Willa's Shortform

Shortform #66 Waht, where did 7 months go?

Working mostly, actually. So that was good, and I'm still enjoying my hospital technology related job quite a bit, but I've been sorely missing having other aspects of my life than work (despite enjoying the work a lot).

I experienced a truly wonderful thing tonight, and that was a Norfolk Rationalists meeting with great conversations between excellent people, we went for five & a half hours and only stopped because we all got too sleepy.

Re: Shortform #65: no, I probably will not go to medical school. I am happily focusing on technology jobs and quite enjoying those in the healthcare environment. I would still like to do research, but until a later stage of life and other job decisions, any research I do will have to be independent, which is fine. I have so much to learn about so many areas, even within very specific niches, not only for my profession but also the research area(s) I'm interested in. Such learning will keep me occupied for some time while I grind for knowledge that I must acquire for professional & personal development plus satisfaction. Here's to learning new things every single day!

I am eating healthier, driving far less, walking & exercising more, and have noticed that my general competency improves as I improve in those areas of my life. This feels great!

I did not listen to music while writing this post, it's quite late & I did not wish for the extra stimuli. The gentle hum of the air conditioning was sufficient.

Cheers,
Willa

ToDo #1

• I have previously read media consumption diet posts on LW and elsewhere that I thought were quite good and helpful. I need to:

  • Find the three most helpful to me such posts, search time cannot exceed 20 minutes.

• Take a few minutes to assess the three chosen posts more carefully, identify where and how they ebb and flow in response to each other. Find the best flow and most correct-for-me ideas out of them.

• Write 1st post detailing structured efforts for improving my media consumption diet to help improve my voicing voice capabilities.

  • Decide time span between 1st post and 2nd follow-up, reflective, post. Set calendar notifications for end of time span to write 2nd post.

• At the marked date, write and publish 2nd post.

re: Shortform #50 "These efforts should help me notice and cultivate my "voice", and give voice to myself. Developing my thoughts into refined ideas and producing them is highly aligned with my interests, goals, and more, so I'm excited for this! (note to self: the actual methods for how I do these things and what I actually do, plus what my successes and failures turn out to be are good source material for two posts: 1 post detailing the plan and effort and a 2nd post detailing successes and failures; I think writing those two posts will beneficially effect my structuring of this effort, increase my likelihood of follow-through, and provide myself with useful analytics after the fact to reflect on; others who read the two posts may find some benefit too)"

Shortform #50 Voicing Voice

My consume vs produce ratio is not well balanced, I consume dramatically more media, information, entertainment, and other such things compared to what I produce. How can I even notice let alone refine my own thoughts and opinions amidst the ruckus and maelstrom of external inputs rummaging around my mind constantly? Furthermore, many if not most of those external inputs don't actually pay rent, though there are (and in some ways quite notable) exceptions (e.g. what I learned reading The Sequences).

In response to this problem, I am altering my media consumption "diet" to restrict non-deliberate consumption and increase deliberate, focused, helpful consumption plus increase conscious production efforts to generate significantly more outputs / products than I do now.

These efforts should help me notice and cultivate my "voice", and give voice to myself. Developing my thoughts into refined ideas and producing them is highly aligned with my interests, goals, and more, so I'm excited for this! (note to self: the actual methods for how I do these things and what I actually do, plus what my successes and failures turn out to be are good source material for two posts: 1 post detailing the plan and effort and a 2nd post detailing successes and failures; I think writing those two posts will beneficially effect my structuring of this effort, increase my likelihood of follow-through, and provide myself with useful analytics after the fact to reflect on; others who read the two posts may find some benefit too)

I am taking my website offline to undergo maintenance and possibly switch hosting providers so that the site is more aligned with how I want to use it and easier to push content out to, and hopefully be cheaper to operate. The present setup is WordPress on AWS Lightsail, and I don't like the experience of using + maintaining WordPress, don't want to continue with AWS Lightsail as my hosting provider, and think that a different website CMS or generator would work better for me than WordPress does. This effort will impact my choices for hosting a second soon-ish to be announced website where I will produce exciting and good outputs in a field I care deeply about and am pursuing as a career.

It has been ~2 weeks or so since receiving my second Pfizer vaccine shot, so while I still wear a mask where mandated, or seems generally sensible and/or low cost/effort, I'm returning back to normal with regards to hanging out with people IRL since there doesn't seem much reason not to do so once fully vaccinated. This has had an immediate and greatly positive effect on my mood and general happiness. Fuck quarantining and not being able to see people, that was a terrible experience. I went axe throwing last night, and that was an amazing and delightful experience! So Much Fun :)

I've started CrossFit! I'm only a few classes in, but wow am I loving it. Attending a class has a ridiculously highly positive impact on my mood and well-being for the day and increases my self-confidence. I am not presently self-motivated enough to exercise by myself on a regular basis, so going to CrossFit classes solves my "doesn't consistently exercise" problem quite nicely. I'm committing to attending CrossFit classes three times per week at a minimum, and because it seems helpful to pre-commit when I'll attend on a given week, I'll do that now:

17 - Likelihood Low; 18 - Definitely; 19 - Likelihood High; 20 - Definitely; 21 - Neutral; 22 - Definitely

I updated my calendar for each day based on class time and likelihood of attending. Barring genuinely excessive soreness or injury potentials, I'll generally aim to do 4 or 5 classes per week with 3 classes as my baseline mandatory attendance rate.

It's good to develop a voice and voice it, here we go!

Cheers,

Willa

Shortform #20 It's time to hunt down a job!

Today was marvelous :)

1. I walked 2.18 miles indoors while on phone calls; I did 20 pushups and 100 situps at noon.
2. I virtually co-worked for about 2 hours and made good progress towards writing my review of Gears-Level Models are Capital Investments [LW · GW].
3. I began organizing and packing up in preparation for moving.

It was pointed out to me that I keep working on a bunch of different things but haven't yet started searching for jobs, despite that finding a good job will enable me to move to Seattle and do more fun things in life. Point noted and taken to heart!

Job hunting is now my highest priority, and I will be focusing on that exclusively while virtually co-working plus will do that while doing productive stuff by myself too. I will continue writing my three reviews (for the LW2019Review) during non-workday hours / in my spare time, but my workday hours will be focused on job hunting.

Good luck y'all :)
Cheers,
Willa

2021 Week 1 Review 1 Jan - 9 Jan

This week saw rapid mood changes, a descent into depression, and many actions taken to combat the aforementioned things. I'm happy to report that the actions I took ultimately led to a significant improvement in and stabilization of my mood, the removal of depression and ascent to a slightly higher happiness set point than the week before, and I've learned some good things.

Most significant thing noticed or learned this week: Living alone is really bad for me. Runner up: The power of co-working!

Once I realized (noticed) that living alone is really bad for me, I talked with family and they accepted my request to relocate from where I'm living now to go live with them. Now that I have a plan that's actively being worked towards for combating the "living alone is really bad for me" thing, I've been much more capable of dismissing isolation or loneliness feelings and my mood has improved significantly.

I noticed that co-working (only virtual so far) can "rescue" a day that's going poorly or make an already good day a great day, because I enjoy the social interaction + getting shit done. This upcoming week I have to pack and organize a lot, but I will schedule as much virtual co-working as I can so that I still get other things done that I care about accomplishing.

My focus this week: virtual co-working, every damn day or every other day at the very least Secondary focus: commit to 1 hour of physical activity per day, preferably outside

Things I failed at last week or didn't do very well at:

1. I did not complete "Important but Ugh" task nor did I donate $50 to a political party I don't like as a "punishment".
   • I learned that making myself pay money if I don't do something is a surefire way to ensure that I don't do that thing, will also destroy my mood, kill my productivity, and generally make me have a very bad time. This technique works for others, and I'm happy I tried it, because now I know more about myself, but wow did it backfire horribly for me so I won't be trying it again.
2. I didn't do much nonfiction reading, though I did have fun with reading fiction.
3. I didn't job hunt at all.
   • I'm not upset about this, moving several states away and helping family sell this house precludes getting any sort of stable job, so I'll do some freelancing instead.

Things I did well last week or am happy about:

1. Other than a short break for New Years, I've continued to write publicly each day, and that's fantastic!
2. I noticed something that was making my life bad (living alone) and started immediately working to correct that thing (I'm moving a few states away to live with family).
3. I managed to stay somewhat virtually social even while depressed and that helped! This was a triumph because in the past I would typically isolate when depressed, and that wasn't helpful, so being at least somewhat social was great!

Here's to a great next week! Amazingly, I have published this by my own deadline, what a great feeling :)

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Note: I listened to this progressive trance mix while writing, that mix has always served me well for helping me get things done.

Shortform #16 The power of co-working!

Today was an excellent day :) I woke up late, but immediately started virtually co-working with a friend and during that time we both completed a nice amount of tasks. Jumping from "I'm finally awake now" to virtual co-working helped me stay on track this day, it was very effective and helpful.

I scheduled the January and February Houston Rationalists' meetups, replied to some messages, tidied up, walked for 30 minutes, and later hungout with a friend around a campfire outside, twas nice!

Tomorrow I will post my 2021 Week 1 Review by 13:00. I will also setup co-working sessions for next week, quite looking forward to those! Seems like I'll be getting a lot more extra physical activity starting tomorrow because I must start prepping to move cross country and that takes a fair bit of organization, packing, etc. physical effort.

I did not listen to music while writing this shortform.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #103 Friends are great!

Note to self, I really want to read "Friendship is Optimal", that along with a rather large number of other things are on my list. A list that would benefit from some pruning, curation, and possibly publishing.

I met with a new friend tonight at a lovely Japanese Fusion place for dinner, and we had ridiculously pleasant, deep, and good conversations.

Friends are amazing. Good night, I must sleep now.

Shortform #94 Boundary Setting at work is suddenly much easier after attending Retreat

Prior to attending the organizer's retreat, I would let people send me tasks that fell outside of my primary responsibilities, even if they were mundane and not good learning opportunities and/or even if the individual in question actually had time to do the task. After the retreat, I noticed today, I haven't been doing that and have been saying no much more often, or enforcing better boundaries generally about work tasks.

I'm not sure what changed. My current job admittedly isn't more than 50-60% aligned with what sparks joy for me and brings about the most professional growth for me. But also, perhaps seeing how much the virtue of consistency was reinforced at retreat and talked about combined with my work mentor strongly emphasizing that too helped me integrate that virtue more deeply. I want to be consistently great at fulfilling my primary responsibilities at work, and doing so requires eliminating distractions or extraneous / not germane tasks & time sinks. Most of what colleagues try to pass off to me doesn't fall within my primary responsibilities, so perhaps I am now feeling that distinction between primary & secondary or tangential responsibilities more intensely?

Another item heavily emphasized at retreat was time management and how much a person is committing to certain activities or responsibilities: being deliberate about such things matters! I knew logically before that that matters, but perhaps had not emotionally or unconsciously integrated that to a significant enough effect.

Hmm...another factor: I feel much more acutely the limits of "hours in a day" and total healthy life hours in a life that one can use for work now than I did prior to the retreat. That is likely part of the equation.

Yet another factor (why so many?): I felt motivated to find ways to apply what I learned at the retreat to my job, e.g. the workshop on how to recruit a guest speaker to your meetup felt eerily applicable to the process of contacting other teams at work for assistance. I also deliberately chose not to frame returning home as "returning to normalcy, or the mundane world" as I feel that framing is harmful. I wanted there to be no serious distinctions between "the world" as I experienced "the world" at the retreat vs how I experienced "the world" at home and at my job. It's the same world, the same reality, just with different responsibilities, people, commitments, etc. Instead, I felt and still feel that I would rather work to optimize and improve local situations so that I could generate similar levels of fun, excitement, learning, and growth at home & at work as I did while at the retreat. That was such a distinctly different way of framing returning home than the "mundane" framing that I've felt somewhat like a substantially different person because now I'm operating with a better perspective & framing in my home & work lives, local life, etc. I feel optimistic about the local future, eager to learn, eager to grow, and a relentless drive to improve everything around me & my life.

I now believe that frameworks or perspectives of mundanity to be harmful & trigger spirals of bad things. Each moment experienced is different than every other moment if you look at the world with fresh or beginner's eyes. My priors for the state of affairs around me no longer are warped by the mentally colonizing framework of mundanity.

Shortform #110 Studying | I vent some about work, but not...intensely, more of a light venting.

I was approved to work four 10 hour days this week meaning that I have Friday entirely free from my current employer! Huzzah! Huzzah! I will be spending the majority of the day studying for the professional cert I take exams for at the end of this month plus will meet with my co-organizer to figure out upcoming meetups. I am grateful that I've been able to study some at work, though not usually more than twenty minutes per day, still...the extra time there and the time I've been putting in at home have helped, I feel confident in my competency to take the certification exams at the end of this month.

Studying is nice :) I continue to be somewhat ambivalent about my current profession, but I am passionate about many parts of it at least, and it pays well. Still, I'm happy to be pursuing other things simultaneously (yay for organizing, yay for writing, etc.), that helps me stay motivated and handle some of the more boring or annoying parts of my current job as I work to "level up" the rungs of my profession.

Replacing computers all day long is incredibly boring. The conversations I have with people & who I'm helping out and who they serve, those are the rewarding parts of the job. I do love when I get to dive into the technical weeds and do some real troubleshooting, but that's not as frequent an occurrence as I'd like. Thank goodness for studying, deliberate practice, and continuing to learn nonstop!

Shortform #100 Writing publicly considered beneficial, fun, and not that scary

After writing one hundred shortform posts, writing publicly no longer feels scary and really just feels like a habit more than anything else (especially because the last 33 posts were near daily or daily). A habit I intend to continue as these are fun to write (even when I feel grumpy or hit an ugh field before doing so) and occupy a nice role in my life, plus I love growing my writing & other skills when creating these posts.

I feel a strong desire to write bigger posts than these, but I like having the shortforms as a consistent & foundational habit for regular public writing. Consistency and building foundational habits are of paramount importance, atop such you can build bigger and better things.

Here's to continuing daily shortforms and growing what is next too!

Shortform #88 Retreat Debriefing & Staying in Touch | I will review some AI Safety literature

Today was a bifurcated day, I spent the morning and early afternoon dealing with the remnants of travelling (picking up my car from my local airport and then my baggage from an airport an hour away from home because that's where my connecting flight had been routed to last night after the initial one was unexpectedly cancelled) then finally made it to my apartment to shower & recombobulate.

I met with my Norfolk Rationalists co-organizer (shoutout Yitz!!! https://www.lesswrong.com/users/yitz [LW · GW]) to essentially debrief and share as much knowledge I gained from the organizer's retreat as possible. We had many lovely conversations and have concrete actions planned for growing & strengthening the Norfolk Rationalists community. More on that another time, there will be announcements.

I enjoyed reaching out & saying hi to other organizers to check on how their travel went, what they are up to. Many more people to go, if you haven't heard from me and were at the retreat you should soon, I met and remember almost every organizer there (had at least a 5-10 minute conversation with 90%-95% or so of attending organizers).

Several individuals much more knowledgeable about AI Alignment than myself recommended that I check out Coherent Extrapolated Volition [? · GW] and clarified why I need to familiarize myself with existing AI Alignment research a bit more before I go off and do an in-depth analysis of political values re: AI Alignment. Yitz and I will be reviewing that original article & associated content then publish our review of the idea after determining how well it holds up regarding values determination. This and other AI Safety / Alignment work will take place at upcoming local meetup / coworking sessions in Norfolk separate from the Norfolk Rationalists group (as that is an exclusively social group). Looking forward to increasing my AI Alignment knowledge & helping how I can.

Back to my day-job tomorrow, decently looking forward to that in addition to everything else.

Shortform #87 Travelling Occurred

Today I spent the entire day (other than a very lovely short morning breakfast at the retreat venue and a few last wonderful conversations) travelling. I am now safely in bed, time to crash and get some rest.

As expected, today was less productive than yesterday thanks to holiday stuff and doing an unexpected amount of physical activity. And that's okay! Tomorrow may be similar, sans the unexpected physical activity stuff probably.

I read Zvi's COVID Update [LW · GW] and oy vey. Thanks to Zvi for writing those updates, I've found them witty, insightful, helpful, and so on! This particular update earned those attributes too, but damn was the subject matter a bummer, if 2021 turns into another plague year that will suck...hopefully enough vaccines are distributed and that the vaccine for the current strain(s) of COVID has good efficacy with that new UK and South Africa COVID strain. Hopefully. That was really depressing news though, I had to modulate my emotions after reading that post because for a few minutes afterwards I was very bitter and short when interacting with family members. Thankfully, I noticed that and fixed that immediately upon noticing. Ah, how helpful practising noticing is!

I spent 2-3 hours today reading NeuroTribes, by Steve Silberman. Haven't finished the book yet, but am finding it quite good, quite impactful, and something I'll definitely want to reread so I can write a review of it. If anyone knows of a similar book for ADHD, I'd love to find out and read that book.

I originally planned to read for a bit outside and then workout, but was engrossed by NeuroTribes so one hour sitting outside reading it passed quickly. I was drawn back to reality by a phone call from a friend whom I talked with for a little over two and a half hours. While talking I mostly walked, but did take some time to do an upper body workout with weights and spent about 25 minutes doing HIIT with my jump rope. All in all, a fantastic amount of exercise compared to my baseline! I expect tomorrow I may only achieve my minimum of 30 minutes of outside physical activity, but I'm okay with that and am happy to continue getting that habit established. If I do more than 30 minutes, great, but it's great if I consistently do 30 minutes every day too, after a month or so I'll have established a nice exercise habit!

Today marks day 4 of daily shortform writing, tomorrow will mark day 5, and so on!

Recently, I read Alicorn's post, Ureshiku Naritai [LW · GW]. It seems that they (using they because I don't know their preferred pronouns) were able to successfully increase their happiness set point by quite a bit through deliberate practice! This is exciting, I've added a thorough rereading of that post to my ToDo list and will take notes on what seemed like effective interventions / practices. Add in a bit of adjustment as needed to suit my personal idiosyncrasies, and I'll be on my way to practising happines set point increasing things! Looking forward to figuring all that out. Depression is awful and must be vanquished.

Now to sleep I go, for tomorrow will be an enjoyable holiday filled with festivities, and I'm quite looking forward to it. And then I'll surely nervously await results of a COVID test thereafter. Yare yare.

Shortform #119 Art is Fun!

I hadn't played the piano in months, but decided to have a solo jam session where I let myself play whatever felt good to play, and wow was that nice! Some of the time I played existing songs, but most of the time I flowed from chord to chord and jumped around the octaves.

Recently I acquired a drawing tablet, I spent some time learning Krita and drew some things, it was cathartic and very fun at the same time.

I don't think I let myself just play around very much, nor spend much time doing art things that I enjoy. I would like to change that, and I will, but I'm not explicitly committing to doing that at the moment (too many other things to do).

Art is fun, playing is necessary, and human being not human doing :) At the very least, in addition to such things being fun, they do from a purely productivity focused lens, assist with keeping burnout away (which is good, screw burnout!).

Shortform #65 Work Work Work, jobs are nice | Thoughts about career and future things

I started a new job in October, it was about time, and I've greatly benefited from working again! I'm enjoying the work, the environment, the industry, and am looking for W2 fulltime positions (I'm contract at the moment) at the institution I'm at plus a similar few nearby. Turns out I quite like working at hospitals and medical institutions, even if I am still doing IT work.

I started a second job this week which is very different from my main job. Instead of working in person at a big institution doing technical things, I'm working remotely providing information validity assessments (i.e. fact checking) for a smaller yet still high impact organization. Very much so looking forward to doing more of such work at that org and further developing + formalizing my epistemic confidence / information validity assessment and evaluation methodologies.

Sometime during the last month or two as I adjusted to working full time again, I cut out more and more activities / actions / things from my life and so far have only been picking back up ones that truly spark joy and/or are very good for me. I feel overbooked, honestly, but I'm really enjoying everything I'm doing and am finding that my efficiency, competency, plus overall productivity all keep going up. I'm happy and doing quite well!

Other things I'm working to make more time for that I want to do that spark joy and are good for me:

• public writing (like this, but also full posts too. these shortforms are good as basic things to do on a regular basis to keep my writing habit going and increase my self-legibility)
• correspondence! I dropped almost all of my one on one or small group correspondence when I went into super job hunt mode and then especially when I started working again. There are quite a few people I want to get back to, and also reach out to, so I will.
• Guild of the ROSE: a great organization, I am enjoying participating in the guild quite a bit and really like what we're all doing there. Now to make just a wee more time for completing coursework, since I want to be more on top of that than I have been.
• YouTube videos: I've wanted to make videos for awhile, and people these days keep telling me to make them already, so fine I'll do that :) (it'll be fun!)

