Lists of 5

random brain dump of accumulated thoughts from the past few months

It feels like it was the end of January just two weeks ago. Somehow, it’s the middle of April, and just over a quarter of the year has already passed. Unbelievable.

It’s been a crazy few months. I started the year barely leaving the house and now all of a sudden I’ve traveled 3 times in the last 6 weeks. I’ve had days where I read for like 8 hours and days where the thought of picking up my Kindle was nauseating. I’ve had probably 7 different existential crises. I feel like I’ve done so much these past few months, yet the list of things I want to do and read has only grown longer and longer.

Sometimes it feels like I’m drowning. Sometimes it feels like I’m just running in circles, completely directionless. Sometimes I struggle to find an answer to the question ‘why am I doing all this?’

Those anxieties all rush away whenever I reflect on the person I was at the start of the year. Every time I read my journals from then, the growth I’ve made just feels so tangible. And that growth is what provides meaning to everything I’ve done.

It was all only possible thanks to some incredible content and ideas I somehow stumbled across, so as a token of my gratitude, I figured I’d share some of things that deeply influenced me. For fun, I decided to mix in a few random thoughts that have been on my mind.

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5 quotes that made me think

1. If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales. - Albert Einstein

I’m just as baffled as you are that Mr. E=MC^2 was advocating for reading folklore as a proxy for intelligence, but I completely resonate with this. Innovation only happens when creativity and imagination is applied to rigid sciences, and the capacity to be creative and imaginative is built when you stop thinking about the world as it is and dream about the world as it could be (i.e. in fairy tales and myths and folklore and fantasy books). I know I’m not a kid anymore and that I already spent way too much of my childhood dreaming about dragons and magic, but I think I still want to mix in a few fantasy stories into my reading diet that’s recently been filled with a bit too much philosophy, psychology, and software documentation 🤮.

2. Isn’t a principle about what you give up, not what you gain? // Maybe you shouldn’t be looking for life to be easier because you choose to do something that is right. - (I think) Brandon Sanderson?

I’m pretty sure this pair of quotes came from (funny enough) a fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson. Regardless, this pair of quotes hit me like a brick wall. Character and honor don’t come from the things you choose to do, but the things you say no to; the ability to show restraint in the face of temptation without any expectation of validation or recognition. It’s so simply and beautifully said.

3. Music, after all is best experienced when you listen to it with your eyes closed, and your heart wide open. - Totally did not save the source oops

Isn’t this just SO BEAUTIFUL 🥺 I feel like this applies to everything honestly. The world is best experienced when you turn your brain off and open your heart. This is such a struggle for me because I have a tendency to analyze and critique and break down literally everything I see. I have to just remind myself to shut the fuck up, stop thinking, and just appreciate the experience fully. Experience the world with my heart wide open.

4. You probably shouldn't try to explicate your principles for others to absorb; it's really only usable when they also have the set of experiences and cases that you have in your head. - Also did not save the source yikes

Straight facts. On one level, this is about empathy. Just because someone doesn’t listen to you doesn’t mean they’re bad or intolerant or disrespectful. Maybe they just don’t have the experience needed to truly understand what you’re saying, and it’s our job to be empathetic towards that. Just think about all the times our parents told us stuff that we initially brushed off only to later understand the wisdom that was hidden in what they said. We all need to make our own mistakes and have our own experiences to grow.

This also hits at the heart of leadership for me. Leadership isn’t about shoving advice and lessons down other people’s throats, it’s about recognizing where other people are at and gently cultivating an environment where they can gain the experiences they need to be a better version of themselves.

5. If someone has the courage to admit they were wrong, you should have the grace to give them credit for admitting it. Rubbing it in encourages them to never admit being wrong again. - My 5th grade librarian would be screaming at me for not saving my sources

This so simply and clearly explains a lot of the dynamics that I’ve seen. People are so scared of saying the wrong thing and being seen as ignorant and getting cancelled that they end up saying nothing and no meaningful conversations end up happening. And when conversation is stifled, it pushes people towards extremism because wack people on the internet are the only ones who don’t cancel them when they share their thoughts. Where’s all the acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness?

I know I’m someone that absolutely loved being right and loved rubbing it in other people’s faces in the past, so this quote is a massive challenge to me to shove my ego down and be graceful and kind towards others.

