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Breaking Down What Racial Discrimination Really Is
I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:
- Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
- Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.
Let’s just run through a few examples:
- Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
- Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?
I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.
I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:
- Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime.
- Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.
Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:
- Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
- Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).
The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:
- Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
- It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
- We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top
Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.
Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.
Valorant 31: Class in Session – Unit 1 Day 1
UNIT 1: VOD Review | Day 1 – TenZ
Exercise: Imitate Tenz and imagine I am him
Lessons learned:
- I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
- Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
- Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
- Set graphics to low
- Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
- Spray with good spray control – pulling down
- Fall after spraying to reload
- Jiggle if holding close to an angle
- Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
- Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
- Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
- Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
- Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
- Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
- Spam more boxes
- Utilizing jump peeking more
- Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
- Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
All The Nice People You Meet While On The Road
There are so many nice people I meet along the road if I’m just being myself and open to people.
When I was on the plane to Napa Valley I sat next to a couple. The girl got really excited when I wanted to draw with my fountain pen because her boyfriend said she loves that stuff and was an art major like me. I couldn’t get the ink of the pen and but got ink over my hands. She gave me her wet wipe in order to wipe ink off my hands. Her boyfriend lent me a pen when I asked for one to draw with. She braided her hair to show me how braids work because I wanted to draw a character with a huge braid. She offered me her chips when I said I was hungry. She was teasing me so much and was so friendly it actually got a bit awkward with her boyfriend who didn’t seem so pleased.
When I was hiking on Napa Valley, I told a couple that it was worth the view but I had to come back down because I didn’t bring any water. The girl asked me if I wanted any of her water, and asked me if I had to cup to pour it into. Then she and her boyfriend tried to help me find a water fountain.
Also when I was in Napa Valley, I forgot to bring a pen with me to draw with. I asked the girl at the front if I could borrow or buy one. She pulled out a packet of pens and just gave me one.
When I was in Austin looking at apartments, the girl who was showing me apartments told me about how Oracle was buying the apartment complex and that she wasn’t supposed to tell me. She told me I had a really nice vibe. I feel bad because I may have gotten her in trouble because when we got back to the office, I asked her about the Oracle acquisition REALLY loudly because I forgot and she put a finger to her lips and looked really nervous. I was mortified.
When I was in Houston taking photos on the rooftop, I was feeling awkward because everyone there was in their own groups talking and they are all from Citi bank but I was taking photos by myself with a tripod. When I got in the elevator, two girls were telling me how they saw me shooting photos. “You got some good shots right? We saw you,” they told me. One girl said she was calling me the other girl’s brother since she also takes pictures. She asked me whether I lived in the area, and I told her no that I was visiting from DC.
When I went to a Chinese restaurant in Houston and I was struggling to figure out what to order, the waiter came up and asked me what I wanted to order. He asked me if I was Chinese, and I responded in Chinese. He asked me if I was born in China or the US and I told him I was born in Denmark and he said it was a nice place. He said he was from Hong Kong. “I can make something Chinese style for you”, he said and made me a custom dish with eggplant, chicken and string beans. I asked him to take a picture with me, for the memories. He agreed and asked me mine name. He told me his name but I only remember his surname (Leung).
I think back to the guy who asked me yesterday whether or not I was a Youtuber and I think I was so busy being self-conscious and embarrassed, that I closed off the chance that he could have also been a nice person. Even after I told him I had 300 subs, he said to me to keep up the good work. I was just so embarrassed I got out of there as quickly as I could.
Core Wounds 7
Today I want to address the core wounds of feeling creepy and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Awkwardness in the Library
I remember wanting to feel free
To say anything to anyone
To have the power to
Take my destiny in my own hands
And walking up in the library
Feeling so much fear
What if she gives me a weird look
Like the man in new york who beckoned to me
The girl who walked away
No I don’t
She said
We all exist
Here
Perhaps, they are only trying to do the same
To be themselves
To make the world
A safe place for themselves
I can live with them
Leaving
But I’m sad
That it makes me feel alone
An Absolute Puzzle
I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.
