Peripatetic, Writer, Harbinger of Mirth
A friend challenged me to write the last sentence of the defining novel of the 21st century. After much research, discussion, and consideration, I composed the following:
To think we thought change wouldn’t change change.
Perhaps I’ll write the rest someday.
Embrace and love your nerd-dom. All successful people geek out about stuff. Whether it’s sci-fi, sports, music, art, or math, they’re passionate and driven, and that’s a good thing.
I grew up a self-hating nerd. My interests were swayed by society’s judgments. I spent years getting over that, understanding it’s okay — desirable, even, to be passionate. I’m still struggling with it–with judging my loves.
It’s even desirable to be into super nerdy stuff? Absolutely. Sci-fi, e-sports, board games, and reading. Philosophy and sports and theater and art. All things I love. All things are great. Bill Gates is into bridge and board games. Steph Curry likes organizing his garage – how’s that for a weird nerdy hobby?
Every topic has passionate zealots and harmful stereotypes about them. It’s good to have passion. Passion moves the world forward. Do your passions, no matter how you judge them.
Don’t jump at once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Time-constrained doesn’t mean high-quality. Top-of-mind doesn’t mean you should say it. Most ideas are bad ideas, even scarce, enticing ones.
Prioritization and patience are a pair of twins: prioritization is the concept, patience the implementation. Priorities are a rank-order of your values consistent across situations. Patience allows you to align your behavior with those values whenever a new idea arises or an opportunity presents itself.
When someone makes me angry, I often implicitly prioritize that anger, but I don’t have to. Some people channel their anger into achieving their goals instead of letting the anger steer them. The same can be true for other emotions.
An effective marriage between priorities and patience is part of why people with singular focuses are more likely to succeed. If your whole life serves the purpose of creating great literature, each thought, moment, and event slots somewhere under that heading. Every moment could be a story; every word becomes fascinating. If your life serves a purpose, each perception does, too.
“It’s not about death as a good choice, per se: more a rejection of all that exists and a disbelief in underlying capital-V Value that prompts a strong and visceral disgust of all that I find. And, so, without any importance to be found, the act—suicide—becomes as equally rational as it was previously irrational: trading the next terrestrial 60 years for that same time spent in that void I’ll reach eventually is just as fine as not. No value is no value is no value, and what’s 60 years to a rock.”
Yes, I wrote those notes (lightly edited for clarity) as an undergrad dabbling in nihilism. And know what? They’re bad—morally bad. That line of thinking breeds Columbines and Unabombers. They’re also wrong. Meaning is made. Even if Value is a construct, that means it’s constructed. That means you can make it! And just because you make it doesn’t mean it’s not real.
But golly, could I write. And for a nihilist, I sure had passion.
Time moves consistently, but mine doesn’t.
Subjective perception of time is altered by all sorts of stimuli. After a drink, it swims faster, blurrier. Right before lunch, it slows as I savor it more. “Time” is an objective measure about the world—a construct based on collective human experience. Each person’s time, however, is subjective. Experientially, there is such thing as a fast second or a long day.
At twelve years old, late at night in the hold of a sailboat, I wept at the realization that time only moves in one direction. Correct, precocious pre-pubescent philosopher young-Julian: correct, but incomplete.
I also recall, earlier, as a tyke of about seven, telling a friend, “we should have fun for the next hour so it passes faster.”
While I couldn’t yet articulate the difference between subjective and objective time, I already understood its implications: Subjective time is inconsistent. You can manipulate it, and thereby manipulate your experience.
So play with it. That’s as much as I’ve got. I’ve discovered a powerful tool and have little idea what to do with it, so let’s experiment and see what works. Try slowing subjective time by sensing the subsections of each second. Speed it up by losing yourself in thought. Objective time moves at a consistent rate in one direction. That’s our creative constraint. What we do within its bounds is up to us. If you discover something, tell me.
Traveling around the U.S., with no nine-to-five, I revert to a pre-1800s sense of time, which I find brings greater focus and emotional depth.
How long have I been writing this? Wrong question.
Is it valuable? Better question.
Is it what I should be doing? Right question.
