2025-11-01 08:23:58
Have you ever played Duck Duck Goose1 and the person who’s it keeps walking and walking and walking and walking around and never picks the goose? It’s really boring.
There are very few actual dichotomies. Most choices are not binary. Most choices are more like: “Here is an array of options you can recognize (the subset of a potentially infinite array of options you can’t even see because you’re only able to recognize what’s familiar). Pick one!”
No wonder making decisions is so exhausting.
I can spend a lot of time musing over the array of options, but eventually I narrow it down to one option and then it’s time to make the real choice which is a dichotomy:
Yes, do it, action, go, forward.
Or No.
Choosing an option and then saying No to the option I selected for myself is wild!
Why would I do that?
Because choice is dangerous. Exerting the force of my will upon the world, or at least attempting to do so, is a risk.
Risk of pain, risk of failure, risk of being wrong (whatever that means), risk of ending up in a worse situation, risk of being misunderstood, risky risky risky!
Sometimes it feels safer to just hang out, not move, wait and see. It isn’t safer, usually, but it feels safer.
Passivity is a way to live but it’s not the way I like to live.
I like to happen. I like to be the thing that’s happening in my own life. I like to be the main character in my own story.
And I only get to happen by choosing.
Otherwise:
nothing happens and/or
things happen to me but
I never happen.
I make choices all day long but most of those are inconsequential, like:
what time will I get up, what food will I eat, will I be impatient or kind with my child, will I be impatient or kind with myself, will I make that phone call, will I go to the gym, will I worry, will I be grateful, will I floss today, will I finish this blog post, will I actually put away the clean laundry?
The answer to that last one is No.
It’s going to sit in the basket for a few days.
These choices all seem inconsequential but maybe they aren’t.
Tiny choices become a trend, the trend creates a groove, the groove becomes a rut and I walk the rut because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar than to enact change, so here I am: that’s my life.
I can change it by making different tiny choices, one after another.
It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice.
It’s about exerting your will. Choosing something. Selecting an option and then acting on it. Saying Yes.
Duck duck duck duck duck goose.
It’s about the goose.
It doesn’t matter who the goose is. It matters that you pick a goose. Otherwise there’s no game, just a bunch of kids sitting in a circle being bored and sad.
Everyone sits in a circle. One person walks around the circle, tapping others and saying duck until choosing a goose. The chosen goose tries to tag them before they sit down in the goose’s spot.
2025-10-25 07:15:23
Seeds are shitty little bastards.
You put them in the ground. Nothing happens. You water. You watch. You pull weeds. Nothing happens.
You wait. You water. You watch.
Nothing happens.
You give up.
You figure it’s over. Bad seed. Bad soil. Too much something. Not enough something else.
Forget it.
You turn your attention away.
In silence, a tiny stem pushes through the soil. Delicate roots reach and cling. Fragile new yellow-green leaves open.
Just like that.
Whatever you’ve planted that is stubbornly not cooperating: leave it alone.
Quit messing around with it.
Go ahead and give up!
You tried.
Oh well.
Face and bear the anguish of love.
Face and bear bravely your own responsibility.
(I am so proud of you.)
Sometimes we bury seeds in a garden, sometimes we bury seeds in a grave.
I see your effort, your love, your heart.
Wow, what a heart.
O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red!
Now: stop hiding in martyrdom and entertainment.
Stop playing in the shallows.
Dive. Dive in. Dive the fuck in.
Start using all that you are to be who you are.
Release all the resentment, fear, and self-pity.
It’s not about whether you’re justified. Of course you are.
It’s about whether it helps you live.
Sometimes it does help you. Keeps you safe, or at least makes you feel safer.
Then the walls that were a fortress become a prison.
Time to knock ‘em down.
You have stuff to do.
2025-10-23 04:36:01
On the joy of making arbitrary small rules for yourself which you can break at will but which also might help you steer your own obstinate behavior a bit more in a direction you like
A long time ago I gave myself a little rule about what I would post on my blog or any social media: No complaining.
A self-imposed rule that, for me, meant I wouldn’t post for the sole purpose of complaining about something.
Obviously, I break this rule. Have done, will do.
But the number of times I do not break this rule exceeds the number of times I break it.1
You can’t know that, of course. When I don’t break it, when I stop myself from complaining because of my own rule, no one knows but me.