Thoughts about the future and career things: I am a very good technician, solving problems that involve hands on work plus a deep understanding of complex and highly abstract systems (and ideas) comes very easily to me. Any complex system that's been thrown at me...I've been able to quickly understand what I needed to about it and fix problems with it. This is not limited to IT / technical complex systems problem solving, it seems to be near fully general in my experience. I think this is one of those areas where I have an intuitive leg up over others and my prowess at complex system problem solving should be factored into my career goals.

I love exploring ideas and am good at doing so, understanding even the most difficult and complicated concepts has never been an issue for me. I learn quickly and integrate new knowledge well, and seem to make connections between ideas or notice patterns that others miss. I have an insatiable appetite for novelty and exploration, knowledge and understand are power, and I want as much of both things as possible. I have to factor my love of knowledge, appetite for novelty, and capability of understanding into my career goals.

I struggle deeply and intensely if I am only doing one of the above two types of work, however. If I only perform applied or hands on work, I'll soon feel stuck or bored, listless. I burn out and stop caring about fixing whatever it is I was fixing. If I only perform exploration, spend all my time learning or researching, but never apply it, then I drift off and become lost, soon becoming listless and nihilistic. For whatever reason, I seem to require performing two separate types of work at the same time to be personally and professionally satisfied, and stave off burn out and other worse things.

Given that complex system problem solving and idea exploration + development are two of my favorite areas of work that I have demonstrable competence at and gain fulfillment from, I need a career path that saturates me with both types of work on a regular basis.

Additionally, I require sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problems to solve. The most important problem to solve is death, i.e. figuring out how to prevent or fix all possible causes of death. This is a sufficiently challenging, interesting, and important problem with many subsets of criteria matching problems to solve, and I am dedicating my career to solving such problems. But where to start?

Based on my career path criteria outlined above, my enjoyment and deep satisfaction from working in healthcare, and other things, I think the best plan of attack for me is to train for an MD and PhD: MD for the more applied technician sort of work, PhD for the more abstract research sort of work. Uncertain exactly which specializations I want to pursue, though for an MD several on this list look appealing. PhD, I'm inclined towards biogerontology, but by no means have firmly decided yet.

I am open to feedback, comments, suggestions, about all of these things.

Yay for writing! I enjoyed writing this post and am glad I've done so. Here's to more writing to come :)

Earlier I gave myself some time to have one full album listening session (doing nothing but listening to music, no multi tasking) and listened to Caterina Barbieri's "Patterns of Conscioussness" 2017 album, which was sublime and honestly very focusing and refining in significant ways. I unconsciously wrote most of this post during that listening session, because after the album finished I went to my computer and typed all this up.

While writing this post, I listened to the "Berlin Atonal: More Light" compilation from 2020. Not every song was my jam, but it was fun exploring, and I did find some songs I quite enjoyed.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Several very important to me people whom I love told me that they would rather die than live even a few hundred years or indefinitely, that they would not choose cryopreservation if life extension capabilities aren't advanced enough by their "natural time", and so on, when I asked them how they felt about immortality (scenario was: imagine that humanity figures out how to be immortal and there are no restrictions, anyone can have it if they want it, do you take it yes or no?).

There's too much deathism in this world, aahhhhhhhhh. I've already started to mourn those people, and it hurts so fucking much, it literally is keeping me awake tonight...I was meditating then trying to sleep and reminders of their choice bubbled up and now here I am, typing away. Crying about and mourning the loss of loved ones who haven't died yet, but ultimately said that that was their preference over life extension / immortality.

It hurts so bad.

Writing this felt helpful somewhat, at least I've channeled those feelings and temporarily diminished their intensity, somewhat...well, back to trying to sleep.

Shortform #41 Feeling Good

Today was an excellent day :)

1. I walked a little over 3 miles (~7200 steps) today plus ate decently.
2. I felt great upon waking up in the morning.
3. I was virtually social for ~2 hours today.
4. I tore through the garage and got most of the old tech stuff out of their various boxes and almost ready for recycling. (PLEASE RECYCLE YOUR OLD ELECTRONICS, do not throw them away; most cities or metropolitan areas have somewhere you can take most if not all of your electronics for recycling. Please please please recycle that stuff, throwing it away is in most cases akin to dumping toxic waste over the long term)
5. I retrieved all the forms and other info I need to complete my taxes, so tomorrow I will do my taxes.

Over the weekend I stayed in San Marcos with a friend, and had a fantastic time! We avoided other people and hung out together mostly indoors, but Saturday we went hiking at Purgatory Creek Natural Area which was a beautiful place and quite fun to hike. All the trail names and markers were Divine Comedy themed which was cute hehe. We hiked about 7 and a half miles throughout the area, and there were still trails we didn't walk, so that area is definitely good for multiple visits. Getting out of town for a weekend in a reasonably safe way (we had both been quarantining prior to visiting, and we only interacted with each other for the most part) was fantastic, I had a great time hanging out there with my friend, and I feel recharged and ready to tackle a lot of things upon returning!

I haven't done a weekly review in awhile, nor have I done my first monthly review. That'll change soon :)

For now though, I'll shut down the computer and make myself go to bed at a responsible time, so that I wake up tomorrow at a respectable time without compromising how much sleep I get.

ToDo 2020-2-9:

1. I know what article or two I want to recommend as the topic for the next Houston Rationalists Meetup, and the next such meetup is on the 16th, so tomorrow I'll post a meetup reminder and send it out to everyone in the group including the recommended article or two.
2. For the first 4 hours I'm awake tomorrow, I'll be doing digital tasks on my computer such as coding, applying to jobs, and so on. After those 4 hours I can switch to other things, but during those 4 hours I need to do deep focus work, or at least focus mostly on the same thing so I get a lot of it done.
3. I will exercise for 30 minutes or more.

Ah, what a nice start to my week. Here's to an excellent week!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #38

Today was a good day :)

I successfully dialed back the Worm reading and only read for a few hours instead of many hours. I was virtually social for about 2 hours, took care of some moving related tasks, wrote this shortform, and am going to bed at a decent time.

To tomorrow!
Willa

Shortform #25 Work Work Zug Zug

I enjoyed today!

1. I practised more CS fundamentals via coding in Swift for about 5 hours and 30 minutes.
2. I spent about 3 hours being virtually social, it was nice.
3. I spent 1 hour doing chores and miscellaneous < 5 min tasks
4. I logged my calories today, ~2226kcal
5. I successfully used gtimelog to log my time for the day, but I found copy + pasting the whole log to the shortform onerous and not that valuable, so I'm only mentioning the time spent doing things congruent to stated goals.

Unfortunately, I did not exercise today. This marks two days in a row of either paltry or no exercise, tomorrow I will double down on exercise so I stay on track (exercising everyday >=30 minutes is one of my core goals).

I must admit, I hate calorie counting, but it's already significantly changing how I eat in a good way, so I'll put up with it because it's very effective.

I need to add another programming language to my daily coding practice each day, probably will be Python, and I'll focus mostly on algorithms and data structures when using it. I'm enjoying Swift and like it a lot better than Java or C# or C++ so I'll continue with it and probably move towards the Swift app development track with it. At some point I will do low level architecture stuff in assembly, and move on up to C from there, but...not yet. I think I want more general CS fundamentals + general coding experience before jumping into OS development-land.

This shortform took < 15 minutes to write, and I did not listen to music while writing it.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Today was a lovely but very tiring day, I had a great day!

I continued reading Steve Silberman's NeuroTribes for a bit today, but otherwise didn't read much at all today because of all my time going elsewhere. Looking forward to settling in for a few hours of reading tomorrow though :)

My time spent exercising today was much lower than yesterday, but that's because most of my time was spent with family, plus I got roped in to help clean for a few hours (which counts as some physical activity, yay!). After cleaning for a few hours I stole 30 minutes to run out to the garage and exercise: unfortunately the grass in the yard and fields is too soggy + has standing water in spots so I couldn't run outside, had to run inside the garage. I cleared a small circuit for myself in the garage and walked + jogged a 14'10 mile while dodging obstacles (you know, the usual garage clutter kind of stuff), did 5 minutes of jump rope HIIT, and a few minutes of lifting miscellaneous weights. Looking forward to not having to sneak away to get my workout in tomorrow, that'll be a lot less stressful, and I'll be able to workout for longer, am expecting to do 60 minutes of exercise tomorrow.

I had a lovely time celebrating Christmas with my parents and eating lots and lots of excellent food over the day. Tomorrow they leave the state once more, and I'll be alone for about a month or so again. To prevent the kind of mood crashes and depression stuff that tend to come with isolation, I'm forcing myself to be extraordinarily (virtually) social, to continue with my exercise habits, to continue writing here and more, get good sleep, and so on. These things will help!

Today marks day 5 of daily shortform writing, tomorrow will mark day 6, and so on :)

I've scheduled the next Houston Rationalists virtual meetup, we will be meeting virtually on the 30th, full details here: https://www.lesswrong.com/events/3N6JGAtc28nhhsKFx/houston-rationalists-virtual-meetup-december-30 [? · GW]

I forgot to include details about the LW/EA New Year's when I posted that meetup, but I'll make sure to spread word about the event and invite, looks like it'll be quite fun!

As part of my ongoing self improvement efforts, I think I'd really like to incorporate a weekly review habit into my life. Ben Kuhn's description of that: https://www.benkuhn.net/weekly/ is what prompted me to think about that once again, I've previously read about many other individuals' weekly review habits, and such a habit just seem like a really necessary and good habit for self improvement: an excellent tool / prosthetic nicely suited to actually make a human being reflect on their experiences and make changes in response. So, I'm happy I stumbled upon Ben's post on the LW Frontpage since it has served as an excellent memory trigger (I had forgotten that weekly reviews were a thing despite reading about them before. O memory, oh where did you go; on a side note, who else digs the vocative tense?).

I think a great task for my first weekly review will be to go back through my shortforms, ToDo lists, and other things I've written or produced this last week and make sure I've actually completed what I wanted to complete, make notes on what to do next, and so on. I'll be starting my first weekly review this Sunday (the 27th) probably in the morning.

Notice: I am putting together a group to do the Hammertime sequence: https://www.lesswrong.com/s/qRxTKm7DAftSuTGvj [? · GW] If you're interested, let me know!

I'm so looking forward to eating Christmas dinner leftovers for breakfast tomorrow, hecking yeah!

Shortform #92 Woohoo for Organizing :)

Houston Rationalists [? · GW] now have an in-person local organizer! Thank you David M for organizing, I look forward to seeing how the group grows and supporting how I can from afar.

Norfolk Rationalists [? · GW] will become Virginia Rationalists this week! We are still meeting in Norfolk, but the name change should reduce confusion amongst people I or others speak to about the group. Plus, I would like to provide infrastructure & support to organizers in other parts of Virginia and support as many Virginia groups as possible, let's share the infrastructure & management costs (time, money, and energy) associated with such things.

Today marks four years on estrogen, woohoooooo!! Happy HRT cakeday me :)

Still quite a few items on my post-retreat ToDo, but I'm working through them and making progress. I am enjoying that work quite a bit, it's fun and rewarding.

I have attended 2 CrossFit classes each week for the past two weeks! I will attend 2 classes this week and push for doing 3 classes a week starting next week. Finally getting into a habit of regular exercise each week (it's still not a huge amount, but I'm growing that habit!) makes me feel fantastic, and I'm so happy I've done this.

I'll be in Las Vegas later this week to party and have some fun :) If you're reading this and have recommendations for what to do, where to go, etc. I'm happy to hear your recommendations.

You should listen to the "Having a successful career with depression, anxiety and imposter syndrome" podcast episode that 80,000 Hours released on the 19th. I found it an excellent and very relatable episode, and after listening to it am spending more time doing actionable "taking care of myself" things that I'd previously been avoiding, even very simple things. I have ADHD and depression, have had some really intense episodes and awful experiences from both, and found Howie's description of his struggles with both such things to be relatable, empowering, and helpful. I will no doubt share some of my own experiences in the future when I get to such posts, or feel ready to do so. I think if one is capable of safely (without retribution from anyone, no consequences from employer, etc.) sharing one's experiences with mental illness and challenges, it's probably a good idea to do so, and I will take part in that tradition at some point too.

I really like Above and Beyond's weekly Group Therapy mixes, here's the one I listened to today: https://open.spotify.com/album/4Gu2EpyXqwURn614tAlylU?si=QBlyNr6ZQby3I6l0qsnTmQ

I've got the Voicing Voice article in my writing queue, expect it next week as I likely won't be writing while I'm in Las Vegas later this week.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #10

Writing that weekly review yesterday challenged me motivationally, but I pushed through the ugh and wrote it anyways, I'm very happy about that, it was quite helpful to write.

Perhaps one of the most valuable products of writing that weekly review was that of noticing.

Reviewing my past week, the shortforms from that week, and other things focused my attention on things I would have otherwise missed, and thus helped me notice what I improved, what I completed, what I failed at, what was challenging, and so on. I'm deliberately incorporating more of that noticing practice in my shortforms going forward so that I will catch more important details and things that happened / that I did / that I didn't do, especially regarding all such things congruence with my stated short and long-term goals. This will translate into more detailed shortforms, since I need more data. But, I will over time increase the quality of the data I collect as well.

What did I do / accomplish today?

1. Installed gtimelog, re-familiarized myself with how to use it (I used it previously at some point and liked it, must have forgotten to reinstall it after distro hopping at some point), and used it to help me record what I did today.
2. I spent approximately 2 hours today writing direct messages to others, this was time well spent because all that social interaction stabilized and improved my mood, preventing me from slipping into depression (have I mentioned yet how long my happiness or just mood set point is? it's pretty gorram low). Plus I genuinely enjoyed talking with everyone I talked with, and am looking forward to spending more time tomorrow on direct messages.
3. I completed 90% of "Effort required but is Fun / Rewarding" task (I mentioned this task in my weekly review), will complete the remaining 10% tomorrow.
4. I did my laundry
5. I facilitated and attended today's Houston Rationalists Virtual Meetup and had a great time doing so!!! The meetup lasted for about 4 hours.
6. I completed several <5 minute of effort tasks I'd been wanting to do.

What did I not do / fail at today?

1. I did not exercise today, the flu symptoms are still significant and impairing. I do not feel bad about failing at this today, and consider the increased rest time and lack of exercise a prudent choice, actually.
2. I did not job hunt today.
3. I did not clock any time doing the "Important but Ugh" task I mentioned in my weekly review.

What did I notice today?

1. The urges I get throughout the day to avoid working on ToDo items have decreased in strength over the past 10 days compared to their strength and intensity prior to daily shortform writing and other interventions. It feels like I'm slowly re-training my brain's reward system because I derive genuinely greater pleasure and satisfaction from doing things, especially congruent to my goals ToDo things than not doing them, so by consistently doing congruent to my goals things, I'm actually making myself want to do those things even more, more often. This is fantastic!
2. There are a high amount of small-scale bug fixes or interventions I can apply to my life / do that would net an overall high reward and improvement in my life if done. I'll start doing those and also make a list of the ones that I have trouble doing immediately / ones that might take longer time + consistently to accomplish / induce positive changes.
3. Knowing exactly what I did with my time, when, during each day is very valuable data that I want to collect more of.

What do I need to do tomorrow to compensate for stuff I didn't do today or earlier this week?

1. Limit direct messaging / social interactions to <=1 hour prior to tomorrow evening so that I can do:
   • hours of "Important but Ugh" task and
   • hours of job hunting (in the evening I can rest easy and have fun with New Year's eve, but my "active time" during the day needs to be focused on the above two things)

Notes to self:

• Several people I talked with are interested in virtual co-working and/or doing the Hammertime sequence. Reach out to them and start setting things up.
• Write out customs + norms for Houston Rationalists meetups so that everyone has an explicit guide on the way we do things, so as to facilitate more enjoyable and deeper conversations for all attendees, smooth out social interaction challenges, provide prudent ways of handling noticing confusion or heavy emotions, and so on.
• Amount of Firefox tabs are building up again, clean off the desk in the other room where my media computer is located so that when I send tabs to it I can follow my usual routine of reviewing and sorting and dealing with all the tabs sent to it.
• Spend some time jotting down longer term goals that come to mind in one place. Don't worry about structure or style yet, just write them down.
• Order groceries to be picked up on the 2nd or 3rd. Prepare for 4th wave of COVID and hunker down.
• Prioritize responding to emails tomorrow since they are the direct messages that I've least attended to recently.
• Lookup compatible ram for A's computer and send recommended product purchase to A.

I'm taking a few minutes now to write what comes to mind, reflect on my day, plan, organize, blah blah blah.

Today was a good and productive day!

I successfully avoided Hacker News, didn't doomscroll at all on any site, and completed >50% of things I listed in yesterday's shortform!

Didn't read much today outside of light LW post skimming and chugging through a book while sitting in the car and waiting (had to wait a few times for >5 minutes in the car today but that's why keeping a book in the car at all times comes in handy; note: I always shut the engine off if parking for >1 minute, at that point it becomes fuel inefficient to keep the car idling for any longer, plus is bad for the environment to idle the engine). I'd like to read more tomorrow, very uncertain if I will though, probably will be too busy with holiday things and tasks I've assigned myself.

I'm repeating the "spend 30 minutes outside in the sun" TODO item tomorrow, because I think that's just something fantastic to do each day, daily physical activity and sunlight exposure for vitamin D + improved mood are great for the body (well, at least during winter I know that 30 minutes of sunlight won't be skin damaging, I'll have to make adjustments and definitely wear sunscreen during the spring and summer) and thus the mind. If it rains I'll go into the garage and lift weights and/or get cardio done by jumping rope (a surprisingly intense cardio activity, especially if you can do double jumps). Repeating this task daily tracks well with my goals and also tracks well as a form of Rationalist Self-Improvement; with a few exceptions, I believe that engaging in regular physical activity and maintaining a good diet are necessary components of a good life, being the best version of oneself one can be, self improvement, improvement as a Rationalist, etc. etc. etc. And I don't do those things very well nor consistently enough yet, but I will overcome those two failure modes! (the two failure modes being: (1) not engaging in regular physical activity and (2) not maintaining a good diet consistently).

I've purposely increased my virtual social activities, frequency of communication with friends, and general communication frequency with others over the last two weeks and this has had a noticeably positive impact on my mood. I did this in response to oncoming feelings of depression, previously, I would feel such feelings and withdraw / isolate which now I think started a pretty vicious cycle of withdrawing leading to more depression and more depression leading to more withdrawing. By forcing myself to do the opposite this time I have experienced a much much much lighter series of depressed moods that have lasted far shorter this time around than during my last encounter with them.

Note to self: withdrawing when feeling the oncoming of depression leads to a vicious cycle of bad things and more depression; increasing socialness, communication, and general productive output when feeling the oncoming of depression leads to a virtuous cycle where the depression goes away faster and is much less intense while present. Isolation is bad, basically.

Protect and engender virtuous cycles, notice and break out of vicious cycles. Repeat. Win.

I ordered a bunch of books today! Looking forward to finishing The Magician's trilogy (Lev Grossman), reading books 16 and 17 of the Dresden Files (Jim Butcher), introducing myself to Daoism via 2 or 3 different books, and reading 2 books on writing. Books are a great Christmas present.

Today I received my copy of "A Map That Reflects the Territory" (curated essays from LW written during 2018 that were published as books; https://www.lesswrong.com/books [? · GW]) and all the books in that set are gorgeous! Looking forward to reading them throughout the rest of the holidays.

Books are great.

Shortforms will resume on Monday 3 October.

Shortform #134 Cloud Atlas

It is possible that Friday evenings after working all week may not be my most effective evenings for focused study.

Instead of studying anything tonight, I watched Cloud Atlas for the first time and wow, what a movie (how's the book? haven't read it). I was confused at first, because the movie begins by throwing multiple characters in different locations in time and space at you completely independent of context or exposition, but my confusion lessened as the movie progressed and I found the whole experience quite novel and deeply interesting. Very ouroboros. The plot took Inception's layers approach and instead did this cool recursive folding thing that I'm unable to describe very well but if you've seen the movie you might know what I mean (again, unhelpful). Definitely cried at the moments where certain characters chose certain permanent actions or lost someone or were killed. Did not care for the idea that "death is just a brand new adventure" or "death opens a new door", fuck that nonsense (thankfully it was not emphasized too much, only a few times).

Take small consistent steps towards improvement and kind actions.

Shortform #127 CoWorking is Great!

I don't have much slack in my life right now, so working in the same space as a friend plus taking occasional breaks to talk is great. I get some amount of social hangout time and am able to work.

