Some stories from my first day of SlutCon. All names have been changed to protect the anonymity of the people involved, except for Nick, who is one of the organizers of the event. I go to a talk on men’s fashion. The presenter points to me as a positive example, someone she would see and be intrigued by. This makes sense; I’ve been getting a lot of compliments on my cloak and matching dyed face hair. ...
Take a moment to think of something beautiful to you. Not something morally correct or widely appreciated, but something you delight in. For me, this could be a friend’s smile at a party, or a steaming bowl of delicious stew, but I can’t say what brings you joy. Got it? Good. Make the world have more of that. You are good, your tastes and values are good, and the world should be shaped in your image. You are good, because you are the source of your values. Recognizing yourself as good is the basis for making the world better. Notice how you want the world to be, and fix things that are out of place. You don’t have to fix everything; indeed, you aren’t obligated to fix anything. It’s just that the more you improve the world, the better the world will be. And I reiterate, “better” means more in line with your own vision of a good world, not what anyone else says you ought to work towards. ...
Bleh, I really don’t feel like writing, but I didn’t write yesterday, and the commitment for Halfhaven is a post every other day. This one’s gonna be 500 words of low-effort stream of consciousness, just to clear that bar. I’m not obligated to write, of course. I don’t really believe in the concept of obligation. I hope to do a high-effort post on this at some point. For now, I recommend Nate Soares’s writing on the matter, which heavily influenced my own view. No, I don’t have to write, so why am I doing so even though I don’t feel like it? Well, I want to follow through on Halfhaven. I’m looking forward to the feeling of pride about my 30 blog posts at the end of two months. I’m against self-coercion, but sometimes hard or unpleasant things are good to do. The trick is to remind oneself of why one is doing it. For a while, I just didn’t do hard things, and it turned out that only doing easy things wasn’t a recipe for happy thriving. Ever closer to my dao! ...
Index of posts for Halfhaven Treading Water, Oct 1 Introducing Halfhaven, Oct 3 Some Nonsense For My Third Halfhaven Post, Oct 5 You Are Good, Oct 8 SlutCon Vignettes: Day 1, Oct 11 More About Slutcon, Oct 16 Good Grief, Oct 20 Letter To My Past, Oct 23 Free Writing, Oct 24 CFAR Workshop: Day One, Nov 6 Too Busy, Nov 7 Veil of Ignorance, Nov 13 My Thoughts On Nangs, Nov 16 Why Is Writing Aversive?, Nov 22 Boredom, Nov 28 ...
I signed up for a membership at my local YMCA a couple days ago, inspired by this post. The YMCA is full-featured, and remarkably cheap remarkably cheap by Bay Area standards, as far as I can tell. My plan is to start a strength training habit of some sort, but I haven’t done so yet. Instead, today I took advantage of the pool. I was low on energy today, due most likely to some mix of poor sleep habits and the drain of ongoing emotional processing. Whatever the cause, with the clock approaching 7 p.m., I found myself lying in bed, ruminating on some issues in my life and staring at the overdue “Exercise” on my to-do list. Luckily, when the inspiration struck that I could solve both problems in one fell swoop, I still had enough motivation to get up and give it a shot. I grabbed my bathing suit and a towel, and walked down to the gym. ...