I’ll be busily composing a witty complaint in my head and anticipating the commiserative responses, when the spectre of my self-created, self-imposed Rules Master bops me on my figurative head (which is inside my literal head) and says in a shrill voice2: NOoooOoooOOoo complaining!
Obviously: Making a rule doesn’t stop me from doing the thing I made the rule about. I have all the power here. I make the rule, I break the rule.
But, often, I honor the rule. The voice sounds off, I pause, I think Ugh, never mind, and I move on to something else3. If I didn’t have the rule at all, I wouldn’t be mentally pausing. There would be no friction, even imaginary. No internal voice making me feel just ever so slightly guilty.
Self-imposed rules like this add purposeful friction. They help me pause and pay attention. What do I want to do? Or not want to do? How do I want to steer my little leaky ship of behavior today?
It’s the old what-gets-measured-gets-managed rule, just less, um, formal: I’m not going to mark on a spreadsheet or log in an app when I do or do not complain online. But if I have a little rule, I will, at least, notice. Usually.
See also: Break dumb rules
I think that’s accurate. I’m not really keeping track.
For some reason, it’s this voice and I think the rule is mostly effective because I start thinking about shrubberies instead of whatever I was complaining about.
Like thinking about shrubberies. Or getting myself a seasonally shaped Reese’s peanut butter cup as a treat for exhibiting such enormous self-control and moral fortitude.
2025-10-10 09:06:41
I need to get back on the monthly routine because I’m squinting back at August like Uuuuuuuuuuh I vaguely remember it so anyway let’s see how this goes.
What could she say? What sentence would pierce him while leaving her intact? She had built her life so carefully around him. To say something, to do something, to feel something, would be to self-destruct.
Okay. So. I want to like this book. I love books about food, involving food, including food. And this book has a lot of food. Of course it’s a tool, a metaphor, a… I don’t know, an environment. But still: Food. Hell yeah. Actually maybe that’s what I don’t like. I love the messy earthy good realness of food and people taking pleasure in it, cooking and sharing and enjoying it. Food in this story is not that. It is a measure of control, self-inflicted punishment, purgatory, avoidance, annihilation. And that makes me sad. ALSO I think if we’d moved things along and had the final inevitable explosion happen at, say, page 215 instead of page 300-ish, that would have been better. Also also, I said the writing was good and it was but. But there were a lot of stretches of text that went like this: She (did a food thing). She (did another food thing). She (did another food thing). Details of the ingredients. She (did another food thing). Sizzle. She (did a food thing). She (did another food thing). She (did another food thing). Etc.
I don’t know how you’d write it different but it got repetitive. It was too much. I was inwardly screaming OKAY I GET IT I GET IT SHE IS COOKING AS A WAY TO HAVE CONTROL SHE IS EATING AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR ALL THE OTHER THINGS SHE SHOULD BE DOING I GET IT.
Also it annoyed me that he (the fiance) did a horrible thing that ruined it all but we treat it like a big mystery and it is never clarified. I know the point is it doesn’t matter what he did. The point is he betrayed her and instead of rising up with immediate willpower and boundaries and hell naw she just cooks and eats and pretends it’s fine. (Until she doesn’t.) I get that in a really personal way of having done the same thing myself (less cooking, less eating, but just as much pretending it’s fine) and I know it doesn’t matter how the betrayal happens, what matters is that the betrayal happened and what matters even more is the self-betrayal that happens and then keeps happening. Until it doesn’t. Again: I GET IT. But also: I WANT TO KNOW. Tell me what he did.
This book both destroyed and healed me. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about it. It’s beautiful, it’s full of music and connection and fear. It’s a time-outside-of-time book but you know, the whole time, that there is a reckoning, there is an end, and you know it will pluck your heart out and smash it like a grape and you go forward anyway. Because you are there too and the music you can’t hear is carrying you along and the slow threads are weaving together and you are somehow woven in and then your heart is broken and you have no one to blame but yourself. And Ann Patchett.
Is there a satisfaction in the effort of remembering that provides its own nourishment, and is what one recollects less important than the act of remembering? That is another question that will remain unanswered: I feel as though I am made of nothing else.
