Just another week late post! No. Big. Deal. 😁

Overview

A lot of recovery from the Hackathon. RC was also closed most of the week for Thanksgiving, so not as productive as usual.

Emotional 😩

Apathy
This has become a big feel:

“There’s no point…”

Here’s how it goes:

Outgoing Me: “I should ask X to do Y.”

Apathetic Me: “There’s no point. I don’t know X that well / They probably won’t want to do Y / They will be too busy.”

Outgoing Me: “Who cares! How do you know? You want to, so try!”

Apathetic Me: “…I only have 3 weeks left. It’s not enough time to significantly improve my relationships with anyone / I should be focusing on coding.”

That’s been bothering me.

I’ve been really enjoying coding and do want to give that more energy…
But I’m also in this new city with cool people… maybe I should leave the coding for when I’m at home…

Deep down, I know time with people is what I really want. When invitations come my way, I happily drop what I’m doing to hang out. But when I start thinking about initiating that time myself, that’s when the stories of “Coding is more important” pop-up.

Nervousness and Fear
I was reading books to try and better understand my apathy and came across an idea that clicked.

Apathy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way of avoiding what we’re afraid of.

It rings true for me. The things I want to do make me uncomfortable.

But I don’t want to acknowledge that discomfort (thinking of myself as fearless and in control is way nicer 😎).

So instead I deny it.

Apathy = Fear + Denial

It’s not that I’m afraid.
I just don’t care ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Since starting to ponder this I’ve been better at noticing it and acting anyway.

Social 🍲

Chill time with friends
Despite my apathy, it’s been really nice getting opportunities to hang out with people outside of RC.

On Monday, I finally got to see a friend from my Microsoft Intern days.
On Friday, I went with some other RCers to a board games cafe.

Hearts for low-key socializing! ❤️

Potlucks and parties
Thanksgiving caused RC to be closed for the majority of the week. A bunch of us aren’t from New York / didn’t have plans, so @ebb-tide hosted a Thanksgiving potluck.

It brought me back to my dinner party days in Vancouver.
Tables full of food and drink. Couches to snuggle up on. Wonderful humans to talk to.

Was so full of gratitude and happiness the whole evening. Gah! 😍

Wednesday there was a smaller gathering. It was nice being with close pals and also meeting some people from outside the RC community. 🙂

Such a lovely mélange of socializing this week!

Intellectual 🔮

Building communities
I had a lot of great conversations throughout the week about “What comes after RC?”.

Another idea that’s had me excited is starting a coliving space. I spent most of Saturday:

• Asking people about past experiences with coops/coliving.
• Researching existing coops/coliving spaces.
• Aggregating lists of resources.
• Debating ideas with friends.

I’ve started looking for spaces to visit or apply to. One consistent piece of advice was to give it a try before diving in.

Nevertheless, questions around community building have been fascinating me and it seems like a stream of enthusiasm worth following.

How to spend my time?
Another question I’ve been pondering is “How do I want to spend my time?”.

My one approach to making time decisions, is:

What are my goals? Is this the most impactful way to move towards them?

It’s interesting how this changes the way I spend time.

One example:

I used to read a lot online. In fact, EpubPress was created to help me manage my intake of reading material.

• Quora
• HackerNews
• Newspapers
• etc.

I’ve since realized the majority of what I read isn’t immediately useful to me.

“How we scale @ {insert_startup}”
Ooo! How DO they scale? 😱

I don’t know… but why does it matter? I see no need to create a hyper growth system any time soon. If I ever do, I’m sure there’s better resources than something from HackerNews.

“Introducing {insert_generic_word}. A simple, elegant and intuitive JS framework”
Ooo, I write Javascript! I haz need for this 😱!

No you don’t, Harold. You’re in no need of a framework… in fact, nobody writing Javascript needs another framework.

I’ve generally found this value has pushed my time towards more fulfilling activities.

Haskell Progress
The other day I finished my CIS194 course! 🎓

By the end of it, I really started enjoying Haskell. It’s so different from Javascript and required learning a whole other set of concepts.

I think it was the right choice 😊.

Physical 🛌

So much sleep!
The Hackathon last week in addition to the night-owling really messed up my sleep schedule. On Wednesday night I got home at 3am and cooked myself dinner…

Getting things back on schedule so I can live a more normal life again. @hsubox also found me a pillow, so goodbye pillowcase stuffed with sweater! 😁

Pending baking fiasco
I cooked Chicken Parmesan again last week!

I also bought 2.25 kilograms of flour a month ago because my Eggplant Parmesan recipe called for a 1/2 cup of flour…so I’m currently rolling in excess flour.

Decided to just go all in and buy a bunch of cookie ingredients. So hopefully no wasted flour! Look at me, making sure none of my $2.50 bag of flour is wasted by buying an additional $10 of ingredients. #Smart 🤓

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Done! Made it! Fantastic!

Action items:

• Wake up to what an opportunity these next few weeks are. Make the most of them!
• Keep reshuffling time towards better priorities.
• Bake five-dozen batches of cookies.

Can’t. Wait.

Hearts for you dear reader! ❤️

Thanks to @vaibhavsagar and @yuliaju for easing my blogging worries through feedback.