Problem: I'm hecking exhausted from working hours a day on other things in addition to my day job. Really need to change something in the next few months I think. I'm enjoying the work at least :)

Shortform #115 Christopher Nolan's Tenet

I watched this movie tonight and had a blast, it was actually quite a bit of fun keeping track of the timeline stuff and whether someone or an object was operating "inverted" or "non-inverted". Is the premise absurd? It definitely feels that way, but the movie was fun and kept my attention well occupied for its duration. One provocative takeaway from the movie: be careful with rigidity of thought & not updating your priors. It felt like the movie was mostly about rapidly updating your priors and not just for usual character development stuff, but like...oh, what silly time travel or paradox or other incoherent "science" shenanigans are they up to now? The movie was like a puzzle to unravel but with lots of action scenes, it was enjoyable.

Shortform #108 Tool use, software, and digitising operations

How does one as a human being stay relevant and able to solve enough problems that others experience to earn a living? No, AGI does not seem to be here yet, but our lives are governed, shaped, impacted by, and sometimes even ended via machine algorithmic decision making.

What tools are you using as prosthetics to augment your capabilities? Do you care about privacy or should privacy be given up to allow a closer integration with digital operations & support from machine algorithmic decision making? Or is this a false dichotomy? What are your workflows, i.e. how do you get work done, howsoever you define what that work is? Do you automate as much of your workflows as possible so that you can [note: incoming normative value judgement] spend more of your time, your mind, your self, etc. on creative or building type activities? Are you working a job that is stagnant and likely to "go away" unless specifically politically protected? Is the company or organization you're working for sclerotic, or set in its ways, or does not support you advancing your own knowledge & skills at a rate you feel is more than adequate?

Those are the sorts of questions that creep into my mind with increasing frequency and urgency. I feel this vast gulf between those who own "the capital", "the robots", "the machine algorithmic decision making", whatever you may call it...and those who don't and are left behind to beg for kindness. I feel that I'm firmly in the second camp still, and am fighting to make my way elsewhere.

Everything feels that much more urgent, as of late. Festina lente, or rather...don't get blackpilled by accelerationism...stay positive, keep moving forward.

Shortform #107 So much to build, do, and create...so little time in a day!

I have moved from "wanting to do things" to simply doing things and getting a lot done each day. This feels fucking fantastic, I love turning my attention to X things and plowing through them! Scheduling and time block planning are helping quite a bit, but I'm still looking for room to optimize my workflows & cut out time sinks.

Here's what I'm thinking of:

• either pay out of pocket for laundry wash & fold delivery service once I obtain a job upgrade this month or next month -- or if I receive funding for rationalist organizing, include that as one of my expense line items (purpose: significant time savings) because I don't have in-unity laundry at my apartment and honestly dealing with the building laundry is awful and doing laundry at a laundromat is even more awful. Both options are massive time wasters compared to outsourcing my laundry needs.
• Prepare a week's worth of meals every Saturday or Sunday and purchase fresh fruits & vegetables once per week from Aldi: purpose is to cook in batches so that I box-in the time commitments required for cooking into one longer session and don't have to do cook much or at all during the week.
• Determine concrete monthly goals and pursue those to the exclusion of other goals, rotate goals in and out as needed on a monthly or other time period basis. This reduces scatteredness and gives me easier-to-pick-up-and-do items I can schedule into my todo list or calendar.
• Obtain bicycle: I enjoy walking to work, but cycling to work and back would save me about 20 minutes per day which adds up quickly if you calculate that on a per week basis.

Do you have any suggestions for time optimization & task, goal, or project execution efficiency improvements? What helps you 2-10X or more your productivity on the things you care about accomplishing?

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #102 Consistent sleep & wake times experiment

I'm tired of being tired so much during the day, to an extent that is genuinely life & job performance interfering. Time to improve my sleep quality & habits!

I commit to this experiment for one month, the experiment begins tomorrow 11 August, 2022. The experiment will be reevaluated on September 11, 2022. I will be asleep by 10pm each night and awake at 6am each morning, no exceptions for weekends or holidays.

Happy for any suggestions or comments about other ways to improve sleep quality too, I am okay with trying them concurrently with this experiment, because solving my tiredness during the day problem is vitally important to me. I don't think I can afford a sleep study right now, but that is an assumption I haven't fully checked yet (here's another todo item).

Shortform #101 Conversation experiment: Tabooing $topics after previously discussed for $time

Do you ever find yourself talking at length, sometimes repetitively about the same topic(s)? Do you notice others around you doing similarly? Experiment with tabooing that topic or topics (with consent of your conversation partner(s), of course) for an evening (or whatever your time interval is) and see what happens!

Spur of the moment tonight, I asked my friend after we finished coworking and were hanging out if they wanted to try the conversation topic taboo experiment. They said yes, and that led to us having a few additional really good conversations tonight in addition to the tabooed topic conversations we had had earlier in the night (those were good too, please note that tabooing a topic doesn't mean a topic is bad necessarily).

I will be proposing this experiment at Virginia Rationalists' next meetup (tomorrow!) and see how that goes.

Shortform #80: immortalityisgreat.com go live date is 28 August, 2022 | Meetup Organizer's Retreat

While filling out my information on the Meetup Organizer's Retreat get to know each other document, I included a commitment that I would launch immortalityisgreat.com by 28 August. For a bit of further challenge, a friend & cohort member from the Guild of the ROSE created the following prediction market page: https://manifold.markets/XidaRen/will-willas-website-go-online-by-au Here we go!

My goal with the aforementioned site is initially quite small: create a static site containing a rolodex of individuals, groups, and institutions working on life extension. Such a list will inevitably never be complete, but I will try my best. If you see this post and are working on life extension (or other "reducing or eliminating the causes of death" things), please reach out so I can add you to the site.

Now, time for an early bedtime so I can maintain decent energy & focus this week, I'm tired and it's only Monday.

Shortform #77 Decreasing personal maintenance time: haircut edition!

I like to increase the time I have for things I enjoy or bring about professional, intellectual, personal, social, or other growth. My hair had grown ridiculously long (went almost all the way down my back), was consuming a not insignificant amount of time to maintain per week, and was annoying me. I decided to stop procrastinating and finally do something about that, so I went to the salon and now I have short hair that doesn't even reach my shoulders. FINALLY! Now I will have better looking hair that requires less maintenance and thus my overall personal maintenance time per week will go down, allowing me to spend more time on the things that spark joy or bring my life benefit.

What simple change could you make in your life to gain over an hour per week of time & energy back for use with better things?

Shortform #71 A Restful & Productive Saturday | Brief rough thought about AI Alignment & Politics

Today I slept in, studied for my cert exam, finalized my V3 character sheet, virtually hungout with friends, and had a pleasant time puttering around the house.

My office desk is currently two stacks of three boxes per stack with an old Apple Xserve stretched across them for stability. I used my two existing desks for my setups in the loft to great effect, now I need to focus on finalizing my office setup...so, purchasing three desks is my next step there.

I did not write anything down about Politics & AI Alignment, that seems (mostly) to be an activity for tomorrow. Very briefly though: I believe that according to whose values an AI is aligned towards (provided such alignment is doable; I freely admit that my knowledge of technical AI Alignment is woefully inadequate, something that I intend to remedy), well...that choice of values is necessarily a normative political choice. What world does one wish to live in, and how might one use an AI aligned towards creating such a world to bring such a world about? I don't think the question of bringing about a friendly aligned AI stops at mere friendliness, I think the question at that point becomes, to whom is the AI friendly and what does that AI do to those in that individual's "outgroup"? It feels like the human race is not just in an arms race to bring about friendly AI...it's in an arms race to control the power (superintelligent AI) that could ultimately reshape the world according to their own values.

Shortform #61 In Which Half a Month Passed, Unexpectedly

Whoosh is the best way to describe the last ~17 days. Time to make some adjustments, it's not pleasant nor desirable when time goes by so quickly while barely noticing it passing. A surprisingly illegible and inscrutable 17 days, unfortunately.

Adjustments:

• daily shortform writing: this will increase legibility and potential for reflection regarding each day(s) and week(s)
• increase fruits & vegetables consumption: this will improve my nutrition
• step back down one increment on X: the increase of one step increment to current level of X occurred right around the same time that the whoosh-y-ness of everything began
• fast food is verboten: TAP, if about to get fast food, instead redirect to grocery store or home
• increase weekly physical activity: this will improve my fitness and have other beneficial impacts
• reduce vegetable oil consumption generally, but not obsessively

ToDo:

• cf adjustments
• continue applying for jobs
• car stuff: needs oil change, inspection, and renewal of registration
  • street flooded the other night and a small amount of water got into one spot when I jumped in to move the car (further rain would have flooded the car if I didn't move it) and closed the door I'd opened. Already dried everything thoroughly and cleaned with bleach, but keep a nose out for weird smells. If necessary, remove seat from that spot and carpeting and clean whatever is under those things. General good idea: take car through a car wash to at least rinse off the exterior underbelly.
• resume media diet

That's it for the moment.
Tschüss

Shortform #59 The Great Outdoors and Good Conversations; Hammertime Days 6 (Mantras [? · GW]) and 7 (Aversion Factoring [? · GW])

Yesterday we went hiking for 3 hours around the absolutely stunning hills / mountain surrounding Devil's Lake, Wisconsin. The road trip there and back was fun and picturesque too, Wisconsin is gorgeous. We had dinner with one friend's friend at a grand café in town and that was lovely, great food and great conversation.

Today we went to an excellent brunch at one friend's friend's house and spent several lovely hours there eating great food and having great conversations with an excellent bunch of people. Then, a trip to the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art which was fantastic! Later, we met up with another friend of one friend and had more great conversations and a lovely time. We then came back to the house and ate steaks cooked sous vide which I now believe is the only viable method for cooking a steak and all other methods result in significantly inferior tasting steaks, seriously.

I did not make much time for Hammertime today and yesterday due to focusing on other things with the little productivity focused time I had + doing very active vacation things that took up most of each day's time. I've scheduled in a longer intermission period for our group so that myself and others can catch up, reflect on our experiences, tune lists, etc. before moving to the next phase of Hammertime on 2 August.

Earlier tonight, I replied to all comments on my posts that I referenced 2 days ago and said I'd reply to by tonight, so I've done that.

Legibility continues to be on my mind, and I've brought it up constantly the last few days in conversations. I suspect that's because without legibility, or maps of reality, it's not very possible to take deliberate focused actions in goal aligned, personally congruent directions. Which, one must do if one wants to become the best version of one's self, solve hard problems, navigate the unknown, etc. Legibility + deliberate actions reinforce each other and make someone "level up". I suspect I will incorporate these thoughts into a review or analysis of Hammertime in a retrospective post I will make once my group and I finish that sequence.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #55 Alons-y; Hammertime Day 1 - Bug Hunt

I spent the first ~10 minutes of my workday creating my day's agenda. It turns out that setting a timer for 10 minutes before doing any work for the day to create an agenda for the day is a most excellent and helpful ritual, so I'm doing that from here on out.

I scheduled very aggressively and didn't leave buffer time, so tomorrow I'll add 5-10 minutes of buffer time between each non-travel-required / other unavoidable time sink item on my schedule and see if that's enough. Despite the no buffer time and multiple hour+ family interruptions or time spending, I managed to stick to my daily agenda reasonably well, adhered to my media diet successfully, and got a lot of work done. Including day 1 of the Hammertime sequence!

I set 5 minute timers for each prompt (see the lesson [LW · GW] and after 30 minutes (there are 6 prompts) I had written out about 128 bugs into a spreadsheet (I'm using LibreOffice Calc and will try to use the same spreadsheet with different pages / tabs for the whole Hammertime sequence for ease of data input and management). This was helpful! I will finish sorting the bugs by difficulty, category / similarity, urgentness, importance, and context (the latter 3 factors were added after discussing with my group earlier tonight) before bed or tomorrow first thing. I used a 5 point difficulty scale instead of 10, because a 5 point difficulty scale feels more informative to me than a 10 point scale.

I voraciously consumed Liber Augmen during my lunch break and finished that book. Lots to think about there, I strongly endorse reading that book and will be writing about it here in my shortforms soon.

A good day :)

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #49 Specificity

I mostly talk about my own life in these shortforms, and I'm partly okay with that, because doing so has been nice and helpful for me thus far, but I want to talk about other stuff too. So, I'll work other sorts of topics into these posts as I desire: right now I want to learn more about and discuss specific life interventions others have tried and the resulting effects from said interventions. Time to ask that question via the site's "New Question" feature!

If you haven't yet read Liron's Specificity Sequence [LW · GW] you should go check it out! I haven't finished it yet, but it's proving quite useful and good thus far.

Shortform #40 Egads! A Title, but not a real Title.

Today was nice :)

1. I was virtually social for >4 hours today. This includes the 3 hours I attended and facilitated the Houston Rationalists meetup, which was quite a fun and nice meetup, I had a good time and we had a few new members!
2. Today's step count was ~9871 steps, for about 4.1 miles of distance walked. A large part of that came from walking around a field for an hour or so during the afternoon, it felt great to go walking outside again.
3. Completed initial onboarding for a new project, excited to see what we create.

There may or may not be shortforms for Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I'll be out of town and am neither committing to writing shortforms during that time nor outright declining to write them.

I finished reading Worm today! Worm was the first story with "capes" (superpowered individuals) that I actually enjoyed reading / engaging with in a long long long time. Despite the incredible amount of combat scenes that occur in the story, the combat scenes didn't get old or tiresome, and there was also a fair bit of time for character development too. Though, I think I would have enjoyed the story ever so slightly more if there had been a few more chapters devoted to day-to-day life and other character development things for all the purely combat oriented chapters there were. Overall, I'm quite happy that I read Worm, and consider it a very nice and enjoyable epic / saga which I heartily recommend. It gets extremely dark in some parts, but those scenes seemed like they were handled well, so no complaints from me about that, plus I like when stories have some of that grittier more awful / horrific depth to them at times.

Yay for a short weekend vacation!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #34 Unable to Formulate Title

Today was an excellent day :)

1. Had a morning interview and it went well! I'm now doing volunteer software development for a cool place, and am excited for that :) It is very helpful and good experience for me to gain.
2. My neighbor brought us over taco soup and cornbread, and it was fantastic, thank you to her!
3. I walked 5.3 miles today, 13,263 steps
4. I was virtually social for a few hours.

I am continuing to read Worm and am really enjoying it!

Yay for the weekend :)
Willa

Shortform #29 Almost Back on the Wagon!

Today was an excellent day :) I did not stick to the schedule I put together, but writing it last night was helpful since I had it for reference today. I allowed myself to sleep in and that seems to have helped considerably in many ways.

1. I logged my calories today, totaled ~2230kcal
2. I was virtually social for >4 hours via phone calls
3. I was up and active for the majority of the time I was on the phone, I spent >5 hours packing and organizing things today. (including but not limited to, boxing up all 375+ of my books!)
4. I did not program today.
5. I did not "formally" exercise, but did get decent activity in from the packing and organizing.

Turning on more lights than felt necessary and keeping them on was a great help today, after I move (tis soon) I want to buy EVEN BRIGHTER light bulbs than I already have (mine are around 600-850 lumen range) and get some 2000-3000 lumen bulbs to use as well. Artificial daylight is really nice, it turns out. I listened to mostly upbeat instrumental music, especially liquid drum & bass mixes, and that was excellent and felt helpful too.

Goals for tomorrow and proposed schedule:

1. Proposed schedule
   • 10:30 to 14:30: practise Swift
   • Break
   • 15 to 17: virtual coworking, focus on resume writing & job app related things
   • 17 to 18: exercise
   • Break
   • 19 to 20: write daily shortform and weekly review
   • 20 to 22: messaging, be virtually social
   • 22 onward: freeeeeeeeeeedom
2. I will practise coding
3. I will purposefully exercise
4. I will finish re-writing my resume in a way that is tailored for software engineering positions
5. Have fun!

Unlike today, I've actually created calendar events for tomorrow's proposed schedule, this may help :)

Yesterday Scott resurfaced, and that was a pleasant surprise! I'm very happy that he's returned to blogging, and he left several wonderful messages in that post. Thanks for returning, I'm looking forward to reading those explorations! "So here goes. With malice towards none, with charity towards all, with firmness in the ṛta as reflective equilibrium gives us to see the ṛta, let us restart our mutual explorations, begin anew the joyful reduction of uncertainty wherever it may lead us."

May we all explore well :)
Willa

I listened to some super chilllllll but somehow still positive + upbeat feeling house music while writing this and while packing, it was great! I don't always like house music, but when I do, I really like it. There is no middleground for me with house music, for some reason. But that mix was good :)

Shortform #26 Oh wow, a marathon of posts! Also, mild ranting.

Today was good, but felt very split into three pieces. The morning, the trip into town, and the rest of the day: I did productive things for almost three hours in the morning, then drove into the nearby big city for my doctor's appointment, and several hours passed before I got home. The doctor's appointment was great! All good things, but when you have to drive for so long there and back, that does take quite a chunk out of the day. The rest of the day started around 15:30 and went nicely too :)

1. I continued practising CS fundamentals via coding in Swift, total time: about 5 hours and 45 minutes
2. I used the Notes app on macOS / iOS to track my time today mostly because I broke down the time spent doing each section / lesson in Swift to see what I spent more or less time on, and ended up not logging time on my desktop as a result.
   • I should try to install gtimelog on my laptop, might be possible if I compile it, but that may prove to be a big headache. I'll try it tomorrow and if it works I'll figure out how to sync the log file that app saves to between devices, probably by saving it to my Tresorit (I think all I'd have to do is symlink the file located on the cloud drive to a specific location on my desktop and another specific location on my laptop; ubuntu and macos may place these things in slightly different places /shrug)
   • Tresorit is my cloud provider, it is a reasonably private zero-knowledge and end-to-end encrypted cloud provider. Caveat: the company may be subject to Swiss privacy laws, which is nice...but unless you pony up for a very pricey business plan, if you are located in the US then your data will be stored on servers in Ireland via Microsoft Azure. I'm sure it's still very private and nice, but servers in that jurisdiction on that platform are much more susceptible to US finagling compared to on a FOSS platform located in Switzerland, Sweden, or Iceland. However, all metadata and private encryption keys are stored on your device, as opposed to their servers, so that seems reassuring. Definitely more private than Google Drive or most of the other borg cloud providers. Still...I'd like to find a cloud provider based out of and with servers located in either Sweden or Iceland with similar zero-knowledge and end-to-end encryption strategies. If anyone knows of such a provider, please let me know. You should care about your privacy.
3. I consumed about 1700kcal today.

Unfortunately, I did not exercise today, for the second day in a row...to make up for that I purposely ran a good calorie deficit for the day.

Noticed: I get really really really focused and obsessed with coding when I practise for the day, to the exclusion of a lot of other things. Even with a big interruption to my day, I still did slightly more practice today than yesterday, and can see that trend growing. This is good, since I need the practice and want to skill up as quickly and thoroughly as possible for "I want a job" reasons (plus it's fun, I'm enjoying the practice a lot), but I still need to do other things with my day.

Interventions:

1. Continue adjusting sleep schedule so that I wake up a bit earlier each day, having more morning time gives me more coding time.
2. Either exercise first thing in the morning, or right after finishing coding for the day.
3. Schedule 1 hour of just direct social messaging for every other day to be completed after coding time; I seem to either respond to all my inbox at once in one massive hours long binge, or not at all and continually forget about messages until suddenly realizing a few weeks later that I had a bunch of messages, oops. Using repeating calendar events for this might be a good approach because I currently don't handle this very well. Who knew not noticing the passing of time was an issue? sarcasm

Tech world has been abuzz lately, time to go binge Stratechery, it's been a few months. I did not listen to music while writing this shortform.

Live long and prosper, y'all.
Willa

Shortform #22 Packing, Organizing, and Preparing.

Today was a good day.

I spent most of it going through things, throwing away, organizing, sorting, and packing said things depending on what they were, and got a lot done in preparation for moving because of that. I'm looking forward to finishing up my resume tomorrow and getting feedback on it then finishing up my profile on the job sites I made an account on.

I've enjoyed watching the most recent season (part 3 IIRC) of Disenchantment as well, and apparently The Magicians has a new season too, exciting!

Happy Friday Y'all :)
Willa

Shortform #21 Functional strength training and job hunting, oh my.

I had a most excellent day :)

1. I created accounts on job posting sites and started hunting.
2. Joined a discord video call with two friends and we did 30 minutes of functional strength training together, I am now really sore, but am happy I worked out!
3. I did virtual co-working for ~3 hours.

My resume is out of date and pretty bad, I'll fix it up tomorrow using RMarkdown and other nice R things so that my newly created resume will be up to date AND pretty / well styled. I'm meeting (virtually) with a friend on Saturday who runs career building and resume workshops and they have graciously agreed to review and give me feedback on the newly created resume. Thank you to them!

Once I have a new and up to date resume, I can add that to all the job sites I signed up at and finish making + polishing my profile on all of them.