First pick for the book club. We had our first meeting the last week of August and I picked this book without knowing anything about it other than I wanted to read it. It wasn’t what I expected. I’m not sure what I expected. Something lighter, I guess. Anyway I loved it but I felt kind of bad about picking it for CBBC because it is weighty. It is depth. It is pondering. It is kind of bleak. Also beautiful. Also heavy. It’s a book I want to read again in a few years and see how it hits me.
Perhaps, when someone has experienced a day-to-day life that makes sense, they can never become accustomed to strangeness. That is something that I, who have only experienced absurdity, can only suppose.
I guess this is a stranded-on-a-desert-island book, kind of. But only in the sense that the environment, the context, has been set up to give us this thought experiment, this experience, this long echoing question of purpose and the even more important unignorable thump-thump-thump of loneliness.
Anyway this book is excellent. Read it. Or don’t. But do. Also read The Wall by Marlen Haushofer.
I was not sure about this book but Stewart wrote and produced Xena, Warrior Princess so I figured it would be worth a shot. And yes: It was. If you like well-written badass heroines doing cool shit in a dystopian world (I do) you will like this.
Really quite gorgeous. I liked the characters, good adventure, good pacing, good story. A satisfying if bittersweet fantasy (don’t worry, the ending is good).
Loved this one. Scifi, really, but reads like fantasy. I should say more about it but I’m tired and I have already said a lot of words.
Okay thriller. Plot twist was not so surprising. Tolerable writing. Good escape for a few hours.
2025-10-02 09:47:14
But I am who I am and these two small very small really inconsequential things enrage me so here we are
STOP IT. If I am logging in do you think I want the pre-login home page to stay open in a separate tab NO. I do NOT. I am here for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to login. Tabs are precious. I do not have any to waste on the prior page, the pointless page, the unused and unneeded pre-logged-in home page that you insist on keeping open in its own tab. Do you think I’m going to tab back to it and read your latest homepage copy or peruse the social proof or NO. I am NOT. I am ALREADY using the product that is why I am here to LOG IN. Quit target blanking the login button.
Want to do action? Click this button here on the right side!
Want to see things related to the action you just took or will most likely take next? No problem! Click this button. Where is it? On the right side near the last button you clicked?
NO IT IS WAY OVER HERE ON THE LEFT SIDE! SURPRISE! Click it. Go ahead.
Want to do the final action in this sequence of clicks which have to be clicked sequentially to do the thing? Okay! Click the third button. Where is it? Here? On the left side where we’re now putting buttons? NO! On the right side where the first button was? ALSO NO! It’s at the BOTTOM. You fool. You absolute idiot. Why didn’t you know that.
2025-10-01 10:58:02
A mental model or set of values starts as a shelter from the unrelenting chaos of reality. We need these shelters. Living without them isn’t really possible.
We can’t take in and process adequate information fast enough to make truly new decisions. We need to categorize things and go with default reactions, otherwise we’ll get stuck, overwhelmed, never able to move from processing and analysis to action.
Beliefs, mental models, values: These are shortcuts to decision-making. We adopt the ones we are given, adapt them according to our experiences, and use them as a way to understand the world (at least in some fashion). They tell us what the best thing is when we face a choice. They tell us how to react to other people’s choices.
These structures give us shelter from chaos. They give us shortcuts so we can live. We stack a bunch of these structures together and call it something bigger: a religion, a culture, civilization. The interactions between the structures form the system we understand as reality.
The problem with every system is how it evolves. It begins as a means of supporting the structures, keeping everything working; it ends up as a self-referential entity with the core goal of sustaining itself.
The individuals within a system may change and grow and need the system to change and grow with them. But systems resist change. The individuals in a system are often not served by the system, but they’re serving it. They’re trapped within it. Does it shelter them? Does it provide some resources? Does it, perhaps, even keep them alive? Sure. So does a prison.
Scifi tell us to fear AI; at some point, the artificial intelligence will become real, exert will, take over. But we should, instead, look at what we’ve already created that has taken over: our structures, our systems, our organizations, our civilizations. Gaining sentience was not even necessary. We, the inhabitants of the system, provide the necessary sentience to grease the wheels, crank the gears, repair the breaks, patch the holes. How could we refuse? After all, it keeps us alive. This shelter, this system, this prison.