Facts that I know:
- Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
- Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
- At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
- Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
- Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me
She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:
- Was always fun and chill
- Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
- Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
- Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
- Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played
However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:
- Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
- Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
- Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
- Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
- Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
- Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
- Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
- Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun
Some factors that I think may contribute:
- May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
- May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
- May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
- May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.
Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.
Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.
A Taoist Approach to Productivity
I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:
- Make things more empty
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
- Look to make your to do list more empty
- Delete things off the to do list
- Schedule time sensitive things
- Clear off small tasks immediately
- Moving it to tomorrow
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Reduce the size of mountains
- Create simple steps to kick off each task
- Seek balance
- Seek out more risk when things are stale
- Seek out more structure when things are too risky
Breaking Down What Racial Discrimination Really Is
I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:
- Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
- Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.
Let’s just run through a few examples:
- Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
- Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?
I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.
I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:
- Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime.
- Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.
Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:
- Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
- Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).
The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:
- Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
- It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
- We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top
Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.
Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.
Valorant 31: Class in Session – Unit 1 Day 1
UNIT 1: VOD Review | Day 1 – TenZ
Exercise: Imitate Tenz and imagine I am him
Lessons learned:
- I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
- Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
- Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
- Set graphics to low
- Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
- Spray with good spray control – pulling down
- Fall after spraying to reload
- Jiggle if holding close to an angle
- Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
- Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
- Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
- Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
- Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
- Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
- Spam more boxes
- Utilizing jump peeking more
- Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
- Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
All The Nice People You Meet While On The Road
There are so many nice people I meet along the road if I’m just being myself and open to people.
When I was on the plane to Napa Valley I sat next to a couple. The girl got really excited when I wanted to draw with my fountain pen because her boyfriend said she loves that stuff and was an art major like me. I couldn’t get the ink of the pen and but got ink over my hands. She gave me her wet wipe in order to wipe ink off my hands. Her boyfriend lent me a pen when I asked for one to draw with. She braided her hair to show me how braids work because I wanted to draw a character with a huge braid. She offered me her chips when I said I was hungry. She was teasing me so much and was so friendly it actually got a bit awkward with her boyfriend who didn’t seem so pleased.
When I was hiking on Napa Valley, I told a couple that it was worth the view but I had to come back down because I didn’t bring any water. The girl asked me if I wanted any of her water, and asked me if I had to cup to pour it into. Then she and her boyfriend tried to help me find a water fountain.
Also when I was in Napa Valley, I forgot to bring a pen with me to draw with. I asked the girl at the front if I could borrow or buy one. She pulled out a packet of pens and just gave me one.
When I was in Austin looking at apartments, the girl who was showing me apartments told me about how Oracle was buying the apartment complex and that she wasn’t supposed to tell me. She told me I had a really nice vibe. I feel bad because I may have gotten her in trouble because when we got back to the office, I asked her about the Oracle acquisition REALLY loudly because I forgot and she put a finger to her lips and looked really nervous. I was mortified.
When I was in Houston taking photos on the rooftop, I was feeling awkward because everyone there was in their own groups talking and they are all from Citi bank but I was taking photos by myself with a tripod. When I got in the elevator, two girls were telling me how they saw me shooting photos. “You got some good shots right? We saw you,” they told me. One girl said she was calling me the other girl’s brother since she also takes pictures. She asked me whether I lived in the area, and I told her no that I was visiting from DC.
When I went to a Chinese restaurant in Houston and I was struggling to figure out what to order, the waiter came up and asked me what I wanted to order. He asked me if I was Chinese, and I responded in Chinese. He asked me if I was born in China or the US and I told him I was born in Denmark and he said it was a nice place. He said he was from Hong Kong. “I can make something Chinese style for you”, he said and made me a custom dish with eggplant, chicken and string beans. I asked him to take a picture with me, for the memories. He agreed and asked me mine name. He told me his name but I only remember his surname (Leung).