I currently run my website on an AWS Lightsail instance with Wordpress as the CMS. I don't think that's working for me, and the website isn't paying rent design-wise, content-wise, nor financially (though it is really really really cheap to operate, so I'm not losing much). So, in addition to LW2019Review writing, I'm going to make time (that doesn't subtract from job hunting time) to redo my website and axe Wordpress as my CMS since I don't like it. Using a static-site generator and adding a little bit of custom stuff (I really like the functionality and design of Gwern's website so I will steal inspiration from there) will probably result in a much nicer looking, easier to manage, and more functional (for what I care about) site, so I'll do those things.

A weird side effect of job hunting today has been a really strong desire to code. Guess I'll be doing much more of that going forward.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #11

Welcome to the new year! same as the old year As promised, I am resuming my daily shortforms :)

The last 4 or 5 days were simultaneously the worst and best days I've experienced in quite awhile.

Best: Hanging out with great friends on the 31st and 1st, this was fantastic, I had an amazing time. (yes, we all tested negative for COVID prior to deciding to hangout) | Having an emotional breakthrough realization

Worst: The descent into cripplingly bad depression from loneliness late on the 1st once I was alone again. Feeling shattered from isolation on the 2nd and 3rd. | Having an emotional breakthrough realization

Today was a better day, and I am acting on the emotional breakthrough realization I had, so things will be okay! Essentially, I previously could tolerate living alone, but something changed this year (hullo quarantine), and I can no longer tolerate that, so later this month I'm moving states to go live with family.

This meshes quite well with my goal of raising my happiness set point, because when living with others, even if there is drama my mood and general contentedness are noticeably better than when living alone. Furthermore, living with others seems to overall make me a more capable and productive person versus living alone. Now that I know these things about myself, I will arrange to live with others and try my best to not live alone again. The power of noticing!

Note: I'm aiming to move to Seattle sometime around May: if you're doing similarly, let's talk and see if we're compatible as roommates.

My goal this week is to:

1. continue writing daily public shortforms
2. go outside and exercise for at least 30 minutes per day (I have recovered from the flu, yay)
3. spend an hour each day being virtually social, specifically: responding to messages
4. generally try to keep recovering from the last few days and try to keep feeling better
5. do more other stuff yet to be listed

I will be writing my 2021 Week 1 Review on Sunday the 10th, to be posted by 13:00 that day and it cannot count as that day's shortform.

I am not mentioning certain things in this shortform that I mentioned in previous shortforms or the weekly review, because I am not yet operating at full capacity, but I will get there soon :)

While writing today's shortform I listened to Caterina Barbieri's album, Patterns of Consciousness ; this is a great writing or thinking or being pensive kind of album. Spotify | YouTube

Good luck and be well!

Holidays are great, I'm extending my enjoyment of this one through the end of the weekend. Shortforms will return with #11 on Monday the 4th :)

Today marks day 7 of daily shortform writing, tomorrow will mark day 8, and so on :)

Yay for one week of daily shortform writing! Feels like a nice accomplishment, now I'm aiming for one month.

In an "ironic for 2020" turn of events, I did not contract COVID from the family Christmas gathering, no, that test came back negative thankfully. I contracted the plain ol' flu instead, and this is probably why I was so tired yesterday and why my ear has been hurting. Much of today was spent resting and the other half of it was spent at the doctor trying to get diagnosed and there was quite a long wait time. The time waiting was well spent because I am within the 48 hour window of onset of flu symptoms which means the antiviral tamiflu will shorten the duration and lessen the intensity of my flu experience, so I was prescribed that and another thing or two.

I did not exercise today, and probably won't exercise tomorrow other than a light walk outside at some point.

I'm focusing on resting and feeling better so I'm not sure how much of my ToDo I'll make myself do tomorrow, seems like something to "play by ear" so to say, but also literally in my case while fighting off the flu and the pain it's causing in my right ear. The only thing I'm going to ensure I make myself do is respond to lots of messages since I can do that from bed, and I want to respond to said messages.

If you're reading this and you've been feeling bad, or off, or avoiding taking care of something that's making your life worse, go take care of that thing and yourself. #Selfcare is necessary, very important, and just a good thing to do.

Gratitude of the day: Thanks to all the time spent waiting at the doctor's office, I got more reading of NeuroTribes done and reading that helped make the waiting time pass by quickly and enjoyably.

Much shorter update for today, since today was quite bifurcated. Morning to early afternoon were chaotic and all consuming until I dropped my parents off at the airport. Afterwards I was tired and settled down on the couch for a bit, but eventually got up, took the dogs to the field (the grass was less soggy today than yesterday), and walked for two miles. That's all the exercise I did though, and it was quite a leisurely walk, so I think today was my "rest" day. I'm happy I went walking outside, that was fun plus the dogs enjoyed it too!

I did some virtual communicating today during the afternoon and evening, and that was nice. I've been so tired all day though that everything I've done has felt very forced, so I'm going to bed early tonight with plans to sleep in tomorrow as needed.

Tomorrow I'm excited to really dig in and respond to a ton of messages, continue reading NeuroTribes, skim nominated posts in the 2019 LW Review, and conduct my first weekly review!

Today marks day 6 of daily shortform writing, tomorrow will mark day 7, and so on :)

Time to get some much needed rest!

149. Solve easy problems & what's your default query tool?

I am committing to solving at least five problems in my life per week that aren't just regular chores. Here's the current list: (most of this list is: I am tired of seeing my deadname around too frequently)

1. Done: requested name change with US Department of Education
2. Done: requested new card from $bank1 so my name is correct on it
3. Partial: Called $bank2 about name change and they are snail-mailing me the paperwork for that.
4. To do: Call $university1 & $college1 to do name change at both places and get updated diplomas
5. To do: Purchase decorative but functional window privacy film so I can raise blinds halfway on most of my windows and line the sills with plaaaaaaants!

Bonus: picked up my car from a local automotive electrician today, it now has working air conditioning again!

Challenge: switch my default informational query tool from a web browser search engine to ChatGPT (gpt4) and see how that goes. exceptions for local or timely or emergency info apply, of course.

• I started this today, was very useful for some Excel specific keyboard shortcuts I needed during the workday.

Shortform #129 More test taking

Tomorrow morning I take the second out of two exams for an IT cert I'm pursuing. I've studied well and know the material thoroughly. I'm excited to take that test and obtain that cert as it will help with short term survival with getting better IT jobs while I figure out how to transition to doing different work. Not much else to say tonight, the exam is the main thing on my mind. I'll gain some slack back in my life by obtaining the cert, so that's a nice thing too.

Be well,
Good night!

Daily shortforms shall resume on Monday 5 September, 2022. I am taking IT certification exams this weekend and need to focus.

Shortform #106 Four Days of Consistent Sleep & Wake Times: going well!

Waking up at 6:13am on Thursday & Friday felt like normal work wakeup time but with more energy & less tiredness than usual because of falling asleep by or slightly before 10pm.

Waking up at 6:13am on Saturday and Sunday made my weekend feel like it was unbelievably long in a great way. I wasn't tired at all, felt plenty energetic, and immediately after waking up both mornings spent a solid two or three hours working on important personal tasks or projects. I really am sharper, more focused, and more creative just after waking up in the morning.

I'm torn between pushing my sleep & wake times even earlier so that I can have one hour of personal work time in the mornings before work versus staying the course for another week or so. I do feel comfortable moving the times by 5-10 minutes each day, so maybe I'll try that.

Shortform #78 Design Matters: The Triumph of the Curved Shower Rod | Lighting: Hedonistic Adaptation

For those of you suffering from narrow tub-shower hybrids with shower curtains that inevitably brush up or press against you while showering, for (new retail price) $30-$60+ you can become the proud owner of a curved shower rod that dramatically increases the horizontal space you have in such a shower. I've just installed one (do measure your tub-shower hybrid's length from wall to wall before buying one, that measurement does matter) and the result is a much more usable shower with a more pleasant experience. This upgrade also brings slight efficiency gains, because I'm not fighting off the damnable shower curtain at all anymore.

Oh, and if your bathroom only has one light fixture / a light fixture that's not above the shower area, the curved shower rod upgrade increases the lumens inside the shower area ever so slightly. This makes the shower a bit more cheerful, though I will likely upgrade the lighting in my bathroom to increase luminosity in that spot. Why should a bathroom have to be a dull drab place as they so often are especially in apartments, dorms, or even houses? Light it up and put waterproof colorful decorations all over the place so that your personal maintenance room that you spend time in every single day becomes a much more pleasant room!

I am no longer using Facebook for political reasons but also for efficiency reasons: by having one less communications platform to check, I lower the cognitive complexity & time investment of communicating with other people. Now there is one fewer tool & one less system to be familiar with, thus increasing my time & reducing information I have to care about (leaving me more room for information inputs I want to care about.

Hedonistic adaptation: I replaced >80% of the light bulbs in my house with 1600 lumen LED bulbs (the previous bulbs were CFLs of varying color temperature & not the best luminosity) last month. I find myself craving more light, so I've obtained a two pack of 16,000 lumen, 80+CRI, 6500K foldable garage lights that use a normal E26 socket from Amazon. I look forward to testing them as soon as they arrive! Today I tested reading a book hit by direct afternoon west sunlight vs reading a book next to my normal 1600 lumen light bulbs & 4600 lumen LED shop light, and the former experience produced significantly less eye strain and was immensely nicer feeling. I look forward to continuing my lighting adventures and making the inside of my house as bright as daylight for the mood, reduced eye-strain, and other benefits that brings.

Shortform #76 Noticing mood, behavior, & energy impacts from food types consumed

When I eat processed sugar, I take a negative hit in all three categories mentioned above.

When I eat mostly vegetables, some carbs, and none or a smattering of meat, I feel great. As the meat to vegetables ratio increases, the worse I feel.

When I eat fruits, the impact from their non-processed sugar is not the same as the impact I have from processed sugar: usually there's little to no impact and sometimes I even feel better from eating the fruit.

When I eat processed foods, I take a negative hit in all three categories mentioned above, excepting certain vegetarian or vegan organic processed foods (e.g. frozen organic veggie burgers).

I'm not sure the impact cheese has on me, and I think the impact differs significantly based on type of cheese consumed: if I eat some fancy expensive cheese, I almost always consume it in very low quantities per time consumed & that seems to have no impact. The less fancy & the more processed or plastic-y the cheese feels, the worse I feel from eating it.

I really enjoy lentils, beans, some sort of sauce, and rice. This is a "heavy" meal, but it doesn't make me feel heavy.

If I eat restaurant food or fast food, almost regardless of quality...I feel "heavy" afterwards and feel a strong urge to sleep.

The experience of a premium beer feels nicer than the experience of a non-premium beer. I love the experience of drinking one Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA (it's fantastic, seriously), and after the strong buzz wears off a few hours later there are no negative feelings or effects that I feel. Whereas...cheaper beers are less enjoyable going down and the experience once they wear off isn't as pleasant. Ditto goes for other forms of alcohol I've tried. Really nice port feels profoundly better to drink than cheap port, same with whiskey, same with bourbon.

Anyway! I noticed the above impacts on my mood, behavior, & energy from different types of food and wanted to make note of it for my future reference: next time I go shopping I will be consulting this shortform.

Shortform #56 Travel; Hammertime Day 2 - Yoda Timers

I followed my media diet today except regarding Discord, plus didn't get in my full reserved hours of work. On the whole, I was reasonably productive, but didn't focus my actions very well today.

This evening we had a Houston Rationalists virtual meetup which went quite well! Had a new attendee, several regulars, and great discussion. We focused a lot of the discussion on timelessness, or, why is it some ideas, cultural practices, books, etc. survive over the long term whereas others do not (yes the lindy effect was mentioned). And discussed belief updating, making decisions under uncertainty, Bayesianism, Supermemo and spaced repetition generally, and more. Good stuff!

Today was Hammertime Day 2 - Yoda Timers [? · GW]

I figured out what kinds of bugs I can actually apply Yoda Timers to right now while I'm travelling (I am out of town for a week and off my normal routine for a week and a half or so), but haven't made the time to do that yet. Realistically, I may not be able to make the time to do that in full, so I'll do at least some Yoda Timer bug fixing, but may have to wait on a number of bug fixings using that technique until I'm no longer travelling. That's fine. I'm looking forward to seeing what tomorrow's Hammertime lesson entails.

The combination of doing Hammertime, going on my media diet, and changing some habits is already impacting me quite beneficially. I'm having fun doing lots of work and actually improving myself and my life, it's great.

Now for sleep.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #19 Meetups are great!

Today was an excellent day :)

1. I spent about 4 hours on direct messaging and caught up on almost all my inboxes! The time per day required for giving timely responses to each person will now decrease thanks to being caught up. I enjoyed talking with everyone I talked with, and look forward to those continuing conversations :)
2. I walked indoors for 2.3 miles, that was nice.
3. I had a great time at today's Houston Rationalists Virtual Meetup, it lasted about four hours and was quite fun! I have some good ideas for what to do at future meetups thanks to good discussions with attendees, we are resuming reading 1-3 articles from around the Rationalsphere and discussing them at each meetup. However, this time we will be writing a group-wide summary of each article and the main ideas contained in each one, this will be fun + help with discussion + help with understanding what we read.

I've had great success scheduling virtual co-working sessions, thank you to everyone who's been interested in that! I have multiple sessions scheduled through Saturday and beyond, and will start opening up group virtual co-working at dedicated times too in addition to the one on one sessions that I've been doing.

Tomorrow I will focus on writing. I will write my 2021 plans, goals, dreams, etc. and put them into coherent form so that I can publish a post on that, plus will finish writing my review of Gears-Level Models are Capital Investments [LW · GW].

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

2020 Week 52 Review: 21 Dec - 28 Dec

I do best when I have a structure to work with as a scaffolding when dealing with life and everything that entails. The weekly review process will be one of several structures I'm purposely building into my life so that I can be a more focused and concentrated general intelligence entity: this has the great benefit of helping me align my actions with my goals, plus you know, helping me to actually identify and remember my goals explicitly.

Last week I completed 8 of my major weekly ToDo items and failed to complete 7 of the same. I am satisfied with this amount of accomplishment, it's a good start, specifically because I started something new with my life and completed the three things I found most important. Everything else was gravy :)

Those three most important goals that I accomplished were:

1. Write publicly every single day.
2. Escape vicious depressed mood cycles by forcing myself to be extraordinarily virtually social: I'm pleased to report that this intervention was successful!
3. Go outside and exercise for at least 30 minutes every day. I did this until diagnosed with the flu on Sun the 27th. Since then the more prudent action has been to rest so I've stopped exercising for the moment.

I will continue prioritizing those three goals and so will pursue them again this week!

Things I failed to accomplish that I want to accomplish this week:

1. I did not at all work on a task I'm calling "Important but Ugh" last week. This week I must clock-in 10 hours of work towards that task, or else I will be forced to donate $50 to a political party I don't like.
2. I gave myself a task to do (let's call it: "Effort required but is Fun / Rewarding") and didn't complete it yet, I will complete it tomorrow Dec 30th or else I will be very annoyed with myself and will have let a few important people to me down.
3. I did not do enough job hunting, this week I must clock-in 10 hours of work towards that task.

Additional ToDo for this week:

• Participate in 2019 LW Review by reviewing nominated posts
• Read Acéphale issue "Escape" and ensure to write a short summary and /or review of each entry and the issue as a whole.
• Continue reading NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman
• Build group for doing Hammertime sequence
• Schedule virtual co-working sessions with friends for different types of work / tasks I need to complete.

Things I noticed while writing this weekly review.

1. I want to prioritize raising my happiness set point, this seems like one of the most important / significant things that I can do for myself. The highest priority tasks I have for this week all contribute significantly to this goal.
2. Stating publicly that I will do something is usually an effective motivator for me to do said thing, unless I overload my ToDo list too badly (and thus get overloaded myself) and/or don't add in additional incentive mechanisms to make me complete things I just really don't want to do but need to do, or things I want to do but have a lot of akrasia around doing.
3. I liked Ben Kuhn's weekly review process / structure and modeled mine somewhat off of his, I will adjust as necessary going forward. I'd like to create a weekly review process that is more tailored for me, but for now it's good to have a template to start from.
   • put together list of my favorite essays / books / posts of life advice.
4. It is greatly helpful to write a daily list of what I read that day with a short description or summary or review of said read thing. I will do this every day this week instead of inconsistently like last week.

Bugfixes: stopped using a small TV as my desktop's third monitor and replaced it with an ancient spare monitor I had. I lost some screen real estate but gained a nice quality of life improvement because I no longer have to run an xrandr BASH script every single gorram time I turn my computer on and / or wake it up from suspend (TVs are handled differently than computer monitors on Ubuntu and every time I turned the TV on or turned it off it'd mess up my display arrangement settings). Definitely an improvement and worth the loss of screen real estate, also makes my desk area look more "open" which feels nice.

Well! That is my first weekly review done!! I'm happy I wrote it, but wow did I have to fight off a lot of ugh fields and akrasia to finish it, but that makes completing it all the sweeter :)

My next weekly review will be posted by Sunday 3 January 2021 at 15:00 and will cover today the 29th through Saturday the 2nd.

Well, daily shortform posts do get significantly more boring while sick, unfortunately :(

I've scaled back a lot of my activities and plans so that I can rest and get over the flu more quickly.

However! I have successfully overcome giving in to the temptation to fully go into a cocoon and not do anything, i.e. I have avoided totally isolating myself which is a habit I've routinely fallen into while sick in the past. My plan of being extraordinarily more (virtually) social to prevent the onset of depression is really paying off! I spent the majority of active hours today engaged in virtual social activities despite feeling the strongest recent feelings of "wanting to dive into a cocoon and isolate" for most of the day. I will continue fighting those feelings, even if it feels like I'm being excessively social while doing so. I like people, talking with people, doing activities with others, etc. are good things that I enjoy.

A day after I feel the flu symptoms lessen significantly, I will begin lightly exercising once more and will adjust as needed until I'm back at normal health + good levels of exercise.

Tomorrow my goal is to incorporate more intellectually productive activities into my day in addition to the social ones, so, looks like tomorrow I'll be doing my first weekly review + another thing or two.

Today is shortform daily writing #8.

I successfully completed December 22's goal of not reading Hacker News until today at 14:30. I have a few open goals that I haven't completed yet that I made in previous shortform entries, those will be reevaluated and reprioritized as necessary during tomorrow's weekly review.

The writing I'm doing here in shortforms is nothing novel nor groundbreaking, nor all that interesting most of the time. That's okay! I'm building myself a habit of daily public writing, and establishing that habit for myself is something I value immensely. I always have an eye towards quality, but if I prune my babble too much I'll never write publicly, so that's why these shortform posts are such a good first step for establishing such a habit: I don't have to prune my babble much, but the general high-quality nature of posting on LessWrong still infects my shortform section, making these posts better here than they would have been on Facebook. Additionally, instead of not really ever having post ideas outside of what feels like random chance inspiration, after a few days of writing here regularly and reading others' posts on the site each day, and cutting out doomscrolling and dopamine quick-fixes, I'm now generating a post idea or two a day or refining one I had thought of on a prior day. This is great!

A small note: upon returning to Hacker News today after almost a week's break from it, I only stayed for a few seconds despite seeing some interesting looking posts on the frontpage. I suspect that going there from time to time when I'm in genuine need of a novelty binge might be fine, but even Hacker News seems to be just a higher quality version of a social media dopamine-fix generator site. Sadness :(

I'm taking a few minutes now to write what comes to mind, reflect on my day, plan, organize, blah blah blah.

(1) Tomorrow I will record the amount of time I spend reading and what site I was on (or book / physical reference material if not on a computer / is offline but on a computer) using a stopwatch. I want to know how much time I spend reading what and where I read it.

(2) I am taking a temporary break from Hacker News, the next time I'm allowing myself to go there and mine for dopamine (I mean, search for novel and cool things) is Monday the 28th at 14:30.

(3) Observation: the Hammertime sequence looks very cool and quite helpful, I've noticed that I think about doing it from time to time but have never made the commitment. Does anyone want to group up and do the Hammertime sequence together? If so, let me know! I'll be asking around, doesn't seem like the kind of thing I'd get much traction with nor much benefit out of if I did it alone.

(4) I didn't read very much today outside of some doom scrolling. Tomorrow, I'll be reading the newly published issue, "Escape", of my friend's journal, you can find it here: https://thesacredconspiracy.com/journal/ ; I will be writing a summary and/or review for each entry in the issue and for the issue as a whole!