5 books that I’d add to my personal bookshelf

For some context, over the past few years, I’ve low key relied on the following philosophy from Jack Sparrow when I get pretty much anything (software, books, music, etc):

It’s a pirate’s life for me

Now that I’m not just mindlessly consuming content, I want to actually purchase things and start my own little physical library with books that are really meaningful to me. Here are 5 books I’ve read the last few months that I’d definitely add to the library:

1. Tao Te Ching

This is a collection of ancient short parables that forms the basis of Taoism. It’s littered with delightful paradoxes. Honestly, I still don’t understand a good chunk of it but there are some beautiful lines in there such as:

Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench // Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner // Do you work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

Funny story - the first time I was reading this, I fell asleep in the middle of it. When I woke up, I straight up was in the most Zen state I’ve ever been in and that lasted for the next two days. I felt like I was floating. Either way, this book is a go to for me whenever I’m feeling a little anxious or unsettled.

2. The Untethered Soul

This is a beautiful and gentle exploration of the nature of consciousness as well as the relationship you have with your thoughts and your energy. It completely changed the way I view the world and set me on the path towards inner peace and freedom.

3. Living in Flow

The central premise of this book is that alignment with ourselves and our circumstances makes a meaningful impact on the events that happen in our lives, i.e. that the universe is responsive to our intentions and desires. The fascinating thing is that this isn’t written by some spiritual guru; it’s written by theoretical physicist who derives this theory based on quantum mechanics. I’m not going to pretend that I understand all the science the author references or that this book makes a bulletproof scientific case, but I’m inspired by the fact that modern Western science seems to be validating things that ancient Eastern wisdom has been teaching for centuries. It was fascinating seeing things that were discussed in a more abstract / spiritual sense in books like The Untethered Soul be discussed in a very scientific way in Living in Flow.

4. The Way of Kings

This is Book 1 of a fantasy series called The Stormlight Archive. At its core, it’s a story about broken people and their redemption. I honestly feel like I’ve learned more from the characters and stories in this book series than I have from any self-help book. It’s incredibly inspirational. Oh, and I love all the magic and mystery and drama in the series as well. It’s a masterpiece.

5. Stillness is the Key

Ryan Holiday, the author, is so masterful at contextualizing the ancient philosophy of Stoicism in a way that makes it not only understandable to modern audiences but very practical as well. This book makes a really powerful case that stillness and inner peace is the key to living a fulfilling life. It also provides really good practical advice on how to achieve it, and I’ve leaned on this advice quite a lot.

5 thoughts that keep me up at night

1. The best crimes have gone unnoticed

I’m a strong believer that the most clever people are actually the bad guys, the ones who figure out ingenious ways to break things and steal things. They’re always one step ahead, and most modern security innovations are responsive to holes that they’ve found and exploited. I am convinced that the most genius schemes are extremely subtle and have gone unnoticed and uncaught. I don’t actually want to be a white collar criminal (or maybe I do…🤫), but I want to know how the other side thinks and just how far ahead they are of the good guys. What corporate espionage is happening at such a subtle level that no one notices? What acts of theft have occurred that were never detected? Who knows.

2. There are so many lost stories in history

History is a story of the survivors and the elite; the ones who were rich enough and lucky enough to have their stories documented. In a lot of ways, our understanding of the past is built upon cherry picked stories that have managed to survive the test of time. There are probably so many lost stories about common people and extinct civilizations and different ways of living. It’s analogous to the tree falling in a forest question; if something happened in the past that no one recorded or documented, did it ever really happen?

It’s not only staggering how much we don’t know, but also how much we’re probably wrong about. It’s like a game of telephone played over the course of centuries; there are probably some things that we’ve convinced ourselves of that are completely wrong. It’s so fascinating to think about.

3. People have probably fucked with history and science by planting leading pieces of evidence

We employ a lot of technology to accurately discover and date things, and based on the order of things that happened and the places in which they happened, we come up with a story.

What if there’s a random group of people that’s going around misplacing this evidence to just fuck with scientists and historians? What if there are people altering the carbon composition of things before they’re discovered to mess with carbon dating methods? What if people employ super advanced technology to discover and move things in an undetectable way? All our stories would be based on fraudulent evidence.

I would love to be a part of that group. Let chaos reign.

