“Slow down, you crazy child. You’re so ambitious for a juvenile”
– Billy Joel, Vienna
“You’ve got so much to do and only so many hours in a day”
5. Go home from work.
5:30. Go lift.
6:30. Make and eat food.
7:30. ?
If everything goes according to plan, I have 3 hours until I should begin getting ready for bed.
Things I have recently chosen to do with this time, in order of alignment towards my goals:
- Created and published a chrome extension for language learning
- Created but did not publish an app for daily journaling, and a way to analyze your mental trends over time
- Attempted and failed to build a Kalshi bot (somewhat expectedly couldn’t find a source of alpha)
- Listened to Dwarkesh Podcast w/ 3Blue1Brown
…
- Played jazz piano in a combo
- Played basketball (cardio)
- Went rock climbing (new skill development)
- Reread an old book of mine
- Played pickleball (cardio)
- Played chess
…
- Watched S1 of Ted Lasso (good to have pop culture knowledge)
- Watched S2 of Ted Lasso (finish the storyline for my peace of mind)
- Scrolled X (earn something relevant from my feed?)
- Watched the Greatest Beer Run Ever (maybe some historical lesson here?)
- Scrolled Linkedin (compare myself to others… improve ambition?)
- Watched the F1 movie
- Watched 3 hour Morgan Jay compilation on YouTube
- Spent over an hour watching movie previews, searching for something to watch
Todo: Things I have chosen not to do with this time:
- Respond to texts - sorry everyone :(
- Apply to a startup program I really wanted to attend
- Written this essay
- Applied to jobs
- Moved forward and worked on a website design firm I started
- Went to Jujitsu
I feel an immense amount of guilt about the above list. Because I have “wasted” my time. Every night, when I go to bed, the question I ask myself is: did I make progress today? By this question I measure myself.
This is stupidly evident in the list I made above, which, of course, is ranked by utility. Glad to know I mentally count rock climbing as “new skill development.”
This has lent me a constant dissatisfaction, as well as constant stress about whether I’m spending my time well. Ironically, this type of stress leads to me coping in the very ways I seek to avoid. I seek content simply to turn my brain off, to banish the self-accusation, the questioning:
How dare I watch television, when I could be building, creating, learning, training?
I say, as I flee the question by diving into my 1080p refuge. Still, questioning my choices.
“You can’t be everything you wanna be before your time”
Admittedly, I cannot help but note that this pattern of thought seems to have served me. I’ve been this way since the summer before my senior year of high school (college applications changed me), and it seems to have worked. A constant dissatisfaction with today has led me to improve it, to optimize it, in many ways. I am obsessed with “better,” at every stage.
I’ve made some real progress as a person in the last 3 - 4 years. Got hired places. Made friends. Lifted heavy things. Pursued excellence. Made a positive impact. Gotten “better.”
Without this attitude, perhaps all my time would be spent watching movie previews. Maybe I’d be on TikTok instead of LinkedIn.
I’m not sure this has brought me joy, contentment, or happiness. Even so, does one not have to make sacrifices to create something great? Is the price of my ambition my satisfaction?
“But then if you're so smart, tell me why are you still so afraid?”
If things were working as planned, I think there would be less of the bottom tier. Less of me stumbling into bed at 2am, disgusted with myself after wasting a night watching a movie.
Less of me looking at an empty block of time and turning it into a fork in the road, to a single choice that leads to prosperity or poverty. Fearing the forks, as an alcoholic fears liquor stores, as nothing more than a grand opportunity to ruin oneself.
Perhaps there is a way to wend my way between the two paths, between self-proclaimed virtue and vice. At the moment, there is little middle ground between my most focused work and my most self-destructive ways to turn off my brain.
In the 7:30pm moments, when I am forced to decide between effortful work and to disappear from the aware world, I almost always choose the anesthesia. I pay back my debt in guilt and fatigue.
I think there is a way to be awake, aware, and not focused on creating shareholder value. My goal is to move toward the middle tier of the list, towards things that have utility in their true enjoyment, and little else. I don’t believe that this is television, alone. I don’t believe this is ever accomplished by a phone. For the most part, I don’t believe they are activities done on my own.
Going to have to learn how to have fun again.
"When will you realize... Vienna waits for you?"
Well, the essay is done. Finally able to check off one of the things I marked as ToDo above.
Not sure if this is fun. But hey, at least it’s progress.
I guess Vienna is waiting for me. Feels like it’s impatient, though.