(5) TODO: (5a) Email and message the people I've been meaning to get back to or reach out to. Due on the 24th by noon. (5b) Complete the below mentioned task (re: edit comment and then post it on adamzerner's "Writing to think" post) by 16:00 tomorrow (the 23rd). (5c) Tomorrow: Spend 15 minutes looking for tech or political jobs in Seattle (or full remote). Spend an additional 15 minutes after that inspecting UW's graduate programs. (5d) Tomorrow: Go outside for 30 minutes, it doesn't matter too much what as long as I move / do some activity and get sunlight. (5e) Remind myself that todo lists are good, but don't write endless todo lists or else they become overwhelming and get ignored. Reminder will occur at noon. (5f) Schedule next Houston Rationalists meetup, choose either 29 or 30 Dec in the evening. Make sure to inform members about the LW/EA New Year's Ultra Party (https://www.facebook.com/events/678804856145168)

(6) LW Stuff: (6a) Over the next few days scan through the nominated posts (2019 Review) and select 5 of them. (6b) Read those selected 5 thoroughly and write thorough, good reviews of at least 3 of them. (6c) Finish doing that stuff and post those reviews on LW in the appropriate places by January 4. That way I have more time to write more reviews later if I want to! (6d) Reread everything here and take notes while doing so: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6MEB6P5hNxrgmcpyP/before-rationality-a-snapshot [LW · GW] (6e) After rereading that stuff, figure out what earlier snapshots I can recall but at the very least put together a snapshot of where I'm at currently then list "how I want to improve, where I want to go" and so on. I really like jospus321's idea of doing rationality snapshots, and want to participate in doing that. (6f) There is something else, but I can't remember it right now. It'll come back to me at some point.

(7) I found out about bagpipe jazz today and this has made me INCREDIBLY HAPPY. Go forth and listen to some bagpipe jazz, it's wonderful, Rufus Harley is great: https://open.spotify.com/album/4Sjo4mlzIJ8HHmJLq2hPZg?si=DaSW5kF8RwSuYF_wxeLr5g ; "Feeling Good" is probably my favorite song from that album so far, it's fantastic!

(8) Tomorrow's shortform is not allowed to make use of numbered nor bulleted lists nor strings of words formatted similarly to lists. Today was for lists and tomorrow isn't. I don't know why, but that's what I've decided.

This shortform took longer than a few minutes and is made out of lists for some reason, that's okay! I'm happy I took the time to write :)

Writing is great for me, but I do way too little writing. I put my feelings about this into a small poem, here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vMNPQvFfgNmRWsJBi/intake-rumble-spew [LW · GW]

Since shortform posts are, short and don't require high epistemic confidence and seem compatible with social media style posting, I will now write shortform posts regularly so that I get at least some writing done. This will help process the torrent of data and thoughts swirling around in my head like some chaotic vortex. It's hard to do anything with that vortex there, but writing helps quiet it and feels good, in particular, having written feels amazing even though the act of writing can be painful.

I think listing out a small selection of what I've read today will help with processing, maybe. I'm going to try it and see what happens!

Hacker News stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25493804 - read the comment thread even though camera technology is not among my main or even tangential interests, not sure how much I value having read this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499361 - read the comment thread and the article. I value having read this, Apple and EVs (and the automotive industry generally) are contained within the set of things I find highly interested. Apple is a mystifying and infuriating company, but they do genuinely novel things and are legitimately their own huge niche within the computing industry, I find them worth studying. EVs are cool, and I want their to be more EVs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25497772 - read the comment thread and skimmed the article. I value having read the commentary, it was okay. When I lived in the city I jaywalked ALL THE TIME and will probably continue to do so whenever I'm living in a city again, because on a non-busy street I don't think it makes time nor efficiency sense to walk a block or more just to cross at a crosswalk. Also, pedestrians should own the road, cars can shove off. I'm into cars and like them and think they are really cool machines, but the US really needs to change its transportation approaches and switch to walking / biking / bus / subway / rail / other public transit systems as the predominant transportation focuses instead of focusing as much as it does on cars. Living in a car dominated place is really frustrating, I like to walk and bike places but it's not safe to do that here. I miss the city.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25492880 - read the comment thread and read the article. I value having read both things, I love learning more about computing history + Apple stuff so reading both those things was fun and valuable to me. The discussion of Bay Area housing prices during the 80s and California living during the 80s was cool too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25495334 - I enjoyed reading the comments here and found the perspectives shared within quite valuable and relatable. I'm way too into tech for my own good, I love the stuff, but got so burned out at my last job that I hated tech for a month or two after leaving it...am feeling better about things now though...but, I do have a lot of issues with the tech industry's culture, norms, etc. The tech industry feels like it's simultaneously as evil as the old oil and railroad barons of the US gilded age, but it also seems to represent so many utopic visions / promises, innovation, human improvement, and so on. I feel very conflicted about working in the tech industry. But, such is where my passions seem to be, and I won't ignore my passions. Besides, without great amounts of tech innovation we won't ever get to a world where death has been defeated, human augmentation is common and prudently done, and so on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25495768 - Good! The US healthcare system feels like it took the worst from private enterprise and public enterprise and combined them into some Molochian nightmare. We should probably just copy Australia and start again from there for our healthcare system.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray [LW · GW] - I liked this post, it illustrated something I feel strongly about: perfection may not be achievable but we can damn well try to make improvements and get as close to the asymptote of the limit of perfection as possible.

That seems like enough for now, I think I'll go actively message friends instead of reading more stuff for the moment, that seems more enjoyable. I enjoyed writing this shortform and will be doing this kind of thing again, it feels great that I wrote a bit about and processed some of the things I read today, it's nice!

148. April 9 Williamsburg VA Meetup, AI, and thank goodness Spring is almost upon us

If you find yourself in or near Williamsburg, Virginia on 2023/04/09 come join for a Virginia Rationalists Meetup [? · GW] and the Williamsburg 2nd Sundays Art & Music Festival.

This week was a bit overwhelming in AI news, with GPT-4 releasing, new Midjourney, Stanford's Alpaca, more AI offerings from Google, Microsoft CoPilot 365, and honestly a bunch more things. I've spent too much time already talking with the GPT-4 version of ChatGPT given how long it's actually been available...oh well, it's a very useful cognitive prosthetic, I'm finding myself actually wanting to write & produce content again since drafting things got so much easier (none of this post was written by an AI, this is a casual shortform so it's all me). I wish the AI Safety folks the best of skill in updating to account for this new burst of capabilities.

Seems that SAD knocked me out a bit for some of January and all of February (I improved my home's lighting considerably this winter, but didn't go far enough it seems, among other things). Temperature fluctuations in Norfolk aside, Spring is definitely starting, and I'm very happy about that. Time to touch grass and do more things outside again!

There is no overarching narrative conclusion to see here, just the end of a post :)

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #147 Working & Considering Partial Digital Nomadism

I experience significant value-add to my life / nice things when I travel. I trialed working semi nomadically in December when I stayed at 7 or 8 households over 10 days while working remotely full time. That was fun, exhausting, and a very valuable learning experience! I definitely overbooked myself on that trip and did not schedule enough downtime, plus, I found working from a single laptop screen a bit less efficient than my normal 4 screen work setup & other desktop accoutrements.

With a bit more equipment optimized for working from anywhere, a few more optimized habits picked up from frequent travelers, and ensuring that I schedule in downtime, I feel confident that I could go a solid month or two working fully nomadically without experiencing significant issues or drawbacks. I do occasionally go onsite for projects & team meetings at my job so I likely would want to not be gone for longer than a month or two at a time anyhow.

For a variety of reasons I don't really want to go too too far out of state and work until late summer, so I'll practise digital nomadism in the meantime by doing multiple local, near local, and nearby state trips so I can find remaining pain points and build the habits, get the equipment, or otherwise develop solutions to address those pain points. Then late summer I'd like to head out to the other side of the country (US) and visit up and down the west coast. It would be fun to visit rationalists in all the cities I travel to, so when I do travel I intend to reach out in the meetup groups, discords, and elsewhere to coordinate such visits for each city I end up in!

Shortform #146 Happy New Year! (a few updates; all dates from 2022 unless specified otherwise)

Resuming on October 16th didn't happen, oops. Looks like January 3rd (today) will have to do! Now for some updates:

• I changed jobs in October: I went from a contract employee to a full employee at the healthcare org I work at, with a promotion to a new team! Now I am supporting clinical & medical technology systems, it's cool stuff, I'm learning a ton, and I love the position, it's a very good fit.
• November disappeared into the abyss of working a lot, I can't say I did much this month besides my normal routine, work & lots of learning at work, and increasing healthy eating habits. I did journal a decent amount in November, so I can use those and other electronic items (messages to others) to piece together a memory prosthetic for that month if I become so inclined.
• December was a very long month, with quite a bit of activity. In addition to normal holiday stuff, I went to Texas for ten days and had a great time travelling & hanging out with friends. I'm happy that I was able to attend a Houston Rationalists meetup and an Austin LW meetup while in Texas, those were fun and it was great to meet a lot of new excellent people & see a few people I already knew too!
• The book club that another Rationalist Organizer and I co-organized ran to completion and finished in December. I learned a lot, and also really enjoyed participating in a book club with other Rationalists & Organizers. The discussions were excellent and everyone had helpful anecdotes to share related to the book we read: "The Art of Gathering: How We Meeting and Why it Matters", by Priya Parker
• Sadly, I was unable to make it to Washington D.C. for New Years like originally planned, but the large winter storm & mass cancelling of flights by Southwest Airlines prevented my friends from flying in to where I'm at (we were going to take the train to D.C.), so we had to cancel those plans. I look forward to visiting D.C. and also meeting up with the local Rationalists community while there another time!
• I don't have any explicit New Year's resolutions, more so I will be continuing with life improvements already deemed desirable (improving diet, sleep, and exercise) and continuing to learn more and do well at work. I'd also like to continue improving consistency & conscientiousness because I find those to be very high reward areas to skill-up in. I have a YouTube project in the works, but will not be launching that until I've written a more coherent business plan than my current draft and have completed scripts for at least five videos. I haven't forgotten about my Substack, but I think I launched that a little bit too early. I intend to continue that Substack and write more there, but this time without as much of a rush & with more deliberateness. I am hopeful and excited for 2023!

I can see the egregore of Overwork & Hustle looming as I think about how much I both have to do and want to do in 2023, but I will make sure to take time to rest & take care of myself. Staying deliberate with my time and actions helps with that, so I expect to write Shortforms at a decent cadence this year; they help with such deliberateness. It may be better to move to a personal blogsite for them...but I'm still on the fence about that.

May you have a most excellent and profitable 2023!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #145 Audio Journaling | Rethinking Shortforms

I tried audio journaling for the first time today, it felt weird but I think the experience was actually great! Recorded for about 30 minutes on an old non-internet connected phone (to pacify my paranoia) and then listened to the recording and got hit in the feels in all sorts of good and helpful ways.

I like writing these shortform posts, but am not sure how valuable they've been over the last few weeks in particular (I know writing the posts as a whole has been incredibly valuable to my personal development and overcoming shyness so just targeting the last few weeks). I've increased my in-person organizing commitments and have a lot going on in my life, including a possible job change. Those things plus...I do feel bad when I write a shortform post that feels rushed or low quality, and I've felt that way about too many of my shortform posts recently. My time is important and your time is important, so I'd like to ensure these posts are generating the kind of value I want them to. No more shortform posts this week, I will post again on Sunday October 16th.

Shortform #144 Pre-Registering commitment actions

This week I may have meat on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.

Saturdays I am intending to Sabbath hard and go home for the sake of supporting my increased workload on the rest of the days of the week and having one day where I really unplug and engage in pure non-work leisure. No shortforms on Saturdays.

Commitment: wake up at 5am three times per week, those days this week are: Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

2 mile minimum walk: I will almost certainly do this on Sundays, probably before or after Virginia Rationalists' Sunday workshop.

Tomorrow I intend to go through the character sheet that I built today [? · GW], sort the features by order of desired acquisition, and make my plan of action for acquiring those.

Shortform #143 Taking small actionable steps to improve my life

Starts Monday Oct 10. I am coasting now on my past commitments because they have become habits (for the most part). Time for new commitments! Note: I find that small continuous actions of improvement, (see also Kaizen), more sustainable & actually doable than big innovations, so those are my guidelines with most of my new commitments.

Health:

• Eat one or less egg per day instead of the two I've been averaging
• Eat meat no more than once every other day instead of the once a day I've been averaging
• Increase stairs climbed per day from an average of 7 flights per day to 12+ flights per day (note that this is a full weekly average, not just during workdays where it's easy to climb 10 flights a day given my current duties).
• Continue walking as much as possible to reduce car utilization, plus, commit at least one 2 mile minimum walk per week that's separate from my walking commutes.

Mind:

• Continue the habit of going to bed by 9:30 and falling asleep by 10 except for occasional (no more than once a week) staying up slightly later. Waking up at 5:45am every morning for the last few weeks has been great for me, I want to continue that and possibly move the wakeup time earlier.
• Set a five minute kitchen timer once per day and write in a designated notebook about thoughts that crossed my mind that day.
• Set a five minute kitchen timer once per day and read a designated nonfiction book or textbook about biology (this will be one recommended by commentators from my Have you considered getting rid of death? post that was also posted on LessWrong).

This feels like quite a few new commitments already, yet I'm feeling like writing several more paragraphs worth. Let's start with the above, I'll add more as I go.

Shortform #142 What entertainment are you consuming or interacting with?

Right now I am listening to Fragments, by Bonobo. I love that album!

Tonight was my once or twice a month "watch YouTube videos" night, and...I'm not sure how much I like that habit. I do skip a lot of videos I used to watch almost compulsorily when I watched YouTube videos multiple times a day...so that's an improvement at least.

I am not watching any TV shows right now, but I will possibly watch a movie this weekend. I'm reading a book on Kaizen which I'm quite enjoying and am also slowly making my way through Ward. I had hardly played video games for the past six months or more, but right now I'm occasionally playing Borderlands (first playthrough) with some forays into visual novels too.

Shortform #141 Weekly workshops & good things to come

I will now be running weekly workshops for Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk. I'm excited for this and am looking forward to the growth and fun we will experience! Nothing will change with our weekly socials, I wanted workshops so am running those separately from social meetups as was recommended by many other organizers at the organizer's retreat in July.

I have an interview tomorrow for a job I'm a really good fit for on a team that would be great to work with. Here's to good things to come hopefully :)

I did not write last night's shortform because I was eating delicious homemade from scratch pizza with friends.

Shortform #140 Routine-breaking Weekend

I tend to settle into a fairly predictable routine, and this weekend roused me from that.

On Friday there was a tropical storm and no power in my apartment when I went home after work (though it did come back on that evening thankfully). Because my building sustained no damage, it was a pretty relaxing night, I read some while it was still light out and then the power was back on by nightfall so I hopped on my computer and was somewhat social virtually for a bit.

On Saturday I went to Richmond, VA for the ACX Meetup Everywhere meetup there and that was fantastic!!!! Had a wonderful time :) I then attended a lovely dinner at a friend's house after making it back to Norfolk.

On Sunday I helped take care of my niece for most of the day.

I don't feel as well rested as I usually do after a weekend, but I do think an occasional few interruptions to my routine is probably good for me in that it helps avoid stagnation in some ways in case my routine turns unproductive or unfulfilling (which does happen sometimes).

Shortform #139 Note to self: don't reschedule weekly meetup

Tonight's Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was great! We had a new individual join us who is familiar with ACX.

In retrospect, I think it was inconsiderate to suddenly reschedule the group's weekly meetup just because I couldn't attend. My co-organizer and others likely could have attended yesterday, and there were a few people who just couldn't make the rescheduled meetup but had included Wednesday nights in their routine as "meetup night". So, I intend to not reschedule the weekly social meetup unless literally everyone reaches out in advance and asks for that to occur. Weekly meetups = people build that into their routines, and should not be changed lightly.

Shortform #138 A good but slightly disorienting day

I applied for a promising job today, here's to hoping that bears fruit!

I am somewhat out of whack due to having to suddenly house sit instead of going to my own home after work. I do not enjoy this, but it's an obligation I'm fulfilling.

No meetup tonight, I rescheduled Norfolk's meetup for Thursday evening (the 29th). I'm excited for the meetup tomorrow!

Shortform #137 Meal Prepping & Rambutan

In pursuit of healthier eating, I prepared containers of seeds, fruits of various kinds, and vegetables that I can eat during meals & take to work for lunch. I also tried a new-to-me fruit called Rambutan, I like the flavor okay but it's a little bland, and now have a container of that fruit to eat through too.

I meditated for 5 minutes, rowed for 5 minutes, and did 5 pushups tonight. Small continuous improvements, here we go!

Shortform #136 Sugar* Considered Harmful

• = sugar in excess of what one would consume normally by eating fruits & vegetables and maybe 1 square of dark chocolate.

I splurged (everything else were essentials / healthy food) on one item this weekend from Trader Joe's: Pumpkin Spice Cinnamon Rolls. Yes they were tasty, duh. After consumption...now I feel physically ill: almost sweating and general discomfort, anxiety, elevated heart rate, trouble focusing, restlessness, etc. Oh! This is not an isolated set of bad feelings, these bad feelings occur every single time I eat sugar in excess of eating a few particular sweet fruits. (I have a great A1C level, for those who are worried this is due to something abnormal; I get full bloodwork done about 4 times a year [last time was late summer] and those levels have consistently been excellent)

I don't care for a fully general rule of sugar = always bad...but from my experiences...I think it's best for me to continue cutting unnatural amounts of sugar out of my life, because wow do I feel great when I do cut that out. The last few months I've steadily reduced my sugar consumption and now even eating two or three oreos feels intense and can trigger the bad feelings...eating a few cinnamon rolls at once was definitely a mistake. I intend to learn from this experience and the other bad experiences I've had with consuming unnatural amounts of sugar these last few months: stop consuming this particular drug [sugar], it's bad for me and makes me feel bad.

Thank goodness I like the taste of >=90% dark chocolate and even pure baker's chocolate. Figs are pretty great too, they almost taste too sugary but they don't make me feel bad so I guess they are fine. I can cut out unnatural amounts of sugar, feel better, and still get to enjoy tasty dessert-style foods that I like (very dark chocolate, figs, sauteed onions, berries, and more), it's a win win!

Shortform #135 Rest and Shrinking the "World"

Last week I read about 10 arcs of Ward, listened to a ton of UNspoiled! podcast network podcasts, and played video games some too. I increased how much I slept each night and averaged a bit over eight hours, and improved the healthiness of my food choices. As much as I escaped into fiction and the "other worlds" that come with fiction, I felt that that came at the expense of the reality / world we all live in (hence part of this post's title). The more I engage with fiction, the more I withdraw from reality / the world around me. I'm glad I took a week of rest, I think I needed it, especially with a few upcoming challenges, but I don't care for the "world shrinkage effect" that occurred during that time. I stopped myself from returning to shortforms and other work prior to today, because I wanted to rest the full week, but the last few days have been...challenging. I'm just ready to get back to working on immortality studies, writing, organizing, and engaging with nonfiction, and all the other things I like do. So, I'm back!

Daily Shortforms will return on Sunday 25 September, 2022. I need to focus on building other habits right now, but also...a bit of extra rest is nice.

Shortform #133 Knowledge Intake

As mentioned yesterday, I re-read the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? [LW · GW] and added what was recommended to my knowledge intake system. I believe I'd benefit from working methodically through a textbook while reading another more foundational conceptual book so to those ends I suspect the first two books I read specifically for increasing my Biology knowledge are:

• Molecular Biology of the Cell
• Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things

If I notice significant gaps in my knowledge or struggle too much with either of those, I will try more introductory Biology related books.

My reading material tomorrow is to review and add to my knowledge intake system the reading list & recommendations from Richard & Michael's podcast episode Xenogenesis - Ageing and Immortality Special.

I use a clipboard manager at work (the built in Windows one, "clipboard history") and spent 5 minutes searching for a macOS equivalent because that's really useful functionality to go without, and I want it for my home or non-current job productive use cases too! I'm using Maccy because it's open source and it's pretty.

Shortform #132 Small but good actions.

Tomorrow evening's reading material is a re-read of the comments on Have you considered getting rid of death? [LW · GW] where several people recommended good things to check out. I will add that material to my intake system and begin processing it.

I will post Friday's reading material tomorrow, I have got to get to sleep now. Tonight's Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk meetup was fantastic!

I have completed similar "prep for tomorrow" actions tonight like I did last night. The extra slack provided by those actions from yesterday came in handy today.

Shortform #131 TWI & Kaizen

In the spirit of continuous, sustained, small-step daily improvement (hello Kaizen or its precursor, TWI), I am adding a small component my daily shortforms: spend 10 minutes or less reading about a pre-registered subject each day and share my thoughts on what I read that day in my shortform.

Tomorrow I'm choosing or "pre-registering" my reading material for 14/09/2022 through 18/09/2022. Tonight I prepared tomorrow's lunch, set out tomorrow's clothes, and did a few other things to make tomorrow go more smoothly & increase my slack.