4. Our reality is malleable

I’ve started to believe that there’s no objective reality. Whenever something happens, it passes through a layer of processing in our brain, we have an emotional response, and then we craft a story that aligns the events that happened with the feelings that we experienced. And most of the time, when we think back to things that happened, we only remember the way that we felt. The specific details of the event get blurred and our mind uses some random prediction models to fill in the rest of the details in a way that would make sense to us. Even when we’re faced with evidence of what “actually” happened (pictures, texts, videos, etc.), our lens of viewing those things is completely biased by the feelings we experienced. There’s no single objective truth about the past.

Even the nature of our experience is completely subjective and individual. There’s not necessarily an objective color green - how do I know that the green I’m seeing and experiencing is the same as the green you’re seeing and experiencing? How do I know that way my voice sounds in my head is the same as the way my voice sounds in your head? How do I know that the way this desk feels to me is the same way that this desk feels to you?

5. Singular forces / trends never shape the future; it’s always about interactions

I hear a lot of people say things like ‘web3 will define the future’ or things of that nature. The story is never that simple though, right? If you look at the past 10 years, you can’t really say that the decade was defined singularly by the financial crisis or the pandemic or climate change or racial tensions. It was defined by the interaction of all of them. That’s why I think the most clear vision of the future won’t come from single-issue advocates, but from the people who have the imagination to dream about the interactions between climate change and NFTs, between disillusionment with work and rising extremism, and between entrapment in virtual reality and a collapsing healthcare system. I certainly have no idea how all these things are connected, but that won’t stop me from trying to understand.

5 articles I read again and again

1. How Philosophers Think

This essay really made me think about the nature of the ideas that people share and how to truly pursue intellectual depth as opposed to shallow and meaningless tweet-worthy thoughts.

2. Losing Love, Finding Love, and Living with the Fragility of It All

This is probably one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read. It ties together love, grief, and the impermanence of everything in an incredibly poetic way. I had chills the whole time I was reading this.

3. Idol Words

This is a fascinating short story centered around the hardest logic puzzle ever. It’s so intellectually stimulating and again just reinforced the idea in my mind that fictional stories can articulate fundamental truths about life in a deeper way than most nonfiction or self-help books can.

4. How I Attained Persistent Self-Love, or, I Demand Deep Okayness For Everyone

This is a beautiful description of the author’s journey towards self-love. I found myself resonating with pretty much everything that he said, minus the parts about psychedelics (haven’t tried them before but definitely open to it).

5. Bookmark #348

This is a selection from the author’s public journal, and it centers on the nature of art. I really resonated with how he described art as an end in and of itself, not a step towards money, status, or validation.

5 things I want to learn

1. How cars work

Last fall, something went wrong with my 2005 BMW and I had absolutely no what went wrong or what to do. Luckily, I had a really good friend take care of everything, but I’ll never forget that feeling of fear and helplessness. I could’ve easily been taken advantage of; someone could’ve told me my car would never run again and I would’ve believed them. I was fully reliant on the goodwill and honesty of others, and thankfully I had good and honest people around me. So now I’m committed to learning how cars work. In the long run, I want to know how everything that I’m reliant on works at a high level. I know I’ll never be an expert, but I at least want to be able to speak the language and not feel like a helpless deer in headlights.

2. How to be a great bartender

I don’t know why, but it’s always been a dream of mine to learn how to bartend. I’ve been low key asking my mom to go to bartending school for the past 4 years. One of my bucket list experiences is dropping everything and going to Ireland or Scotland to bartend for a few weeks. Can you imagine the stories you’d hear from the locals?

3. How to articulate my experiences more vividly

I think our language and vocabulary structures the way we experience the world. Think about it this way. If the only two emotions you knew how to describe were happiness and sadness, then every single experience you’d have would have to fall into one of those two buckets. It’s so limiting and makes you miss so much nuance. I don’t want the 360p view of the world. I don’t want to be the kid that walks into 2nd grade class with the 10-pack kit of Crayola crayons, stuck making ugly drawings because I lack the tools to make something more beautiful. I want to view the world in 4k ultra definition. I want to pull up with the fancy 120-pack of crayons. I want to add more colors and more textures to my toolkit so that I can paint the world more richly and deeply and vividly. And all that will come only by expanding my vocabulary and my ability to articulate and understand my experiences.

