I very rarely sleep well. The one exception is usually the night before some big, major thing. For many people, that’s the night they sleep the worst – for me, it’s one of the rare times I sleep easily and well. Something about being right at the edge of some major event or milestone puts me in a serene way.

To all: a good night.

Yesterday, an interesting thought popped into my head. As I rolled it over in my mind a little, a parallel thought emerged (as it frequently does): “this will be a good blog post.”

That sort of let me pause my thinking on the topic; I often do my best thinking here in this space, exploring the topic through words as I write them. Letting the natural shape of things appear as I grapple with the implications from the outside.

And so I paused my thinking. And also – since I was in the middle of something else that demanded both my mental attention and the physical use of my hands at the time – completely missed writing it down and have thus forgotten it.

It will come to me, I’m sure. Most such thoughts do return to me because they were the natural result of the things I encounter or engage with, and I’m sure those stimuli will repeat. But until then it will gnaw at me.

Oh! It worked. Writing that worked, the thought returned to me. Ha! I knew that would work. I could delete the above paragraphs now that I’ve remembered the topic. But I think I’ll just go from here, and be amused later when I read this.

Actual Topic: Why It Gets Harder to Form Meaningful Bonds and Relationships with People and Concepts as You Age

So, you’ve got this plank of wood. It’s solid; it has no holes in it. That’s you. When something new enters your life, it cuts a hole in that plank of wood in its own shape, and then fills it. So your first best friend or your first favorite hobby is a circle, let’s say. It cuts a circle-shaped hole and then fills it, occupying that part of your life. Your life still feels whole.

But then let’s say over time, your relationship with that concept fades. The best friend moves away or you lose interest in the hobby. So you look for something new – and you find it! A new friend, a new interest, etc. But that new thing is a triangle, not a circle. It’s different. So it won’t exactly fit in the circle hole that’s already there. You have to cut the shape out a little differently for the triangle to fit. It fills most of the gap, but not perfectly. Maybe you don’t even notice at first.

But this happens again and again and again. Each new shape takes a new chunk out of the plank, or it just fits loosely into the jagged hole already there but doesn’t plug it at all. Maybe you get more and more picky, trying to find things that are exactly the shape of the messy space you’re trying to fill, but no such natural shape exists. Maybe you try to force other things to become that shape, but that never works. And so with each new thing, it becomes harder and harder to meaningfully feel whole.

A cynical person would say that the answer is to simply leave your plank of wood intact from the beginning. Don’t cut holes in it at all. But that seems like a sad way to live. No, I think the better solution is to find a way to repair the wood – or even be something less immutable, more repairable than “wood” to begin with. I’m just not sure how to do that.

There are two kinds of people that like theater. There are people who primarily like to experience theater; people who enjoy being in the audience. They love the shows, the production, the performances. They love watching a story unfold, discussing it with peers, and are excited for the next one.

Then there are the people who primarily like to produce theater. Actors, directors, writers, designers, composers, and all manner of cast and crew. They pour tremendous effort into the act in order to create something for others to enjoy. Of course, they get enjoyment out of it themselves, but it’s of a different sort.

While there is plenty of overlap between the two groups (many people can be both!), by the nature of the art there have to be more people in the former category than the latter. For everyone who contributes to theater, there must be scores to thousands of people who primarily (or exclusively) only experience it from the audience. That’s not only okay, it’s great. It would be absurd if it were otherwise.

Imagine meeting someone who loved theater, attended dozens of plays a year, and was a regular donor to their local community theater troupe, but never was a member of cast or crew themselves. Would you accuse that person of not having “the theater spirit?” Of course not.

This is how I feel about Christmas.

I love Christmas. But I frequently get accused of not loving it, because I don’t love decorating, or baking, or putting up trees, or getting/receiving presents (other than for my children). But I do love Christmas music, holiday movies, seasonal get-togethers (as long as I’m not hosting them), and the general spirit of the holiday.