Shortform #130 More Slack

I passed my second cert exam (this cert requires passing scores on two separate exams) this morning and have thus obtained my new IT cert! I now have more slack in my life, which feels so good. I'm not completely out of churning waters yet, but they are quieter and a bit slower than before.

I look forward to discussing Twelve Virtues of Rationality [LW · GW] in my upcoming meetups.

Shortform #128 Organizing for Immortality

Thank you to everyone who read and/or commented on Have you considered getting rid of death? [LW · GW]! Your thoughts, resources, and support are welcomed :)

I've reflected on that post, discussions I had with others about it, and the comments, plus my current life circumstances: I have a small amount of time slack but zero financial slack, so what is the highest value added work I can put forth towards the bigger immortality project? Organizing, I think.

I intend to read, write, and produce original research for that project, but those things take time to do well and acquire subject matter expertise. I can and will write about the objections I listed in my post, some thoughts on governance, and then really spend more time reading & discussing research. However, there are a lot of possible cause areas within the overall / bigger immortality project, and I want to build a community around working on those. Immortality organizing here I go! Expect announcements about those efforts here soon (within about a week or less).

I missed my shortform yesterday, I am acknowledging that I missed it but am moving on. Dwelling on that won't help anything. I'm very happy that I wrote my shortform today :)

Shortform #126 Running More Specific Meetups

We had nine attendees (including myself) at our [Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk] social tonight! It was great, I had a most excellent time, and everyone else said they enjoyed it too.

Only four out of nine attendees (including myself) were familiar with LW/ACX/EA, and when you don't have a group where most of the people are "in-group" so to say (i.e. familiar with things inside our walled gardens), that changes the dynamics of the experience quite a bit.

I may have to vary between open and closed socials in addition to adding some more workshop or discussion meetups. That strategy has worked well for most other organizers, time to copy (also ask for help a bit), tweak, and implement!

Shortform #125 Increasing Vegetarianism

I am still eating meat, but have steadily been cutting back on my meat consumption for the last few weeks. I feel better, my mind is sharper, and I tend to have more energy when I eat more fruits & vegetables and less meat. Not ready to make a full commitment, not sure if I ever will (parties do exist, and there are still things I like trying or would want occasionally), but I am thinking of the 80/20 rule and how that could apply well in this case.

If I eat vegetarian for >=80% of meals, I get the aforementioned benefits while still getting to eat some amount of meat. This seems like a good compromise.

Shortform #124 Returning, Exams, and Plans

Shortforms exist again! Yay :) I enjoy writing these, they are a nice ritual and anchoring part of my days each week, especially while parts of my life remain fairly fragile or uncertain.

The IT exams went well until there was a software glitch, and the second exam failed to even launch and no proctor ever reached out to me. I passed the first exam with room to spare, and opened a support ticket about the second exam, so hopefully the testing company will issue me a new voucher so I can take the second exam and finally obtain that dang certification.

A good friend helped me calculate current and projected expenses, this was very helpful, actively looking for jobs is in my best interest, as is getting a bit of assistance for organizing work. So those two things will be my extracurriculars on top of the rest of my work until I've settled money matters a bit more solidly.

I intend for my immortalityisgreat.substack.com release cadence to be once per week, but bi-weekly might be best for the moment while I build some more stability into my life. Expect a new post by the end of next weekend.

Shortform #123 Learning Social Conventions via Scripting & Deliberate Practice

One topic discussed at Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk's social meetup tonight (we had six attendees and had a ton of fun!) was how many people had to consciously choose to learn & practice social conventions like eye contact, body language, customs, and more. Those are things I've had to do, as most social conventions or customs didn't or don't come naturally to me for some reason. This topic resonated with most of us at the meetup, so I'm wondering if it's also a topic that many here on LessWrong find relatable or useful.

To what extent and in which manner did you have to explicitly choose to learn & practice social conventions or customs?

Shortform #122 Some books on my "To Read" list: (this list grows over time...it may need some pruning, I know I'm missing things, and this list is separate from my "To Finish" list...; this list is mostly for me, it helps to consolidate some things. I'm very open to recommendations.)

Liu Cixin's trilogy, The Remembrance of Earth's Past
Peter Watts, Blindsight
Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By
National Research Council, Funding a Revolution: Government Support for Computing Research
Peter Kingsley, Reality
David Eagleman, Livewired
Reorganise
Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference
The rest of the Culture novels by Ian M Banks
Octavia Butler's works.

I suspect this list will change & narrow to few focus areas as I research more within longevity / immortality cause areas, pursue certifications to improve my organizing & facilitating skills, and another thing or few. I love fan fics, web serials, pulps, less serious fantasy & sci-fi, etc. so while those are not listed explicitly, they will be consumed too heh. A few times a year I love to get on Apple or Kindle free books and read a couple free tier fantasy & sci-fi titles, it's fun!

Shortform #121 So many ACX Meetups Everywhere to go to!

I will be travelling as much as possible to ACX Meetups Everywhere mostly along the East coast, some in the South, and hopefully all such meetups in Virginia. If I can swing it, I'd like to go to Houston see everyone & run a meetup then attend the Austin ACX meetup.

I love looking at the Community map and seeing so many meetup events occurring, this is fantastic! I'm eager to see that grow year over year and help however I can with that growth.

If you haven't been to any meetups or only a few, ACX Meetups Everywhere are the best time of the year to try attending rationalist meetups, I highly recommend you give that a go. Meetups FTW!

Shortform #120 I [mostly] met an important-to-me deadline: immortalityisgreat.com is now live as a substack blog

Here's the first post: Have you considered getting rid of death?

I am excited and look forward to writing more on that subject, preferably each week!

And now bedtime, then back to my day job tomorrow...

Shortform #118 Changing Profession & Considering Other Jobs

I don't like doing IT and the thought of doing it years in the future fills me with intense dread. I have decided that I will leave that profession to go do something else and am now considering what other profession or job(s) that might be.

I'm not leaving my current job immediately, I do need to survive in the meantime of course, but having a job-change plan & steadily executing on it will help make the day to day more bearable (it has gotten so bad I've been tempted to just walk out multiple times a day, each day of the work week, however...I will not be doing that as I feel that's not a good thing to do).

I love talking with people, I actually do like the act of selling, I enjoy writing, and above all I really want my next job to be more exclusively people-focused as opposed to technical-focused.

Possible choices:

• LW / EA / ACX Organizing full time across a whole region of the US and more if funding is available.
• Technical sales; I do still enjoy technology, I merely no longer prioritize tech over other things I'm curious about, plus I like selling things and talking with people, so technical sales could be a rather good job to transition to.
• Community organizing, political activism, politics, or other civic / engagement type work.
• Support group facilitator
• Customer or constituent or other people type support roles, even if it means spending >5 hours a day on the phone (not as ideal as other roles, but still probably more sanity preserving than continuing to work in IT).

Any suggestions or recommendations?

Shortform #117 Studying!

Thankfully I was able to take today and tomorrow off from work, I am studying. Nothing more to really discuss, just a lot of work to finish up this weekend. Be well, live long, and prosper :)

Shortform #116 Commitments Check-In

Very simply, a status update on my ongoing commitments, plus a short deadline list.

Media Commitment: This goes well! I am barely watching two movies a week, have not watched YouTube except for purely time sensitive educational purposes, and haven't watched TV at all. My worry about binging comics hasn't been vindicated, as I've acquired several new comics but am actually going through them pretty slowly.

Regular sleep habit commitment: This was going well until the awful stress storm of this week where I have changed my sleep or wake times not longer than plus or minus thirty minutes at least two nights this week. I'm considering that a bit of an exception, but I intend to return to fully consistent sleep & wake times after I've made it past a few upcoming deadlines. Note that I will not allow plus or minus sleep time changes greater than one hour no matter way.

Beingness commitment: in Shortform #114, I made a commitment to take more unstructured time to myself and just relax. Last night I cancelled co-working plans and watched a movie and didn't do any work at all, it was great. I have less time tonight, but I will take some time to chill before bed. This commitment is the most difficult commitment for me to follow-through on at this time, but I will ensure I do, because if I don't, I get mindkilled or worse for some amount of time. I do feel I'm at risk for minor burnout and will do whatever is necessary to heal and avoid that burnout.

Deadlines:

• IT certification exams x 2: these will be taken and passed by the end of this month. This is a huge source of stress, I've been studying for a few months and feel decently prepared, but I will definitely feel a lot of relief once I'm done with those exams and have obtained the cert I'm going for.

• Launching immortalityisgreat.com by August 28th. I've created a Substack and am tidying it up + writing my first post. Thank you to Austin Chen of Manifold Markets for critiquing my original plan for the site, I have pivoted based on that conversation we had.

• Done: schedule ACX Meetups Everywhere for Norfolk VA. This was completed on Monday, yay!

• Norfolk Rationality Dojo: tentative first workshop is on August 28th, but it may be deliberately a very closed session with no more than 4 attendees to beta test it.

• Apply for funding: I am working at least 10 hours a week on Rationalist organizing and that number keeps threatening to go up. I would like to increase how much I'm working on organizing and the value-add I can provide, having funding would be instrumental to both those goals. I will apply for funding this weekend, even if it's a small amount, it will help.

Yes I also work full time. I may need to reevaluate priorities & what I'm doing next month if I end up not being able to make time for beingness, because such a situation wouldn't be very sustainable for long.

Shortform #114 Huh, Human Being not Human Doing

For the past month or so I've been in a Doing spiral. This has been great for my productivity, but as multiple important deadlines coincided at the same time this week, I've realized (thank you everyone I've talked about this with for helping me realize) that I've left little time for simply being in my life.

One might say I've left very little to no slack in my life, with the negative consequences that can cause. Working 10 hours a day at my day job before coming home to work for 2-4 hours a night on studying for an exam, writing, Rationalist organizing, other projects, etc. plus working a bunch on weekends is very tiring, even though there are parts of it I've loved and have enjoyed being so productive. Other than audio media I consumed while completing physical or repetitive tasks, I consumed almost no media the last two weeks in particular, I was working so much.

New commitment: take some time back for myself to simply be each day & week. That may sound vaguely defined to you, but that sentence functions equivalently to a list of SMART goal activities to me, although I'll make sure it doesn't operate as such, hehe. Being is the focus of this commitment.

Shortform #113 Writing under the influence of panic, stress, etc. considered harmful

See yesterday's shortform, but more broadly, I've noticed that if I let stressors I'm feeling into my writing, my writing is worse, specifically: less concise, less clear (vagueness is not a virtue; nor am I trying to entice close reading, one ought not need to be a Straussian to read what I write), and not as coherent.

I noticed that I initially felt significant stress about this post, because I wasn't going to post it before 9:30 (my bedtime). I sat with that stress, and determined that I'd feel worse if I didn't take a few extra minutes to keep up my daily post commitment, and this post became what it is now instead of the rather bad first draft that you don't get to see.

To convey a sense of what I mean by the impact of stressors on my writing if I allow them to influence what I write, please notice how you feel if you're late to work, school, or an important event and how that negatively impacts your thought processes, reasoning, and induces general mindkilled-ness.

Harm occurs if the stressor(s) are not processed or set aside because then one either feels bad afterwards, publishes something they don't like, or simply experiences the stress more fully instead of letting it wash away.

Now it's definitely time for bed, but I feel relaxed and really enjoyed the experience of writing this more-meta-than-usual post. Ciao :)

Shortform #112 Golden handcuffs versus Competency handcuffs

If golden handcuffs is a situation where one is well compensated to the point of not feeling comfortable ever being less compensated than that and thus feels trapped in a job-related situation...I take competency handcuffs to be a situation where one is competent at something they realize they don't enjoy doing much but haven't yet figured out an existing competency they have or trained up another competency and thus feel trapped in a job-related situation. Bonus points for competent golden handcuffs, oof (though they do seem to generally go hand in hand, I think there can be situations where they are distinct phenomena).

Feeling a strong sense of the latter situation, personally.

Shortform #111 Uploading versus Upgrading

What do you choose and why?

Does uploading necessarily mean disembodiment?

According to which software license would you as an entity be licensed as if uploaded? What does Free or Open Source Software look like when the source code is a human being?

What software license would your upgrades come with? If you default on some hypothetical hardware upgrade subscription or capital investment, do you get your old body parts back, repoed, or something else?

What political changes does human civilization need to make to properly handle the implications of uploading, or upgrading? (presupposing that there is still a human-governed civilization at such a point rather than an AI-governed civilization a la The Culture's Minds)

I strongly prefer the upgrading path & hybridity of machine parts & biology. Uploading is way scarier to me than that, but I haven't analyzed that scariness very deeply, to be honest. Still, being powered by a mini-fusion reactor, the ability to fly and survive in any environment, and brain computer interface style augmentations just do have a sexiness and great feeling to them versus the...somewhat boring feeling idea of becoming pure machine code.

Shortform #109 Yay for organizing & co-organizers!

Virginia Rationalists: Norfolk filled up the large round table at Fair Grounds tonight, had good conversations (though admittedly a bit lacking in rationalist content...but that'll be what the upcoming dojo or workshop meetups are for), and walked to a Boba place together afterwards for some wonderful bubble / boba tea.

Yitz [LW · GW] and I met briefly afterwards to discuss our upcoming dojo and workshop meetup plans as well as figure out our plan for Meetups Everywhere 2022 - Call for Organizers, because we will do an ACX Everywhere meetup!

Virginia Rationalists now have a Discord server :) (if the invite fails for you, please message me here on LessWrong or leave a comment on this post, I'll get you a new one)

I am excited for Richmond, Virginia as their group is gaining an additional organizer soon! I look forward to a road trip to visit everyone there and attend a meetup (no I am not said additional organizer). That and a road trip to DC to visit their meetup group(s) will probably need to wait until September due to time & budget constraints this month.

Shortform #105 Wow, desks are great | Setting up my home office

I went to Costco with two friends today and picked up three six-foot long folding tables that are sold there. Just for a sanity test, I sat on one of the tables and it fully bore my weight, thus I felt comfortable putting on the ~100 pounds of equipment I have on one of them now. It is very nice to have desks and workbench space instead of working from the floor, oof. I've got four / five of my monitors setup, but the last one (an old Wacom drawing tablet) needs a display adapter to function, I'll pick that up from somewhere online most likely.

It's been so long since I had a proper desk setup & an office to myself, I'm ecstatic for the workflows, projects, and fun things I'll be able to get up to now that I have 18 horizontal feet of desk real estate and a proper office! My use-cases:

• Immortality & longevity focused Substack writing with all the research & analysis that that entails
• Rationalist meetup organizing: working off of just a laptop was way too painful, I can't wait to use the extra screen real estate, computational oomph, and tools to improve my meetup organizing capabilities.
• Music production (yay for having a synthesizer / keyboard specific setup too)
• Video production, mostly for YouTube.
• Learning drawing and minor art production via the aforementioned Wacom tablet.
• Improving my IT skills since that's still my main profession: I now have the space to setup networking gear, servers, and other things to use in production plus learn on.

Building out ones creative studio space, workbench area, and so on feels amazing, I'm glad I have the opportunity to do these things now. Time to create good things :)

Shortform #104 Movies, oh movies

I love working extra hours earlier in the week to allow for a short day Friday, may push for working four 10s to just get Fridays off entirely. Anyway, I finished watching Dune which I had watched partially last month, then I watched Men in Black: International.

I'm not very good at movie critiques, so I won't offer any in that direction for Dune or MIB: International. To think critically about a piece of media, I almost always have to experience it twice, and I did not watch those movies twice (only once).

I freaking loved the aesthetics of Dune: vast sweeping shots of the desert, epic music that feels like it matched the scenes, and a general ambiance of gritty (but not over the top) motivational experiences. Had a fun time watching that movie and it kept me hooked for the most part.

MIB: International felt like a fun action romp, I enjoyed the laser guns, the explosions, the aliens, and the banter. The movie definitely kept me hooked, though it was a bit predictable.

That concludes my two movies for the week, I may or may not watch two movies next week, we'll see. Won't ever be more than two in a week (unless a friend drags me to a theater in person). Thank you to unnamed hero friend who provides access to media when I want access to it.

Shortform #99 Glassblowing, Contemporary Art, & M.C. Escher! | Also, good conversations :)

If Saturday was a stay-in get attention hijacked kind of day, today was a "get the heck out of the house and do something" kind of day. I met up with a friend to visit the Chrysler Art Museum and attended an hourish long glassblowing demonstration which was absolutely fascinating, I loved it! I enjoyed walking around the modernist & contemporary sections of the museum (only stayed for a few hours so I didn't go to all parts of the museum this time around), had a few decidedly new experiences during that and found those pleasant.

The M.C. Escher exhibit was amazing, perspective altering as expected, and inspiring :) Expressing mathematical and/or physics concepts via art is a beautiful thing, I want to see more of that.

After visiting the museum, I went to my favorite cafe and sat at the cafe's big round table by a window. I studied some, but mostly had conversations with several different people throughout the day. Getting into intellectual conversations with strangers is truly enjoyable, you never know what you may learn or concepts you may be introduced to.

During the evening, I met with a friend & coworked for an hour before hanging out. That was a very productive hour, wow do I have much left to do after the Retreat and yet more for organizing to do. I love that work so much though, it's great :) My friend & I had excellent conversations after working, I'm glad we met up and look forward to the next time!

I do not have a desk in my office yet, and use my desktop while sitting on the floor. My foot fell asleep while writing this lol. That happens a fair bit, but it's okay, I shall acquire desks soon hopefully and have a proper setup once again.

Shortform #98 Visual media consumption considered enjoyable but net harmful for now

In shortform #89 [LW(p) · GW(p)] I declared another media diet. That diet ended yesterday evening so I tried out a TV show, Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" on netflix. Which...promptly hijacked my attention from last night until the afternoon of today. I came across LRNZ's "Golem" for free on Wednesday last week at my local cafe hangout, took it home, and devoured it in one sitting. I could keep listing examples, on and on...of all the times some visual media (digital or analog) has so utterly hacked my attention that I abandoned all else in favor it...but that list would be ridiculously long.

Friction increasing or other interventions around visual media consumption that work well for me:

• Video games: if the playtime is with a group of others and scheduled in advance, that poses no issues & maximises my enjoyment of the time (I don't usually like playing video games alone anymore).
• Movies: going over to a friend's house or a theater makes this totally fine. I may also be okay with limiting to one per week because honestly I just don't watch movies very much.

What I simply have to ban, unfortunately:

• TV shows
• YouTube videos or similar but from other platforms
  • Three exceptions: Video is from work & required to watch. Video is educational / from ROSE for a workshop. Video is short and was sent directly to me by a friend.

What I am uncertain about but likely need to ban:

• Webcomics, manga, visual novels, comics
  • I don't engage with such media very often, but when I have, they've been very hijack-y. A blanket ban with exception for reading set amount of chapters or arcs per time interval with a group is probably the best bet.

After experiencing attention hacking or hijacking, my mood tends to crater, my mind is unfocused & hazy or a bit...loose (see yesterday's shortform for a great example of that), and I feel bad about the time spent. Not guilt per se, more of a melancholy feeling about having missed out on more enjoyable non-hijacking activities.

So! Back to a media diet starting tomorrow 7 August and lasting through 10 September this year.

Shortform #97 Frames, paradigms, priors, concept space, oh my!

I am obsessed with such things ^^^^. What are ideas, how do they work? When you reduce until everything is just axioms, why do you build what you build on top of those axioms? <<<< mostly rhetorical questions, though sometimes they can be nice to meditate on.

Thank goodness for reality, not only is existence a lovely thing, but the territory provides a great foundation upon which to build maps. And then there's Math.

I don't expect this post to make any coherent sense to others, it's for me, it makes sense for me. Back to watching Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" on Netflix now that my media diet has concluded. If you've read this, I hope you're doing well, salud! What concepts are you obsessed with?

Shortform #96 Operating Systems Rant Number Infinity

Much like you need a kernel (usually in most cases, anyways) to run an operating system...this rant needs a foundation: use-cases for operating systems; the principle of charity & steelmanning shall apply here. Note that this is focused on desktop operating systems, not mobile operating systems. Don't take this too seriously, I have some thoughts about the OSes I use and need to get them out, this is by no means polished or seriously researched.

Microsoft Windows

• The inescapable behemoth that is Windows ate the business world and continues doing so. What do most businesses love & need for the technologies they use? Iron-clad support contracts with enforceable SLAs, and the software does most of what they need most of the time and is mostly stable. The easiest way to make a living working with computers during the last two decades (minus possibly being a programmer) was (and for now too, is) to support Windows as an OS & the whole Microsoft ecosystem or products.
• Video games: Yes you can game on Linux, macOS, and even BSDs, and yes consoles exist, but playing video games is synonymous with Windows for a reason: compatibility, enterprise support, & mindshare.