First night in my van,
Emptiness reverberates.
I am vast. Try alone.
(On New Year’s Eve in a Las Vegas Casino)
How does one celebrate in a predatory place? I evidently celebrate by feeling sad. The band didn’t play Auld Lang Syne as their first song of the New Year. Unacceptable, but not why I feel sad. I feel sad because I spotted a little girl. She’s celebrating New Year’s in a casino, which feels icky to me, bordering on harmful. My being here doesn’t feel icky, however. Is there a difference?
Maybe. Perhaps it’s bad to teach a child to associate predation with celebration, while I’m old enough to make my own decisions. I chose to be here. That’s one difference. It’s not particularly strong—it doesn’t justify the existence of casinos in general, but it explains a bit of the ethical difference in my gut.
The girl and her family stepped away. A mother and her two young children arrived. One, a baby boy in a stroller surrounded by stale cigarette smoke—you should have seen his thousand-yard stare.
“I dislike fish” is different from “I don’t like fish.” The first establishes an existence while the second allows for a neutral feeling or no opinion.
Through linguistic constructs like this, the English language implies that liking is the existence of action and disliking is the absence. (In addition to “like, “I care” is an action and “I don’t care” is an absence. See also “I love” and “I don’t love,” as well as “I’m a fan of…” and “I’m not a fan of…”).
This language suggests that bad is the absence of good. In reality, however, good is the absence of bad.* Our language should reflect that.
*While I’m confident in this statement, I have trouble articulating “why” beyond simply giving examples. I suspect it boils down to the fact that “good” eventually boils down to our struggle against entropy, which is the always-coming bad.
Is a veg day the necessary calm after a storm? After 13 hours work yesterday, today was pizza and soda and staying up past 3. At the end of these days, I typically feel sad. Nobody gains when a person lets their life spiral away. I didn’t even read much, which I really should do more.
You needn’t spend every second moving toward what you want, but you can be and should be if you have the right aims. Retreating is sometimes the best way to advance. I wonder if that was the point of today.
On the 7th day, God rested. If God needs rest, I must too. These days must be okay. I feel less bad now, less regret.
I assisted a friend with her ten-year-old student. I helped a high school boy plan for his future. He liked an essay I wrote enough to share it with his class. I didn’t work–so what? I’m following my natural rhythm: Fits & starts, sprints & walks.
I’ve been having all sorts of wonderful experiences–futbol and tennis, befriending locals, helping kids. Today was a slow heart rate, no-work relaxed day. I opened a new book and began my next writing project.
I learned about myself. This is who I was. I can be someone else tomorrow. “Was” doesn’t mean “am.”
I’m on a decade-long journey to improve my breathing. Eight years ago I began meditating; two years ago I had my septum un-deviated. Both made my list of top-10 life decisions.
In dance lessons today, I noticed a clear difference between dancing with my mouth open and dancing with it closed.
In short, I learned worse when I could breathe worse.
Medicine is the only industry I know where we avoid optimization. Doctors don’t understand, “I want to improve my daytime breathing.” If they don’t see a clear problem, they refuse to improve. Perhaps it’s their promise to “do no harm,” which doesn’t recognize some large upsides are worth the risk of harm.
More than just doctors, most people think about medicine this way. In every conversation (save one) where I’ve mentioned my desire for surgery, my co-loquitur has responded as though I’m nuts: “Why would you undergo surgery if your life is fine?” Even a 0.001% improvement to a person’s daytime breathing would be transformative. My life is fine. It could be better. And sure, as I tell them, “using a CPAP is annoying.” I just exaggerate how annoying it is.
If I’m lucky, surgery to rotate my jaw forward a few 5 millimeters will be done by February or March. If I’m unlucky, it could take a year more, perhaps even longer, because orthodontists are confusing, deceptive, and opaque… and because I may have chosen the wrong one. Until my cut date, I remain a mouth-breather.
When my jaw is fixed, it’s not as though my whole life will be fixed. It is, however, that my whole life will be improved. I’ll have a new jaw, a better jaw, a million-dollar jaw. I’ll dance with my mouth closed and cry tears of joy.
Julian Wise 