I don’t feel that I need to produce Christmas any more than I need to produce a play in order to be a lover of theater. So this year, I didn’t. This year, I went full-on audience member. I took my kids to a ton of Christmas-related stuff (we went to a holiday-themed park attraction, we drove around town for hours looking at lights and listening to Christmas music, we visited Santa, we decorated gingerbread houses with family members), but I did zero decorating. We have a tree up now – I put it up and let my kids do whatever they wanted to it, and it’s more perfect than anything I could have put effort into. Come Christmas morning, there will still be plenty of presents under it.

It was… wonderful. Just getting to experience Christmas without having to feel like I needed to do anything to create it. Wouldn’t you know it, it happened anyway! And I got to spend so much more time with my children, so much more time being present with them, than if I was scrambling to manufacture magic.

Every single second of your life will happen. Most of them don’t need you to do much to them; they’ll be perfect the way they are as long as you’re there for them. Save your effort for the big moments, the ones that will cascade down into all those other ones, and then let those other ones come as they are. Live them.

I am a serious person, and I value seriousness in others. That doesn’t mean I’m humorless or dour, mind you! I’m plenty goofy. It’s just that I approach things with a mindset that they should be valued for what they are. I strongly dislike sarcasm, I prefer to make my opinions clear, and I engage in discussion on the grounds presented.

I tend to value seriousness in others. Again, not “lack of humor” – in fact, if you can conduct yourself seriously while also maintaining a sense of humor I will regard you very highly. I crack jokes a-plenty, but not at the expense of being engaged with whatever I’m engaging with. Because I value others who take things seriously, I look for ways to evaluate intellectual seriousness.

One of the most certain ways to see if someone is an intellectually serious person is to see how they examine, present, or absorb counterfactuals to their own positions. If you think we should go about a certain project in a certain way – can you articulate what would change your mind? If you have a certain opinion – can you describe what led you to it, other than absurd claims of objective truth?

If you can’t? If you can’t wrap your head around the opposite view, then you’re likely not a serious person. You don’t have to agree with the opposite view, of course! But if you can’t see it, then you can’t engage seriously with any discussion surrounding the options.

Most people have goals that they would very much like to accomplish, but we tend to weigh these goals against the cost of achieving them. Costs not only in time, money, effort, juice, or other of our own resources, but also in terms of opportunity cost. We can’t pursue every goal; we must prioritize.

But there’s an additional complication, which is that some goals may detract from other people’s ability to accomplish their own, and we like those people. Taking away their resources might get you closer to your goal, but you generally don’t.

Those people in turn have their own people, and so on. The web of our interlocking cares for one another and the things we try to accomplish, both individually and as clusters within that network, is endlessly fascinating to me. It motivates me to look for ways to align goals, ways to understand motivations, and ways to imagine myself in the situations of others.

I think once you start to see that web, it’s very hard to un-see. It becomes very hard to think of yourself as truly atomistic again. There is a lot of good to be done with that knowledge. I will try to discover more.

A great success can be a major blind spot. We want so badly for each success to be the “ultimate” one that changes the rest of our life to a simple repeating pattern. We struggled and won; doesn’t that mean we deserve for the struggle to end?

Sadly, that’s not the way it works. There will be new struggles, and old successes will lose their luster. The thing you wanted most in the world at 20 probably won’t still make you happy at 30, 40, 50.

You do deserve a rest. But not forever. You have to keep marching; there’s always a sequel. If you do it right, they can always be fun. Good stories in their own right, worth reading and enjoying. And that’s the secret – not to dread the fact that there will always be another page, but to embrace it and make it your own.

You’re about to engage with someone. You’re on the verge of sending them an email, starting a conversation, etc. This will be your first interaction, and you’re goal-oriented, so you’re very focused on the best way to get what you want. You’re also, perhaps, focused on what could go wrong with that plan – what if they don’t like my email?

What very, very few people do is think “what does the other person want to happen today?”