I think back to the guy who asked me yesterday whether or not I was a Youtuber and I think I was so busy being self-conscious and embarrassed, that I closed off the chance that he could have also been a nice person. Even after I told him I had 300 subs, he said to me to keep up the good work. I was just so embarrassed I got out of there as quickly as I could.
Core Wounds 7
Today I want to address the core wounds of feeling creepy and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Awkwardness in the Library
I remember wanting to feel free
To say anything to anyone
To have the power to
Take my destiny in my own hands
And walking up in the library
Feeling so much fear
What if she gives me a weird look
Like the man in new york who beckoned to me
The girl who walked away
No I don’t
She said
We all exist
Here
Perhaps, they are only trying to do the same
To be themselves
To make the world
A safe place for themselves
I can live with them
Leaving
But I’m sad
That it makes me feel alone
An Absolute Puzzle
I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.
Facts that I know:
- Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
- Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
- At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
- Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
- Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me
She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:
- Was always fun and chill
- Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
- Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
- Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
- Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played
However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:
- Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
- Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
- Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
- Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
- Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
- Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
- Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
- Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun
Some factors that I think may contribute:
- May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
- May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
- May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
- May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.
Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.
Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.
A Taoist Approach to Productivity
I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:
- Make things more empty
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
- Look to make your to do list more empty
- Delete things off the to do list
- Schedule time sensitive things
- Clear off small tasks immediately
- Moving it to tomorrow
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Reduce the size of mountains
- Create simple steps to kick off each task
- Seek balance
- Seek out more risk when things are stale
- Seek out more structure when things are too risky
Breaking Down What Racial Discrimination Really Is
I believe that racial discrimination exists primarily in today’s day and age in two forms:
- Attractiveness. We know attractiveness is partly biological, but it is also in large part cultural. White people are considered more attractive than other races. We also know “pretty privilege” exists and has a profound effect on how trustworthy, successful and smart someone is. We are biologically and socially hardwired to like attractive people.
- Social economics. We know that white people own most of the wealth. We also know wealth is generational and can give you a huge advantage in life.
Let’s just run through a few examples:
- Who has a better chance of being an actor? What about a tik tok star? An attractive person or an unattractive person?
- Who has a better chance of being a banker? Or a real estate agent? Someone who’s parents are investment bankers, or if their parents worked at Mcdonalds?
I believe that affirmative action and other tools to remove bias are not meant to “even the playing field” or create an “equality of outcome” (even distributions) but rather to counteract biases that may be counter to the correct action or truth. For example, hiring a more attractive person even though they are lazier, dumber and have less experience.
I do believe that race can be very complicated and there are many instances that are not being considered here. However, I feel that those cases are more niche and require more thinking as to the best solution, such as:
- Perceptions of blacks as more capable of crime.
- Women not succeeding as much because of childbearing.
Broadly it is clear to me that this has two main implications:
- Mainstream ideas about race discount the disadvantages of “ugly” low-income white people.
- Mainstream race theory overcompensates for perceived roadblocks of “attractive” wealthy minorities (as they are not only privileged but are often touted as the beacons of hope when they are benefitting from the same system that is currently creating bias).
The only two things I would support affirmative action for would be affirmation action for looks (I don’t know how this would be measured exactly) and for social economic status. I believe that affirmation action in these two areas would:
- Disproportionally benefit minorities as they are considered uglier and are often poorer
- It would call attention to bias that we have very often in our own lives, a bias that affects our ability to make clear and rational decisions
- We would see many competent and talented people who were formerly ignored, be brought to the top
Finally, I would say that all races and all people struggle with issues. There is little to no point in trying to make everyone happy. The main point is to somehow come up with a system where our biases have checks and balances that will guide us to making the most rational and clear decisions.
Being someone who has grown up a minority in America, there is a big wound racism creates within you, a feeling that there is something wrong with you. However, those wounds are opportunities to heal and become wiser, they are not something that everyone else needs to carefully tiptoe around (and be politically correct about). Wounds and pain are not bad things. We can show compassion without enabling people to not grow emotionally and not face their own demons.