Apple macOS

• Beautiful hardware, beautiful software. The magic box that "just works". Found for a reason in creative industries and often is the OS + hardware of choice for developers. macOS is usually more stable than Windows, has Unix roots that still persist to this day, and Apple's customer support experience is incredibly good compared to other technology companies.
• Tight integration between hardware & software: not quite as a fully general rule...but usually the more optimized an OSes codebase is for the hardware it runs on, the better your experience using said OS will be, at least from a performance standpoint. This feels true of macOS, it is a more stable and smoothly responsive OS to use from my experience than any other OS I've used, even a lightweight Linux distro (responsive, but not smooth). Also, Macs tend to last a long time and usually are a better capital expenditure than PCs; six years of full software support on average and then a few years of security updates, and usually still a decently functioning if outdated computer that can run other operating systems if needed (I'm bullish on ARM Mac laptops being able to run Linux or even Windows in 2-5 years; Apple has not made that verboten and many people are interested in enabling such support).

GNU / Linux distributions

• Freedom.
• I have old computers and love that I can still make productive use of them for modern tasks if I run a Linux distro, this is great.
• This section is deliberately shorter than macOS or Windows, I love GNU / Linux distributions, the free software philosophy, yes also the open source software philosophy, and the vision of how the world could or ought to be that is embedded in how Linux distributions feel to use. No, perhaps not the OS family for everyone, and there are definite issues where certain usecases easily supported on macOS or Windows are just honestly terrible on Linux distributions.

BSD Unixes

• Freedom.
• Open source cathedral design as opposed to the bazaar design of GNU / Linux distributions; see The Cathedral and the Bazaar, by Eric S. Raymond. I love a well designed & tightly integrated system and find that the BSD Unixes (i.e. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, etc.) might just supply a better designed & more stable experience than most if not all GNU / Linux distributions. I'm still learning & growing with BSDs so I have a ways to go, but so far I like BSD better than Linux from a purely technical perspective.

Commercial Unixes

• Stability & enterprise support.
• I am mostly mentioning this category to note that it exists, but I have no experience with commercial desktop Unixes, only a few server or mainframe Unixes that I got to log into and poke around in a few times (mostly IBM's AIX).

Chrome OS

• I've used this some, it's a really cool concept, but I personally could not use it as anything other than a test OS or to learn another OS paradigm on because of privacy concerns. I do think Chrome OS is doing good things for computing accessibility for many many many people though, and it's an amazingly secure operating system too, that's good.

Now with my perceived use-cases or commentary on desktop operating systems laid out...why am I writing this? Mostly for personal reflection and to think out loud about the impact of operating systems in my life and why I find them so fascinating.

I want an OS with the freedom of GNU / Linux & BSDs, the security of Chrome OS, the versatility, compatibility, & enterprise support of Windows, and the beauty, integration, and optimization of macOS.

I'm not sure that OS exists or ever will, but if it's ever created, I'll be there to use it & possibly contribute to it too.

I like operating systems, they are fun things :) Computers are eminently useful prosthetics for us humans, and I'm happy to be alive during this era with them. Though (nods at AI Safety, political & sociological issues caused by computing technologies, and a few other things), they are not without their risks if not properly created, governed, & used.

Happy Computing y'all :)

Shortform #95 The Feeling of Focusing & Attentiveness

At any given moment, where is the full weight of your attention targeted at? Or is your attention partial, divvied up amongst several targets?

I'm deliberately reducing the amount of noticed occurrences where my attention is partial rather than full. Undivided focus or attentiveness not only makes experiencing existence more satisfying for me, it also sharpens my cognition because I single task instead of multitask. That sharpness benefits me by reducing biases, making my heuristics more transparent & noticeable, and generally increases my capability to derail cached thinking in favor of more context-aware, more up to date & accurate thinking.

What does attentiveness feel like? What does it feel like from the inside to be fully focused & single-tasked? I feel a sharply noticeable difference in my body between divided & undivided attention:

• Divided attention fatigues me, makes me feel guilty if I'm actively listening to someone or in a conversation, and gives me a "lurching back and forth as if pulled simultaneously in conflicting directions" feeling in my body (literally I'll feel "moved in one direction" in one part of my body or head & "moved in another direction" in other areas.
• Full attention feels razor sharp, it feels competent, it feels natural, it makes my embodiment feel very good, and I feel completely oriented in the same direction at the same time.

I'm curious about how emotional states, embodied feelings & states of being, and focus affect cognition, because I think these things are highly significantly impactful on the quality of one's cognitive processes & capabilities to be accurate with one's cognition.

Shortform #93 Timeboxing

I am loving spending so much time doing organizing work, it's genuinely fun and feels great! I do have other interests and prior commitments + goals to attain though, so I need to be more deliberate with my time. I'm once again heavily relying on my calendar (Google Calendar for now) to restrict certain activities mostly to specific boxes of time on the calendar. This is helping. I attended to other goals & commitments today while still doing organizing work.

There's so much work to do for so many of my interests & parts of my life. Here's to timeboxing and managing it all a bit better!

Norfolk Rationalists is now officially Virginia Rationalists [? · GW]. If you want to organize meetups in Virginia please reach out, I'm happy to help you with that.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #91 Winning as an Individual: thoughts

I believe that winning [? · GW] is important & necessary. At least four elements contribute to individual winning:

1. Community
   • Humans are social animals, loneliness kills, and "reaching one's highest potential" is facilitated by membership in a value-aligned motivated & ambitious community (e.g. "it takes a village", "paypal mafia", or "manhattan project").
2. Cognition
   • See essentially the whole idea of the Rationalist community, heuristics & biases research, understanding thought processes & building better ones, using deliberate practice to improve cognitive habits, logical analysis, and intellectual rigor. Well trained cognitive skills & habits are imperative for winning at many things humans pursue.
3. Emotions
   • What do you shy away from that is holding you back? What ideas do you drift towards and why? What emotional baggage seeps into your cognition and subtly infects not only the conclusions you proclaim but even your priors & frameworks of thought? Are you too anxious around other people and struggle being a member of a community? You must know yourself & come to thorough understanding regarding your emotions and how they influence you, otherwise you may fail before you even start.
4. Wellness
   • Human beings who are not in good health nor in good physical shape are negatively impacted by those states of being: eating well, being in good health, and high physical fitness are of paramount importance for optimizing one's cognition, and are useful too for improving emotional states, all of which are helpful for one's membership & status in a community. This is not to say that a person can't do well or even thrive if the conditions mentioned here for wellness are not met, rather...not being at peak or very high wellness IS applying negative pressure against their thriving.

I intend to flesh out those four elements of winning more & turn them into a proper post. If you've read this, any feedback, comments, or suggestions? I will be using the elements of winning as guides when creating my meetup group's dojo. I did not mention why I think winning is so important as I take winning as a given good, but I suspect pointing at a few reasons why might be helpful for readers so I'll include that in the post.

In other news, I will be playing a Kenku Artificer Artillerest in an upcoming D&D campaign and am excited for that, looks like a lot of fun :)

Upcoming announcements for Norfolk Rationalists & Houston rationalists should occur tomorrow for at least one announcement, with the rest hopefully produced by midweek at the latest.

Shortform #89 Consistency Matters

I did not write a shortform yesterday, which broke my ~20 day long daily shortform writing streak. Back to it I go, starting a new streak with #89 :)

What do I get out of writing daily shortforms?

• I keep a general (though sometimes detailed) log of my daily activities, feelings, thoughts, and experiences which helps me in a few ways: emotional processing, serving as a memory prosthetic, and discussing things I find interesting.
• I increase how comfortable writing publicly feels to me.
• I practise the art of short blog post writing on a regular basis
• I practise consistency. A habit or virtue I wish to strengthen & improve at.
• I stay centered, focused, less likely to veer off in some wild direction: deliberate, written out reflection time everyday is immensely helpful!

I've struggled with time & prioritization since returning to work on Wednesday. I'm so happy I made time to hangout with my co-organizer for Norfolk Rationalists on Tuesday, we had fun, and I was glad to share some of the huge amount of things that I learned from the organizer's retreat. I want to meet again soon to share more of that knowledge so we can finish that debriefing, integrate the lessons learned into our plans, and build Norfolk Rationalists into a bigger & better community group that also has a separate productivity focused group (dojo). Similarly, there are so many messages in the organizer's discord or direct messages I want to reply to or send to people I met, but haven't had the time yet since returning to work. I suspect I'll spend a lot of this weekend continuing the debriefing, integrating more lessons learned, and reaching out to so many people from retreat & elsewhere, plus contributing back to the broader pool of knowledge all us organizer's are building since the retreat.

I'm doing another video related content intake diet: From 29 July, 2022 through 5 August, 2022 I will not watch TV shows or YouTube, nor play video games without scheduling them first and only if during that play session I'll be playing with friends and hanging out in voice comms with them. I am allowing myself to watch two movies during this time period. Exceptions allowed for Guild of the ROSE video workshop content (if any), work related duties as strictly necessary, and if a friend wants to show me something in-person.

Shortform #86 Meetup Organizer's Retreat Day Four (final day)

A truly lovely day continuing the tradition of good conversations, excellent learning, and building friendships here at the retreat.

I participated (well, mostly actively listened) to perhaps the first conversation ever where I couldn't intuitively navigate it & "just know" what was being discussed. Time to learn more math, and read about Coherent Extrapolated Volition, among other things.

Now for some sleep and then travelling home tomorrow. Wish I had more time here, I look forward to visiting Berkeley again & travelling to other organizers' cities too :)

Shortform #85 Meetup Organizer's Retreat Day Three

The question of what the rationalist community is (if it's even just one community) comes up frequently during retreat. No one has a concise definition of the community though we all recognize it when we see it / recognize the people who are a part of it. How do we make the community legible to ourselves? Once legible, what will our mission & vision be?

Obtaining a clear mission & vision for the community would improve our members' & organizers' capabilities to take specific, focused improvement actions to solve the myriad of problems we individual as people but also collectively as a community feel are important & need solving.

Shortform #84 Meetup Organizer's Retreat Day Two

My fingers are slow and inflexible as I type this, because I just spent nearly the entire day outside (excepting indoor workshops) late into the night here at the retreat (it's cold at night in Berkeley): attending workshops, talking with other organizers, and having the kinds of amazing late night conversations I expected would occur here (they are even better than I predicted).

My shortforms during the retreat will be very short. I am spending almost every waking moment engaged in good discussions & conversations with fellow organizers here, and I am loving those experiences! I've been taking notes (as have others), so after the retreat is when I'll do some retrospectives or insights learned types of posts.

Shortform #83 Travelling & Day One of Meetup Organizer's Retreat!

Seven hours on a plane plus an hour on a train later I finally arrived in Berkeley for the retreat :) Thanks to timezone changes that was somehow only like 13:30 Pacific time.

Had an amazing first day meeting everyone I had the chance to speak with, walking around Berkeley, and discussing organizer things!

Now for sleep, oh goodness.

Shortform #82 In which I prepare for travelling.

Sometime in the next 12-15 hours I will end up in Berkeley, California for the Meetup Organizer's retreat!!! I hate flying, but I'm looking forward to the retreat :)

Shortform #81 Bit of a grindy, but good day | Nothing much to say

I received my 2nd COVID booster today because I work in healthcare & it's been >4 months since I received my 1st COVID booster. Thankfully I've not experienced any significant side effects from the COVID vaccine thus far, and this time holds true to that pattern too.

Continued preparing for the meetup organizer's retreat which I fly out to on Thursday.

Shortform #79: Design Matters: Lighting | Seven Days of No Video Media

My two 16,000 lumen LED garage lights came in, they are surprisingly small & light, but wow do they serve up some serious light! Next step: remove annoying housing covering the bulb sockets in each of the track lights in my loft ceiling so that I can plug in both of those LED garage lights into the sockets and benefit from their intense light diffusing down from the ceiling into the rest of my house. If that proves successful, I may acquire two additional such lights to fill all four sockets of that track light fixture. Thank you to $friend (you know who you are) for buying these two lights for me to experiment with!!!

Today marks day seven of my no video media commitment (https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/teC2Gn6aCJR77htLY/willa-s-shortform?commentId=Eg64kY8x57AKBfx6m [LW(p) · GW(p)]), I am happy to report success in this endeavour and that I feel more focused, organized, and am finding life more enjoyable. People keep mentioning shows or movies that I think would be very interesting or entertaining to watch, but I'll hold off for now. The commitment is for two weeks, so here's to another seven good days!

I am looking forward to listening to Audrey Tang's Innovative Mind's podcast, https://www.taiwanplus.com/originals/innovative minds with audrey tang.

I am curious about reading AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee & Chen Qiufan.

Shortform #75 Specificity, the tool that keeps on giving great results

I was reminded of the sequence, Specificity: You're Brain's Superpower [LW · GW] today while utilizing what I learned from it extensively both during today's Norfolk Rationalists meetup & tonight's Guild of the ROSE workshop on Street Epistemology.

I've noticed my interest in speaking "broadly, generally, or widely" about $topics decrease significantly over the past year or two since really integrating the specificity sequence into my way of being & operating. I don't speculate on very much anymore, and find most speculation other than "hypothesizing about $topic based on $evidence while being explicit about epistemic confidence in each presupposition leading to hypothesis" to be annoying or vacuous. Why spend my time speculating, theorizing, or hypothesizing about topics when I could simply learn more of the specifics about $topics and build a better mental model or idea about $topics. Idle speculation doesn't seem worth the time or effort.

Shortform #74 Labs are cool

I had the opportunity to go into another lab today! It was awesome, the personnel there inspect human tissues for issues, report their findings, and prepare relevant tissues into histology slides for later review by physicians. I saw a necrotized toe with ulcers. Kinda gross, but also kinda cool. Diabetes isn't something you want to get, wow.

I'm looking forward to responding to & continuing the discussion in the question I asked yeseterday, https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/W3kykr5ycpm3HGiCN/how-do-you-concisely-communicate-and-navigate-the-politics [LW · GW], but that'll have to wait a day or two unfortunately. I'm exhausted and am going to bed early.

Shortform #73 Video Media Ban Day 1

I felt no impulses or pressure whatsoever to watch TV, YouTube videos, or play Video games today and successfully avoided each of those media types. I had an extremely pleasant evening wherein I walked to the grocery store after work, walked home with my groceries, listened to the Audible "The Great Ideas of Psychology" audiobook I'm working through at the moment while eating dinner, and went to my ROSE cohort meeting (it was a blast tonight).

Then I talked with a friend, followed by playing the piano for 30 minutes and had a jamming good time!

I value how tonight felt and want more evenings like it, onwards to day two of the video media ban.

Shortform #72 Too much content consumption kills the self

While today was immensely restful, I feel restless and dissatisfied. There were nice moments, fun moments, and some productive moments today, but I spent much of the day engaging in consumptive behaviors such as video game playing, watching youtube videos, and watching tv shows.

The things that were on my mind yesterday barely surfaced today as I escaped & submerged into the massive input of consumptive content streams. It may not have been direct wireheading, but it seems too much ingestion of consumptive or consumptive-adjacent content streams basically kills my mind for the day.

I don't want to kill my mind, that's akin to destroying my own self. I love being alive & a conscious sentient life form, so I'd rather build my own self up, strengthen my mind, enjoy my life, and hone my skills. Pursuant to those ends, I'm banning myself from solo TV watching, YouTube viewing (two exceptions: ROSE workshop cited videos & if I must watch a YouTube video for work or specific education purposes), and video game playing for two weeks. The ban is lifted at 5:00pm Monday 25 July, 2022.

I've done media input curtailments & bans in the past to good effect, so this is not a new practice.

Shortform #70 Changing Gears, Altering Perspectives

It is finally the weekend! Huzzah :) Time to not think about work for two days and attend to other things, specifically:

• Finalize my V3 Character Sheet from said workshop: https://guildoftherose.org/articles/the-character-sheet-version-3
• Prepare for the Organizer's Retreat that occurs in slightly less than two weeks
• Reflect on and write some rough-draft thoughts about Politics & AI Alignment
• Visit the M.C. Escher exhibit at the local art museum. That and other displays or exhibits there will alter or challenge my usually occurring frames & perspectives in interesting ways, I'm excited
• Study for my certification exam & inevitably work on some computer that's misbehaving or that I need to setup differently
• Search for free or very cheap desks or tables or workbenches for my office

I'm often struck by the difficulty (or if one is a Luhmannian, downright impossibility) of communication. I appreciate that the LessWrong & general rationalsphere communities focus so intensely on explicit structured communication, this helps reduce inferential distances that in other communities are not effectively reduced or in some cases, not even consciously thought about. Adroitly conveying one's internal conception & experience of a thing in thingspace to others is an immensely valuable skill.

That's all for tonight, be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #69 Reprising Interests: Politics edition

I used to love interacting with political topics, ideas, problems, and thinking about solutions to political problems (e.g. being genuinely surprised by the fact that civilization is a thing and wanting to understand how such governance of human affairs works & how to improve upon that ordering). Indeed, I studied Political Science and earned my Bachelor degree in it because I couldn't get enough of studying politics. I dropped that group of interests quite firmly and shunned everything to do with politics for the last several years, really going numb to all such matters in 2017 or 2018 with that numbness staying consistent or increasing even (despite the wonders of the world and human existence, there is so much horror and awfulness, perhaps those things got to me...)

The numbness is still there, this is a difficult post to write. Now though, instead of ignoring or suppressing my interest in political matters, I'm slowly going to reprise them. Why? I can't tell you concretely why other than it feels important to do, like I'm excavating some part of myself I had shut off and buried, and I feel a desire to do that excavation.

My first step is subscribing to the New Yorker. Reading through their anthologies of The 40s and The 50s over the last year is the furthest I voluntarily delved into political matters (for the most part) in quite some time. Why that publication? They are weekly, not daily, which is important for reasons to do with quality & taking a slightly longer view than most publications. Speaking of quality...well they are quite good, and while they may not get everything right (I don't think it's a cop out to say that no publication does...because no publication or individual gets everything right), even when wrong the writers there typically issue forth structured ideas & support them with some amount of evidence. Furthermore, I'm not looking to read news, I'm looking to read about historical trends, analyses of important matters, genuine investigative journalism and deep dives into various topics; the New Yorker provides those things while mostly escaping being a mere news publication. Also I like that there's literature, comics, poetry, and other fun things mixed in.

Tomorrow is Friday, and I only have to work about nine hours because I worked about eleven hours today. Yay for a shorter workday and then two days of freedom from work to pursue some things that are enjoyable but difficult to do during the work week. I don't mean to say that I dislike what I do, au contraire I enjoy my job. Breaks and resting and hanging out with friends and hobbies are good things too!

I am excited for the Meetup Organizers Retreat later this month! Much to prepare for, but I think I'm going to learn a lot, become a better organizer, teach whatever I can offer, and have great fun :)

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

PS: HAH! Nice.

Shortform #67 Viva la daily shortforms!

I don't want 7 months to go by in the blink of an eye again and have no published material to look back on to consult as an external memory, so, daily shortforms are back :)

I have my custom desktop up and running once more, but there's an issue...it's crashing every so often again...I monitored all temperatures, and there does seem to be a VRM that literally never goes below 90C....but all other temperatures in the system seem fine. Crashing occurs more often on Windows but consistently occurs on Ubuntu too. Here's hoping that improving case airflow will help with that...if not, I guess over to computing forums I go. The system uses a decade+ old motherboard so that probably doesn't help matters and would seem to make the VRM hypothesis more likely. If case airflow improvements don't help...perhaps I can stick thermal pads on top of the VRM heat sinks???

The other month I replaced some equipment in a lab and geeked out about what they did there. The labizens (lab denizens?) gave me a quick run down on flow cytometry & how they use their flow cytometers. Wow that was cool! Essentially a flow cytometer is a machine capable of lining prepared cells up into single-file-order and "flowing" them forward for automated analysis by image detection equipment & a computer.

After I complete my next professional certification (hello by August or so), I'll obtain some Ham Radio equipment and get Ham certified. I want to learn that system because it seems cool & like a great learning experience! Plus, there are ways to connect to the internet via Ham radio relays :) Sounds like a nice backup connectivity option to have.

Tomorrow is the weekly Norfolk Rationalists meetup, hooray! If you're in the area, please do come out to Fair Grounds for that.

Shortform #64 Building Deliberate and Helpful Systems for Increasing Goal-Aligned Actions

The Guild of the ROSE's beta phase courses begin this week, and I'm happy to be participating! I like the organizational model of the guild, the mission and vision, the guild's fundraising model, the community, etc. I'm excited to see where this all goes and am enjoying my participation + cohort membership thus far, I've already gained good things from it.

Making and using deliberately designed systems for creating, organizing, managing, etc. knowledge work, creative work, projects, etc. is vital, so I'm building such systems for myself now. The goal is to increase my deliberateness and produce / create a lot more goal-aligned work, so the systems will be tailored thusly.

