Category: Wise to the Game

LARPing for Learning

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This evening, I played a role-playing game. A family of 7 sits down to Thanksgiving dinner. Each character has a grievance for which they want a fellow player to apologize. I played a mother who simultaneously over-gives, wants table cohesion, and is needy. Things I learned:

  • Over-giving and wanting validation (i.e. martyring oneself) is emotionally exhausting. These run against table cohesion, as they naturally lead to one being snippy.
  • When one feels that one is the martyr, apologies/taking responsibility can come off as passive-aggressive (i.e. BE passive-aggressive), because it’s on top of an underlying fault that one is ignoring – i.e. that the martyrdom is itself a fundamental problem.
  • In a tense situation where different people have strong grievances with each other, an authentic but minor apology can decrease the tension in the entire system.
  • Not all games involve winning. In this case, the winning is the learning we made along the way.
  • Role-playing is an excellent structure for learning.

Missed Signals & Organization

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Continuation of Yesterday’s Game

This morning I woke up, and I went out to have a bagel with an old friend from college. The child with whom I had played the silly soccer noise-making game yesterday walked up to me with a soccer ball. His mother is indicated to me that he had done this. When she gestured this toward me, I was so excited! (I had completely not noticed at all. It’s not that I had misinterpreted his intention; I hadn’t even noticed he was indicating an intention.) Rupert and I went and played the soccer game again. This was absolutely delightful.

Later, Rupert’s brother came over to me and asked for a high five. I misunderstood him. I thought he wanted a hug, so I gave him a hug. Then someone said high five, and I was like, “Oh, I misunderstood,” and I gave him a high five.

Both of these were circumstances where the playing of the game was super fun. I just didn’t know what game they wanted to play, and once we understood, it was a great time.

Also, such a blast to have a not-quite-four-year-old want to continue yesterday’s game.

At the Game Conference

At the game conference this afternoon, I was put on a team to string up the ropes course puzzle. I am not the right person to design and execute a ropes course puzzle, at least not when given 2 hours to do so because the doors open in 2 hours. Fortunately, there were plenty of people who were the right people (e.g. a woman who had built rube goldberg machines and a couple who had built theater sets).

Their biggest problem was lack of management and lack of coordination. They didn’t know that they should divide into 3 groups of 2, each tackling a different structure. I organized the teams and ran between them, uncovering and solving their blockers.

Each solved their own problems very well, but nerds (engineers included) tend to focus on solving the problem in front of them. They operate best when someone else is thinking about the constraints and considering how the different problems fit together. There’s a huge value in coordinating.

Rupert & I played a game.

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The game started simple enough: he kicked the soccer ball at me, I whacked it back. But I couldn’t whack it back without a silly sound effect. So I emitted the natural sound: one of a samurai warrior delivering a killing blow. Rupert laughed. So on the next whack, I emitted a new sound. This one a guttural wail. Rupert laughed.

This game continued for a while. A classic game to play with a child: perform an action, make a silly sound.

Then, the magic: the soccer ball passed between the couch and the wall, in a space only barely wide enough for it to fit. I emitted a sound befitting my excitement: a sound that said, “Behold!!!!!!!!!!!!!” He laughed at that a lot a lot.

Magically, he knew not to keep kicking the ball at the crack. The game progressed, with the crevice a randomly-happening delight. If it had been tougher to hit, aiming at it wouldn’t matter. But since it’s easy, you don’t want to aim at it or you water down the fun.

We played for fifteen minutes, with variations throughout. At one point I switched from sitting to lying on my back with my head upside-down, then finally lying on my side. At another, Rupert’s father joined in with a shark. He didn’t match the game as-played, however, so Rupert nixed his joining. Perhaps I should have told Rupert’s father how to play, since it wasn’t intuitive to him. I guess that’s how rules evolve.

At night, Rupert bumped me with his bum while walking past. It was very funny, very playful, very goof. We both guffawed for a while.

I made a friend. So what if he’s three years old.

On writing

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I wrote today for 5 hours. 6:30am to 11:30am. An odd experience, writing these days. On the one hand, it’s more like chiseling. For me, a ghostwriter by training and writer-by-happenstance due to weird life events that selected writing for me rather than a deep passion for poetry or an obsession with books and reading, the relationship to writing is fraught. Casual. Too casual for a commitment. Like a man who tells his wife, “We’ve been together so long” in response to her questions about his love.