Valorant 31: Class in Session – Unit 1 Day 1
UNIT 1: VOD Review | Day 1 – TenZ
Exercise: Imitate Tenz and imagine I am him
Lessons learned:
- I’m exhausted – fell asleep for a long time after watching and imitating for a short period of time
- Knife to gun transition – keeping knife out until dangerous angles, then switch to gun or do a jump peak while switching if no room
- Hold for peeks – clear where they might peek, not where they might be, continue to hold it or switch to another angle they can push you from
- Set graphics to low
- Don’t push smokes unless with flashes or off of someone else’s contact
- Spray with good spray control – pulling down
- Fall after spraying to reload
- Jiggle if holding close to an angle
- Warm up at the start of each round by flicking onto teammate heads
In game what I did very successfully:
- Spamming through smokes – I got many headshots through the smoke
- Holding peekable angles – I felt I got a lot more intentional to where I was staring
- Holding off angles when watching for the flank (specifically I utilized the place Tenz hid on Pearl in the first round to get kills
- Being more intentional of when the knife is out, I rarely got caught out with my knife. I figured out how much time it takes to pull out the gun, and I always timed it so that I pulled out my gun before peeking anything.
What I can improve on:
- Pulling out the knife more often when I know no one is close
- Spam more boxes
- Utilizing jump peeking more
- Making sure my peeks are still tight and clean and fast
- Being much more focused on holding specific peeks when slowly scaling up
All The Nice People You Meet While On The Road
There are so many nice people I meet along the road if I’m just being myself and open to people.
When I was on the plane to Napa Valley I sat next to a couple. The girl got really excited when I wanted to draw with my fountain pen because her boyfriend said she loves that stuff and was an art major like me. I couldn’t get the ink of the pen and but got ink over my hands. She gave me her wet wipe in order to wipe ink off my hands. Her boyfriend lent me a pen when I asked for one to draw with. She braided her hair to show me how braids work because I wanted to draw a character with a huge braid. She offered me her chips when I said I was hungry. She was teasing me so much and was so friendly it actually got a bit awkward with her boyfriend who didn’t seem so pleased.
When I was hiking on Napa Valley, I told a couple that it was worth the view but I had to come back down because I didn’t bring any water. The girl asked me if I wanted any of her water, and asked me if I had to cup to pour it into. Then she and her boyfriend tried to help me find a water fountain.
Also when I was in Napa Valley, I forgot to bring a pen with me to draw with. I asked the girl at the front if I could borrow or buy one. She pulled out a packet of pens and just gave me one.
When I was in Austin looking at apartments, the girl who was showing me apartments told me about how Oracle was buying the apartment complex and that she wasn’t supposed to tell me. She told me I had a really nice vibe. I feel bad because I may have gotten her in trouble because when we got back to the office, I asked her about the Oracle acquisition REALLY loudly because I forgot and she put a finger to her lips and looked really nervous. I was mortified.
When I was in Houston taking photos on the rooftop, I was feeling awkward because everyone there was in their own groups talking and they are all from Citi bank but I was taking photos by myself with a tripod. When I got in the elevator, two girls were telling me how they saw me shooting photos. “You got some good shots right? We saw you,” they told me. One girl said she was calling me the other girl’s brother since she also takes pictures. She asked me whether I lived in the area, and I told her no that I was visiting from DC.
When I went to a Chinese restaurant in Houston and I was struggling to figure out what to order, the waiter came up and asked me what I wanted to order. He asked me if I was Chinese, and I responded in Chinese. He asked me if I was born in China or the US and I told him I was born in Denmark and he said it was a nice place. He said he was from Hong Kong. “I can make something Chinese style for you”, he said and made me a custom dish with eggplant, chicken and string beans. I asked him to take a picture with me, for the memories. He agreed and asked me mine name. He told me his name but I only remember his surname (Leung).
