Halfhaven

It’s Thanksgiving week, and I’m in Texas with my family. I’m so bored. I don’t often get bored at home. There, I keep pretty busy. I think that boredom is the feeling that I can’t take actions that matter. When I’m home, there’s always something I can do. I can spend time with a friend, or improve my space, or cook, or work out, or walk around my neighborhood and maybe discover something cool. I don’t always have the energy to do another meaningful thing, but lacking energy doesn’t feel like boredom. When I lack energy, I sleep or I unwind with a videogame or book, aware that I have other options but choosing to engage in something more passive. ...

The astute reader may have noticed that I’m substantially behind on my Halfhaven commitment. It’s not because I don’t have time to write. Rather, it’s because often, when I contemplate writing, my attention slides away and I do something else instead. I like having written, but I find the actual process of writing aversive. There’s a technique I learned from meditation that goes “if you feel resistance to practice, can you love the resistance?”. I’m going to borrow that technique here, and write a post exploring why I don’t want to write. ...

A trip report of a particular cognitive experience.

A party game!

Musing on being busy.

What I learned in my first day at the Center For Applied Rationality.

Jotting down some random thoughts.

Some advice I’d give to my 25-year-old self.

I grieved recently. The process was intense and unpleasant, and it helped me a lot. In this essay, I’ll talk about my experience and my theory of why it was good for me. Some background context: my friend broke up with me around a year ago. I had expectations for the future, a vision for our life together. I’m sad about losing those. I didn’t want to be sad. I clung to her for palliatives to keep the sadness at bay: sex, time together, reassurances. The pressure hurt her. I started trying to push the sadness down so I would stop hurting my friend. ...

On the first night of SlutCon, brimming with energy, I wrote up some vignettes from the first day. As is so often the case with events like these, the rest of the weekend was a lovely blur. I’ve taken some time to process and reflect, and I want to share some of what I experienced and learned. More Vignettes Saturday I wrestle with a friend of mine as onlookers play music on a Bluetooth speaker: first Duel of the Fates, then Careless Whisper. It’s a hard-fought match, and we both get sweaty and scraped up. At one point, I have him in a headlock, but inexperienced as I am, I worry about hurting him and let up. After the bout, he calls me out on this, saying that he likely would have tapped out and given me the win if I had followed through. I reflect on the parallel to flirting; it’s hard to go for what I want if I’m not sure I can trust my partner to enforce their own boundaries. ...