I like ideas. I enjoy truth. I delight in a clever turn of phrase.

Most of my writing is recorded conversating, turned around into a specific story. I like it, but do I love it? Yearn for it? It’s a pleasant morning.

I enjoyed these five hours the way one enjoys diving deep into a previous passion. The grind, for me, is enjoyable enough. I therefore pursue it with a calm interest. That’s all. It’s nice. It’s good enough.

Today, it was enough. And that, to me, is enough.

A Bounty Hunter

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~Four months ago, a friend set some bounties. A professional forecaster, he defined areas of his life he wanted to achieve, along with the probabilities of successful achievement. These categories ranged from personal (get married) to professional (raise $X for a fund) to admin (complete his taxes). I accepted 7 of the 8 bounties.

Four months in, we’re doing well. I don’t know exactly where our numbers are. I won’t likely know until December. I do know that, for one area, he referred me to a friend. He referred to me as his [area] coach. I chuckled; I’m definitely not a general [area] coach. I just happen to coach him well.

Nine years ago, I wrote a ten-year-from-then plan. One of those traits: I get paid on commission. I have always found direct, clearly-aligned incentives to motivate me better than wishy-washy hourly nonsense.

If referrals are the highest form of flattery, bounties are what feeds my family. It activates my interest, so I become an expert in the area.

Delightful. Tasty. Fun.

Falling into Perfection

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Two years ago, I ran away to join the circus. The circus broke my foot and laughed me out of France.

Today, I have found my circus. These are my monkeys.

Twelve writers on a train from San Francisco to Chicago. All met through twitter. All different sorts of writer, from ghostwriter to anthropoligist to sci-fi nerd.

I’m now – at 3:35am – leaving this perfect context. The last time I recall feeling like I was exactly perfectly in the right place was arriving to Chicago to interview at art school seven years ago. I would not attend that school, but I would meet one of my dearest friends.

Out of 173 applicants, we 12 formed the perfect crew. If this is my community, I’m happy as I am. If we convene on twitter, I need to be there.

I met a woman: we began falling in love. She might come live with Nikki and me. I befriended a man who will join us at easter services.

Of the 13 on the train, a shockingly high percentage are those with whom I would delight at further connection.

I slept only 3-4 hours per night. Last night, I slept 11:30pm to 3:15am. Somehow, I have been following my Path.

I wasn’t looking for a helicopter to save me from the rising floodwaters. But I sure adore soaring.

Amtrak Halloween

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The funniest part of dressing like a train conductor on an Amtrak train on October 31st isn’t that people laugh at your contextually-appropriate costume. It isn’t that they ask you to blow the apt-for-circumstance whistle. It’s that NONE OF THEM RECOGNIZE THAT IT’S A HALLOWEEN COSTUME.

Even though it’s October 31st, if you wear a train conductor outfit on Amtrak, people will assume you’re a train enthusiast! Including the friends you’ve made during your three-day-long writing workshop! Instead of thinking, “It’s that one day of the year when people dress up”, they think “Wow, Julian really likes trains”.

On Amtrak, even on Halloween, the base assumption is “train enthusiast”.

Wild.

San Francisco: Birthstones & Fentanyl Folds

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“His birthstone is the second most expensive behind the diamond and the sapphire: the emerald.” – overheard in San Francisco’s Mission District

I didn’t realize that diamond-sapphire stones existed. I can see why that’d be expensive.

You’d think the hardest part is combining the stones. The actual hardest part? The diamond.

–

Walking through the Mission District, I’m struck by the homeless people and the drugs. I used to live in this city – within a one-minute walk of what I referred to as “San Francisco Public Library and Homeless Shelter” and “Bill Graham Civic Auditorium and Homeless Awning” (because homeless people would huddle underneath) – and still I’m surprised. I’m mostly surprised by how everywhere they are. I must’ve walked by 20 people in three blocks.