I think back to the guy who asked me yesterday whether or not I was a Youtuber and I think I was so busy being self-conscious and embarrassed, that I closed off the chance that he could have also been a nice person. Even after I told him I had 300 subs, he said to me to keep up the good work. I was just so embarrassed I got out of there as quickly as I could.
Core Wounds 7
Today I want to address the core wounds of feeling creepy and uncomfortable in my own skin.
Awkwardness in the Library
I remember wanting to feel free
To say anything to anyone
To have the power to
Take my destiny in my own hands
And walking up in the library
Feeling so much fear
What if she gives me a weird look
Like the man in new york who beckoned to me
The girl who walked away
No I don’t
She said
We all exist
Here
Perhaps, they are only trying to do the same
To be themselves
To make the world
A safe place for themselves
I can live with them
Leaving
But I’m sad
That it makes me feel alone
An Absolute Puzzle
I am completely confused and upset by how this girl that I play Valorant went from having so much fun to always getting annoyed and mad.
Facts that I know:
- Used to beg me to play constantly, only stopped because I was too busy with work so I said no all the time
- Used to laugh and think I was very funny in games
- At first, was resistant to smurfing, but after she was convinced, had a ton of fun trolling on smurfs including doing frenzy only challenge
- Used to be afraid to talk in voice chat, only talked to me
- Spent all her time talking to me on Valorant and ignored her relationship because of how much she liked playing with me
She used to be my favorite person to play with for several months:
- Was always fun and chill
- Could make jokes or talk about deep stuff
- Made me feel special because she only wanted to play with me
- Would actually listen to strats unlike some girls who would get defensive when given any feedback
- Was very smart and improved a great deal in the time we played
However, somehow, after months of having lots and lots of fun, everything has taken a dramatic turn:
- Gets annoyed when she isn’t doing well and takes the game very seriously
- Gets annoyed when I’m taking the game too seriously but also gets mad when I goof off
- Wants everyone to be mean and toxic yet gets upset when people are toxic back
- Is mad when I’m goofing off and think I’m somehow trying very hard to be funny
- Claims that unrated it doesn’t matter if she wins or loses but gets mad when she loses
- Claims smurfs don’t matter but somehow gets mad when she loses on a smurf
- Somehow is able to have fun with other people and refuses to play with me now
- Cannot seem to remember any of our happy times and insists that she never had fun
Some factors that I think may contribute:
- May have been taught by someone that being slow and boring is a very bad thing, seems to be overly concerned with it and projects onto other people
- May feel a really strong pressure to do well, seemed to take the game extremely seriously after her friend started playing on it
- May also feel a great deal of pressure to play well and be less toxic around me because she wants it to work out, the pressure may cause her to do worse, and be even more toxic
- May feel a sense of superiority or arrogance? When we first started playing, she kept telling me she was afraid I would stop playing with her because she was lower elo than me. I never did, but always wondered if she would stop playing with me if she got better than me.
Altogether I can’t really make sense of this phenomenon and it does bother me a great deal. I suppose on some level I must accept that something about Valorant and playing with me triggers her in some deep way and that I shouldn’t let that stop me from having fun. It does make me sad that things have changed so dramatically and I lost my favorite Valorant buddy.
Valorant has become significantly less fun for me now. It almost feels like work, instead of a game that I loved. There was a period of time when I was playing with her that I truly let go of the need to win and actually just had fun. I don’t know what I need to do to get that feeling back. I hope she finds a way to have fun as well, but it breaks my heart that it isn’t with me.
A Taoist Approach to Productivity
I’ve been meditating on productivity and I was curious as to a more taoist approach. I’ve come up with a couple of ideas:
- Make things more empty
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Focus on one thing at a time and do work to make everything feel empty
- Look to make your to do list more empty
- Delete things off the to do list
- Schedule time sensitive things
- Clear off small tasks immediately
- Moving it to tomorrow
- Pursue each task with the goal of emptiness
- Reduce the size of mountains
- Create simple steps to kick off each task
- Seek balance
- Seek out more risk when things are stale
- Seek out more structure when things are too risky