Other people have goals too, and they’re often very easy to help. That goes a long way towards getting rid of the anxiety that they won’t want to talk to you – of course they will, if you’re helping them. It also helps you start to craft win/win scenarios that get you closer to your own goal.

Yet so few people take this step! It’s more challenging intellectually – our entire brain is designed around fulfilling our own wants, not those of strangers. We don’t have as many good processes for figuring out what a relative stranger might desire. But practice – it’s worth the effort.

We can’t view ourselves through the eyes of others. We can’t import all their biases and viewpoints and lenses, and we can’t export our own to make room for them. For better or worse, the way others truly experience us will remain a mystery.

But we can certainly gather clues to the impact we’re making and adjust accordingly. While you should always take the expressed opinions of others regarding you with an enormous helping of salt, that doesn’t mean you should dismiss them as irrelevant. You should look for patterns. The rest of the world is your personal mirror.

First, release your ego. There’s no “right and wrong” here. If everyone in the world thinks you’re rude and you think you aren’t, this process doesn’t mean that you have to accept that you’re a jerk. But it does mean examining your behavior and looking for what aspect other people may be incorrectly interpreting as rudeness!

(As an example, back in 1992, then-President George Bush was visiting Australia. While riding around in the limo, he held up his index and middle finger in a “V” sign, which is common in the US as either meaning “peace” or “victory.” Down Under, however, it means… something very rude. 100% of his audience might have thought he was being rude without it being true – but that doesn’t mean Bush should have just shrugged his shoulders and said “sticks and stones!” Something was definitely wrong with his behavior, in the sense that it wasn’t communicating what he wanted to communicate.)

Before your intent reaches the mind of your audience, it has a LONG way to travel. It has to make it through your imperfect ability to communicate, past the audience’s imperfect ability to observe, then through the filters of their own experiences, biases, moods, heuristics, and even current fatigue level. Then their response has to make that same journey back in the other direction! Is it any wonder that we don’t always get it right?

So adjust. Don’t just stubbornly plant your feet and say “well, my intent was pure, so it’s everyone else’s responsibility to recognize it.” Hogwash! It’s on you – because you’re the one who wants the benefit of better communication.

“Twitter isn’t Google” is good, actionable advice. Here’s what it means: due to social capital loss, you have a finite number of things you can successfully ask other people in a given time period. But there’s no penalty other than your own time to search for answers yourself. Because of that, unless you suspect that an answer will be MUCH harder to find yourself than asking someone else, you should try to independently discover it. In other words, before you type that question into Twitter, you should type it into Google.

What’s funny about this is that the advice is so concise and actionable, and yet to anyone 20 years ago it would be utter gibberish. It might be utter gibberish 20 years from now, too! I suppose a few decades ago you could have said “the phone book isn’t an encyclopedia” and gotten roughly the same point across, but I really love the nuances of time-dependent language. Someday people will say “the brainmesh isn’t infoAI” and we’ll all just understand what that means. The wheel turns.

Structure is a double-edged sword. If you’re not overly fond of structure, you might call it “needless busy work” or “bureaucratic red tape.” Things like documenting your mistakes, writing out templates, establishing policies. Meetings.

But with the right application, those things aren’t hindrances – they’re the shape of the rocket. The rocket will never fly, even if you have all the right parts, if they’re not in the right shape. If they’re not rigid and supported, they’re just a pile of junk.

The error goes both ways. Some people think “anything other than pure, direct creation is just a pointless drag on my process” and those people can never scale, grow, or repeatable-ize. Other people think “success requires structure, so as long as I create structure it will, in turn, create success.” But… nope. Those are “meetings for the sake of meetings” people, and they’re the worst.

A pile of junk won’t fly. But neither will an assemblage of parts carefully and rigidly shaped like an airport. You need a shape, but you need the right shape, and you need it to not have anything missing nor anything extra. This is difficult! It’s difficult enough that it should never be dismissed as automatic. This won’t just happen.