I moved to NYC recently. I left San Francisco when the people playing $1k buy-in poker were talking about tech moguls the way that I imagine people in L.A. talk about the Kardashians. The city appeared to me no longer filled with the original innovators (nerds who love tech), nor the assemblers (executives to organize the nerds), but the suckers? The moochers? The spectating hangers-on?

I didn’t remember SF’s pervasive decrepitude. I had heard SF homelessness became less ubiquitous after the Grants Pass Supreme Court case. If this is less ubiquitous, it doesn’t feel like it. (Turns out there are 4% fewer homeless people but 85% fewer homeless tents. Somehow these people have become more homeless.)

Living in SF just out of college, I watched someone inject themselves in broad daylight on Market Street. I watched someone else defecate into a bucket outside my office. I knew someone who strolled to work daily shirtless.

I remember when San Francisco outlawed nudity. It felt to me like a cultural loss. Lewd behavior was already illegal, so the ban only targeted nudity. But what’s the problem with someone being naked?

Today, I feel sad at the hunched-over druggies, wobbling in their fentanyl folds. I wish they had somewhere else to go.

Santa Cruz?

Joyful job offers

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(Written a month ago. Published only after their negotiations ended with a successful and satisfied signing.)

Today I helped someone with a job offer negotiation. I awoke this morning thinking about the elements I’d include. I wrote them down. Then I asked Claude for tips. It shifted the sequencing slightly and reframed two pieces of content. Performing skillfully in this negotiation could be worth 10% in annual pay. That’s huge! A few thoughts:

  1. Most people dislike negotiations, so they end them early. If one more back-and-forth is worth $5k in annual pay, isn’t it worth doing the additional back-and-forth? What’s your hourly work rate? Even at $200/hr, that $5k pay bump is worth 25 hours of work. There’s no way the single additional back and forth is bad.
  2. Ignore everything that isn’t a number. Sure, their internal process matters: when you hear facts about how that works, file them away. But most of the conversation is just bullshit fluff. Ignore their attempts to move you emotionally: numbers and actual contractual terms are the only relevant part.
  3. Use both logos and pathos. Just because the only thing that matters from them is the numbers doesn’t mean the only thing that matters from you is numbers. If you can move a number through fluff, that’s valuable fluff!
  4. Walk through the pathways. It’s like a chess move: follow each action down to the end of its pathway as far as you can see. (“If I do X, they might do A, B, or C. If they do A… If they do B… If they do C…”). You won’t know all the details. That’s okay. You can ballpark them. (“If I accept the offer as-is, we have a deal. If I ask for infinity dollars, they’ll either tell me no or rescind the offer. But in the middle, where do I think their lines are?”)
  5. Be positive, affable, and friendly. Everyone wants to work with someone friendly.
  6. Signal flexibility on things that don’t matter. If you’re proposing a $150k salary, offer to take it as $140k salary plus a $10k guaranteed annual bonus if it’s easier for their books. (This is an actual scenario I’ve run into: in some organizations, bonuses come from a different pool from salaries, and you don’t care where it comes from.)

Three additional rules:

  1. Know what you want.
  2. Get what you want.
  3. (Therefore, generally) ask for what you want.

The Return of Funcle Gumbo

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Last time I visited these kids, I was less fun. It was pre-clown school, and I did not know how to play. I thought play was heavy and selfish. Play is generous and light.

This time, I found the fun.

The boys were skeptical on my arrival. I am big and foreign. They clung to their parents, fair self-preservation.

Immediately, my friend tasked me with doing a silly dance. A great way to break the ice.

Upstairs five minutes later, I pretended to be a train conductor, them my passengers.

Our next game: while they scoot by me, they give me a high five.

The scooting and high five game is peak game. It fits what they’re already doing, just adding a little connection and flair. We played that one for fifteen minutes. It set us up well for our penultimate game, go run away and then run back for a high five. It’s played as it sounds.

Our final game, Francis summoned me to the bath to play. This game involved him throwing foam letters out of the bath and me throwing them back in. A good time was had by all. They don’t know that I’ve been up before 6am each day these past 5. They don’t know I drove for four hours today. They don’t know I’ve got a lot on my mind. They just know Uncle Gumbo is fun.

Quotent Quotables:

  • “Uncle Bummo’s got a poo.” – Francis, age 2, about me, when I did not in fact have a poo.