4. How to build exercise and nutrition programs

Recently, my goals for my body have evolved beyond just having the desire to look like Hugh Jackman. I’m a lot more interested in how to maximize the functioning of my cardiovascular system, my respiratory system, etc. I’m extremely curious about how yoga, breathwork, and other forms of movement can be paired with the classic practice of tossing 45lb plates around to promote holistic body health instead of just muscle size. I’m also really interested in seeing how I can build a natural diet that promotes energy and restorative health without consuming artificial protein or creatine. The ancient Greeks figured out how to be yolked without it; I’m sure I can too. Regardless, if I don’t end up looking like Hugh Jackman in the process, that’s totally fine. I kinda like the lanky vibe anyways.

5. What are the foundational ideas across all disciplines of science

I’m not super interested in knowing the specifics of zoology or the scientific instruments that are used in astronomy, but I definitely am very interested in the general principles those branches of science use to structure their way of thinking. I view these general principles and foundational ideas as puzzle pieces. I love making puzzles, and I’m excited to see how different pieces from different branches of science can fit together to unlock new and fascinating ways of looking at the world.

5 things on my reading list

1. Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole

The thesis of this book seems to center around the idea that true human connection is found through shared pain, and that it’s within this human connection that beauty is born. I’m extremely intrigued.

2. Meditations

Strange that I’ve read so much about stoicism but haven’t read the short text that the philosophy was based upon. I want to get on it.

3. The Power of Now

I’ve increasingly started to resonate with the idea that the purpose of growth is to be able to live in the present moment more fully. This book seems like it’s built around that point and I’m so excited to read this author’s take.

4. The Power of Myth

This isn’t really a book, but it’s a transcription of a series of conversations centering on how myth and shared stories build community and create meaning. I love mythology and am so excited to hear the author’s thoughts on how it has shaped our world.

5. Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life

I’ve been fascinated by the theory of mimetic desire for a while now, and am really curious to read this analysis on how it shapes our modern society.

5 projects I want to do at some point

1. Write a book

You got me, this is really basic. But it genuinely is something I’d love to do at some point and I’d like to start outlining out some ideas in the coming months. Maybe I’ll write a memoir. Maybe I’ll write a series of essays looking at how different parts of society make no sense to me. Maybe I’ll write about how we’re getting trained to ask the wrong questions. Who knows. Regardless, I’m determined to take a step forward this summer.

2. Build a self-updating website with fancy visualizations

Last year, I took one small step towards this by building a website that hosted a bunch of fancy charts I built. I didn’t even build the website tbh, I just used a tool that took some files I uploaded and made it look really pretty online. This year I want to take a step forward and actually build my own website and have it update and build charts automatically.

3. Start a D2C consumer goods service

The idea that I’m most attached to right now is building a series of jersey memorabilia boxes that would include a carefully selected jersey and some fashion accessories like socks or bandanas that would pair nicely with the jersey. There’s definitely some cognitive dissonance with building a consumer business while also believing that consumerism is dangerous, but oh well. I’m very curious about my ability to sell and market something like this. I’m thinking of doing a weekend hackathon sometime soon where I just give myself 48 hours and see how far I get. We’ll see.

4. Start a fashion brand

This is definitely more of a long term project, but recently I feel like I’ve started owning my own sense of style. I’m definitely drawn to a certain aesthetic and am starting to get more experimentative with my looks. Even if I never learn how to design or create my own clothes, I’d love to at least curate a collection of pieces and accessories that fit my vibe.

5. Start a book club with a local elementary school

I’ve been thinking about ways I can volunteer and serve the community that raised me, and the best way I can think of is by offering to read books out loud to elementary school kids. After all, what better gift can you give others than the gift of a good story? I can’t imagine anything more special than sharing in the magic of a story with a younger crowd and hopefully inspiring them to keep reading and keep dreaming.

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I’m so grateful for all the incredible reading material and influences that have somehow found their way into my life these past few months, and I couldn’t be more excited to start tackling all these creative pursuits that I’m determined to act upon. It’s definitely a little overwhelming. I don’t know how to balance the urgency to act, do, read, explore, and create with the desire to stop and smell the roses and enjoy the process. I guess that’s one of the biggest challenges of life; how do you balance finding fulfillment in the present moment with the insatiable thirst for knowledge that curiosity produces?

Just like I had no idea I’d be here right now at the start of the year, I have no idea where I’m going to be 3 months from now. I have no idea how to prioritize any of the things I want to do. I have absolutely no clue where any of these creative pursuits will lead me or if they’ll ever turn into anything more than objects of curiosity. But for the first time in my life, I feel like I’m letting my curiosity dictate my actions, not my environment. I feel so full and energized, and I can’t wait to see where this takes me.