What I'm building so far / what I know I need to build:

• trusted "inbox" for tasks, things I'm doing, etc. that is cloud syncable and accessible from the desktop of all my computers

  • to accomplish this I've created an Inbox.txt file in my cloud storage drive and aliased it to my computer's desktop; i will create a similar alias / shortcut / sym link (Depending on OS, same idea though, different name or implementation) on my other computers.
  • much inspiration for this came from Cal Newport's work generally and some of his podcast episodes I listened to recently
  • I am dating entries and each entry is assigned defined symbols corresponding to urgency, priority, status, etc.

• Way to keep track of what I'm doing with my time and track what I get done

  • I created a DoingList.txt file in my cloud storage drive and aliased it to my computer's desktop. Each entry is time stamped including the start and end time so I know how long it took and when I performed relevant actions for + completed said entry. Generally there will be a corresponding Inbox.txt entry which once actually completed I will append the appropriate symbol to, but notes or other things that I jot down during the process of completing the task will stay in the DoingList.txt file. This preserves a distinction between "here's whats on my plate" and "here's how I accomplished specific things on my plate and when", which feels important to preserve.

• Website design and implementation that supports the repositories of information and other things I want to place on it.

• How to track what I know and how I know it

• Quick to use, well-organized referable sources of information that act as external memory prosthetics for my life generally but especially for specific projects I'm working on and/or knowledgebases I'm building.

I'll likely find more to add to the above systems, but for now that's good enough and represents quite a bit of work.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #63 Something Hopeful

I'm writing this shortform while listening to this song: https://open.spotify.com/track/7BpaJerjwq1LCvInJevW74?si=39872be743b34768

I believe that's inspired the title, the song does inspire a feeling of hope in me as well as wonder.

This is a short shortform, not much to go on about today other than it was a better day than yesterday, and I'm happy about that! There was a Houston Rationalists meetup tonight which went well and was fun, I'm glad I participated in that, I had a good time. I did better regarding my media diet today though still not quite back to full adherence.

Legibility, noticing, precision [LW · GW], deliberateness, focus, and right action are all on my mind these days. Maybe I need to look more into the OODA Loop and surrounding research? Though, that doesn't seem to capture entirely the above grouping of things, despite still being helpful in certain ways.

Shortform #62 Ah, Commitments | Getting Out

I said I would resume daily shortform writing (among other things), and I am doing so. Thus this :)

Generating communication right now feels extremely difficult. Wow. But, I'm doing so because of the myriad benefits which come from writing publicly like this. And the communication gets easier as I type each word. Break through the block / barrier!

Despite the difficulty of translating experiential matters into communicable form, the above short paragraph represents a reasonably adequate insight into the experiences I had while writing it. I often write things like that at the beginning of any writing session, post, etc. but never make that part public. Doing so now for my own future reference and to note the trend of such experiences / feelings which occur most of the times I begin writing, plus maybe others can benefit from me sharing that experience if it's relevant to them in some way. A very common oft repeated experience or feeling of my being is a mental "locked-in" sort of phenomena where the act of communicating feels extraordinarily difficult, such that "getting out" of my own head and communicating with others / "the outside world" is a challenge. Sometimes extremely so. There's so, so, so much I want to say, do, discuss, develop, etc. I will defeat those feelings of communicating being difficult by continuing to practice communicating and doing all that I wish to do.

Failed at resuming media diet today, tomorrow's a new day to do so.

Hammertime intermission ended today and the group I'm leading started back up on that (I don't think I posted about the second intermission here in my shortforms, but did mention it on discord). Here's to continuing Hammertime!!

I've taken a temporary 2 week break from EA Hub volunteering while I more intensely apply for jobs. Looking forward to returning to that work, but I'm thankful for the pause right now.

Began listening to some of Monastic Academy's podcast episodes and some other shows where Soryu Forall appeared on.

I meditated for 30 minutes in one uninterrupted sitting today. The time passed remarkably quickly, and was very pleasant, though the muscles in my shoulders and especially my neck are so tense that I experienced almost burning sensations as some of those muscles relaxed for the first time in...who knows how long. This is normal for me, and such sensations will go away within a few days or week or two of regular meditating as those muscles get more fully relaxed plus I regain the ability to willfully relax them. I believe the longest I've meditated in one uninterrupted sitting previously was 20 minutes, so yay for achieving a new personal best. More to come :)

There's no reason why death should continue to plague humanity (and other species), I think solving the different causes of death and achieving immortality is probably the single most important problem set our species faces. Most problems, including AI Alignment fall within that cause area [immortality], so why isn't this being more focused on? Despite the extreme importance of AI Alignment and other existential risk problems, I'm frankly not that interested in working on any such problems narrowly and specifically, except for the meta problem of death existing, so I'll focus on the immortality cause area for my works. More to come :)

Bonne nuit

Shortform #60 Back From Vacation

All of Wednesday [28 July] was spent travelling, as there were significant delays to my flight thanks to thunderstorms occurring on the flight path. Made it home safely though, but spending most of the day in airports or on airplanes is not the most fun sort of day.

I had an extremely good time on vacation in and around Madison, Wisconsin! What a lovely, pleasant, and beautiful place, I'll be happy to visit again one day.

Today I unpacked, rested, applied for a really cool job, and generally recombobulated (fun fact: the Milwaukee airport has an official "Recombobulation Zone" immediately after the security screening area; I haven't noticed other airports give this kind of zone a name before, but I like that the Milwaukee airport did). I have weekend plans for a family member's wedding shower and am looking forward to that! Monday it's back to the job hunting grindstone, for I am eager to be employed once more and reap all the benefits which accompany employment. Seattle beckons! As do a number of other things.

Hammertime Intermission [? · GW] for my group runs from 29 July - 1 August, we resume with Day 11 - Bug Hunt 2 [? · GW] on Monday 2 August. I personally will use the intermission to finish up the last few lessons from phase 1 I didn't make time for while on vacation, redo a few things, reflect, and so on.

I have written ~60 ish shortform posts now. This has been a great and enriching experience for me. I have way more confidence in writing publicly, noticed increased confidence generally, am more coherent, am generally more productive, and am having fun. I will continue doing these shortforms and writing publicly, there's much more growth to come! And so much to write about.

A non-exhaustive list of topics that are on my mind semi-regularly or regularly:

• The use of tools by humans and the impact thereof
• Software licensing schemes and philosophies, aka: what governs the mediation of the world we experience and all the impacts thereof, especially regarding future technologies that will literally change the machinery of human beingness and alter what experiences are possible.
• Do beliefs I have about X make sense, pay rent, and/or check out aka are they true?
• Cohering my thinking on X subject by reading deeply on it and writing about it
• Plunging through my archives (I've read a tremendous amount of things and saved much for offline use) and writing brief summaries about most of what's there or longer summaries or other types of writings to increase the legibility of my thoughts, development, idea lineages, increase coherency, and so on.
• Values, AI, and alignment problems
• Actually achieving human immortality
• How to build a value / moral aligned society to last over the long term especially while distributed across the vast distances of space and with immortal humans. Aka exploring the ultimate goal of political philosophy
• Contemplative traditions, philosophies, theologies, experiences, etc.
• Taking ideas seriously and doing things about them

Helpful things I reread on a regular basis lately:
My Fear Heuristic [LW · GW]
Four Components of Audacity [LW · GW]

What I'll be rereading, taking notes on, and carefully evaluating: Liber Augmen
You should go read that book (very strong endorse).

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #58 Day of Good Fun; Hammertime Day 5 - Comfort Zone Expansion (CoZE) [? · GW]

Today was wonderful, my friends and I started the day off with a nice short breakfast then spent about an hour and a half coworking and getting some things done each. We then went to a local Indian restaurant and met with one of my friend's friends and ate amazing food while having great conversations, it was a lovely time! Then we went to a few local parks for the next 3-4 hours and spending the whole afternoon outdoors in nature was fantastic. We then went back to the house, rested and ate, then proceeded to one of my friend's friend's house where we met several of that friend's friends and spent a lovely 4 hours conversing about all manner of things, it was a most excellent time! Tomorrow morning we go hiking for a number of hours in a really pretty place and I'm quite looking forward to that.

I didn't do the deliberate practices from Hammertime Day 5, but I did know intuitively of something to try and so did a CoZE by getting the contact info of and connecting online with the new people I met who I greatly enjoyed meeting and had a lovely time talking with. I never do something like that the first time I meet someone, so this pushed my comfort zone a bit, and I must admit it was really nice, and I will be continuing this habit in the future.

Now for sleep.

I'm aware that several individuals have written comments on posts I've made, and I haven't replied in some amount of days at this point. I will not keep y'all waiting too much longer, I promise! I will carve the time out to reply tomorrow or Sunday; continuing the discussions on my posts or elsewhere I've commented is important to me, and I want to further explore those conversations and see where they go.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #57 Some Adjustments; Hammertime Days 3 (TAPs [? · GW]) and 4 (Design [? · GW])

Yesterday was a day of travel, noticing the inadequacy and lack of public spaces, and happily hanging out with friends I haven't seen in awhile.

Today was quite nice, I don't particularly enjoy travel days so it was pleasant sleeping in a small bit and not having to deal with travel and instead go spend time around city with friends. I've noticed that despite being on vacation, I really want to spend time working and getting things done, and am frustrated that some of the improvement areas from Hammertime benefit particularly from being in one's domicile and the TAPs and Design lessons in particular don't lend themselves well to trying to practice when out of town and not in one's own space. I've brought this up with my friends and they feel similarly regarding doing work, they (and myself) want to spend most of the day enjoying our vacation time but also reserve a few hours to get things done, so we'll start doing that.

I finished sorting, categorizing, and otherwise adding descriptions or context to all the bugs on my bug list! I will reevaluate that list tomorrow and determine what bugs are well suited to fixing or making progress against while one is out of town and not in their own space, i.e. the more mental types of bugs I guess, and maybe ones to do with how I use computers.

Reading ahead for tomorrow's Hammertime - Comfort Zone Expansion (CoZE [? · GW]), I think the setting a timer and figuring out things I don't even consider doing, things that scare me, and so on will be very doable practice tomorrow. Definitely should be able to do something from the set a 20 minute timer section and DO the scary thing, I'll get at least one of those done.

An interesting part of being on vacation is that my media diet is almost automatically enforced because my friends and I go out and do things all day and also the friend we're staying with doesn't have a TV, plus we're not spending too much time using computers or being distracted by phones, it's nice.

I'm still noticing thoughts about legibility popping up in my mind fairly regularly, and I'm enjoying thinking about the topic further. It seems like the more I produce, the more legible I become to myself, but also the more legible the world becomes to me, and vice versa in a mutually beneficial way. Legible as in: I now have more concrete models and specific examples + ideas to refer to regarding specific thing or even some general thing that exists in reality, including my own self, mental states, emotions, desires, strengths, weaknesses, etc. I think I will look further into quantified self research and practices once I return from vacation, that seems like a good source for increasing legibility of my self with important benefits. I will also figure out more kinds of work and creative things to produce, because engaging with the world and creating something new or at minimum taking some sort of deliberate focused action increases legibility too. I'm not willing to fully endorse legibility as being absurdly powerful and important, but I'm leaning in that direction and am enjoying exploring this more; I wonder what I could exploit because of legibility? (i.e. how much does the idea of legibility pay rent and/or legibility of some specific thing in reality pay rent?)

Go forth and illuminate reality, make more things legible, see how that feels and helps.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #54 Preparation

Today I alternated between resting, having fun, and getting the word out about the Hammertime Sequence group I'm leading (we start tomorrow, join us! [LW · GW]). I suspect we may gain a new member or few to the group even after starting since I have a bit more promotion to do tomorrow morning.

I'm looking forward to engaging with my media diet and new habits, doing Hammertime, and somehow also doing those things while on vacation in a few days, should be fun :)

For now though, rest is best, so to bed I go.

Shortform #53 Train Goes Choo Choo

I'm back aboard the daily shortform writing train as mentioned in my media diet post [LW · GW]

I'm running a group through the Hammertime sequence! [LW · GW]. We start Monday 19 July, 2021. If you're interested and want to do that, join the Houston Rationalists discord server, that's where group communications and activities will take place; https://discord.gg/kmZy5ny

I think completing the Hammertime sequence [? · GW] is a nice complementary activity to my media diet + habit changes, should prove beneficial to me, and will likely be fun since I'm doing it with others. I'll be logging my experiences with the Hammertime Sequence in my daily shortform posts, I think keeping such a journal will be helpful and nice.

I looked at University of Washington graduate programs last week and wrote down the ones that looked interesting, next week I'll inspect each program more carefully, list requirements, determine feasibility and interest, etc.

I think it's a good idea to spend time doing remote gig work as part of my 8 hours of productive time each weekday, so I'll fit that into my schedule in addition to doing job applications and another thing or so. If you recommend any particular gig work or contract work aggregators / sites, I'd be happy to hear about it.

Notions of legibility still seem intensely important to me, I suspect I'll end up writing actual posts about that as I explore the concept(s) further and find examples of where legibility matters (well, not just find the examples, that's pretty easy, but examine them more closely; plus figure out more precisely and coherently what I mean by legibility.

On my read and examine well list for the week are:
Air Quality and Cognition [LW · GW] by chw
The inescapability of knowledge [LW · GW] by alexflint
Liber Augmen, The Book of Growth by JD Pressfield

I finished reading the last few Specificity Sequence posts [LW · GW] during the week, can definitely say that sequence impacted me in beneficial and significant ways, strong endorsement for reading it.

That's all for now, sleep awaits.

Cheers,
Willa

Legibility of the self, coherency of thoughts, and focused deliberate actions seem all very important ideas plus states of being to pursue and continue exploring. They all seem to reinforce and strengthen each other, for one. Additionally, it seems like pursuing such things is how one moves forward or "levels up" in important and significant ways.

Shortform #52 Some Successes

I met my job application count goal for last week, and increased that count for this week.

This week I will also be determining what exactly I want out of a PhD program and see what compatible programs exist, if any (especially at University of Washington). Leveraging grad school deliberately(what a fantastic post, thank you Andrew for writing that) seems a good path for what I am pursuing as my career and would provide me with invaluable training, experiences, access, mentorship, and more for that.

The anti-depressant I started a few weeks ago seems to have kicked in and the effects are noticeable and very beneficial, I'm very happy about that. That plus deliberate attention to my routines and habits has increased my functionality in areas I need at the moment quite noticeably, I'm doing well and that's nice.

I need to write a full blogpost again soon, that's also on my todo.

Thank you to C for your challenges and great support, that's helping a lot.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #51 Sprinting to the Future

I am job hunting now, looking for writing, analysis, managerial, business development, or junior software engineering positions (any of those roles are fine, plus I'm open to other kinds of roles on a case-by-case basis) that are either fully remote or located in Seattle where I'm looking to relocate ASAP. This is my linkedin profile and this is my EAHub profile(if you aren't familiar with EAHub, go check them out! they are a global directory for effective altruists to connect).

I finished writing Voicing Voice and posted it last night: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gEYGz3GgqCmd86A8B/voicing-voice [LW · GW]
I'm decently happy with how Voicing Voice turned out, I think I managed to communicate my specific point about the benefit of growing one's own voice while sharing some relevant personal experience to why that matters so much to me. If you have any comments about the post, please leave them on that post.

Off I go to update my profile on all the job sites and then apply for jobs! It's time to get a job and move to Seattle!!

Once I have a new job and am no longer focusing all my energy towards that, I'd like to continue adjusting my media consumption diet and doing other things as mentioned in Shortform #50 [LW(p) · GW(p)]. I will continue to write in the meantime though, since that's too important and positively impactful to me to stop: new post next week about immortality.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #48 Go Outside, Self

On 14 Jan, 2021 for Shortform #20 I said it was time to find a job. So far, no new job. That's because I haven't applied for a single job since writing that post. Ouch. I've enjoyed not working quite a bit, plus I focused on moving instead of job hunting.

I guess the hard part begins now, because I still don't want to find a new job, because I still really enjoy not having one and being able to just live. Especially now that I can walk <5 minutes to the beach and hangout on the beach, just living seems really nice.

I never before optimised my life for fun, this [since moving, so about 2 weeks or so at this point] is the first time I've done that, and I still haven't managed to break all the old habits and thought patterns. It's only been about 2 weeks, so that makes sense, but I really don't want to add a job yet when I feel there's more fun to be had, new and better habits to be built, and so on. On the other hand, money is a necessary condition of life, and I think depleting my savings is a pretty bad idea, so after 2 more weeks of optimising for fun, I'll get a job. (I have lived off of savings for the last 5 ish months, still have over 8 months of runway left at current burn rate, but...there's no good reason to deplete my savings, that would be stupid, so I won't do that [having a lot of savings gives me great "fuck you" power if I'm ever in a situation where I need to change something or leave ASAP, and living without that power is awful, so I don't ever want to lose it again]).

All this talk about fun comes from re-reading Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary which is a biographical account of Linus Torvalds' life and how he created Linux (yes, I'm aware of GNU and FSF contributions to all that, among others.) Torvalds seems to have a laserlike focus on only doing what he likes, having fun, and enjoying life as much as possible.

Because I've never approached my life with that attitude before, I decided to try doing so after moving, and that's been a really nice experiment! I am continuing the experiment, and one way I'm doing so is changing my default from "prefer staying inside" to "prefer being / going outside": yesterday and today I spent 3-6 hours outside and loved every minute of that time. Yesterday I walked 8 miles (5.5 on forest trails and 2.5 on the beach) and today I walked 4 miles (2.5 or so on the beach, the rest just puttering around the house and yard), sat outside with my laptop for a few hours writing, and planted some plants! Another way I'm optimizing for fun is by [responsibly] saying yes to doing things outside of the house, being social, and so on instead of defaulting to no and having to find some reason to do something; now I will default to yes and have to find a reason why I should not do whatever the thing is. This change in mentality is already paying great dividends, and I've been consistently happier over the last two weeks than I have in a really long time. I know part of that happiness increase is from the novelty of living in a new place, but my day-to-day moods just seem better overall in addition to the novelty-induced happiness increase. Anyway, good things are afoot from this experiment, so I'll continue pursuing fun for the sake of fun!

I was pleasantly surprised to see ESR post Rationalism before the Sequences [LW · GW] today, that was a lovely telling of the pre-history of LessWrong, and learning about said pre-history was fascinating and impactful: I'm so happy that LessWrong and other rationalsphere places exist, that we have intentional communities of skeptical empiricists, and that we all don't have to "improve the sanity waterline" alone anymore. These are good things, cheers to ESR for writing that post.

I listened to the album "Why?" by Koan while writing this shortform.

Writing is nice, I enjoyed creating this post. 2 weeks from now I will apply for jobs, in the meantime I will have as much fun as possible.

Shortform #47 A New Place

I drove across the country to the new house, arrived there safely after ~2 days of travel, and then rested for a few days. I'm excited about living in a new place, time to start unpacking and exploring :)

LibrePlanet 2021 is this weekend, here's the schedule if that's something you're interested in, I'll be checking several of the sessions out for sure.

Feels like there are a ridiculous amount of things I need and/or want to do now that I've moved, I'll spend some time early tomorrow setting priorities, then will adjust things as needed.

For now my ToDo looks like:

• Order groceries and supplies
• Set priorities then build tentative schedule for next 1-2 weeks
• Organize and unpack clothes, toiletries, computers
• Update address and all the million other things that go with doing that
• Look for local and/or remote jobs
• Find privacy-respecting calendaring system for family to use, good goodness do we need it.
• Set aside time each day for specific-topic-writing; it's time to write more than just these shortforms!

The beach here seems nice, definitely will be jogging and hanging out there, despite how cold it is.

I wrote this shortform while listening to Polarity, by the Hoff Ensemble. It's a fantastic album, I highly recommend it, especially if you're into jazz or like experimental music.

I wish there was a search via mp3 (or other audio format) search engine. I have a few mixes and tracks that I somehow obtained over the years that don't have an artist with an online presence or maybe don't have the right artist's name on them. Would love it if there was a way to search online via those audio files to find who the original artist was for each of them. I will duckduckgo this question tomorrow.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #46 Git Pushin'

Today was chaotic, but overall decent.

• I walked ~10,000 steps.
• Did not waste time on the internet prior to 5pm (I will continue these restrictions tomorrow, because they work and are good for me; I am happier and get more done when I follow them).
• Logged my time and what I accomplished throughout the day.
• Submitted my first functionality-changing pull request (with commit from my forked repo's branch) to an open source project, thus hopefully finishing the ticket on github I was assigned (still under review).
• Was virtually social for > 1 hour.
• Did more moving related things...moving is a lot like a black hole, it sucks up all your time and you can't escape its influence until past the event horizon (successfully finished moving). Should be driving across the country tomorrow, here's to that!
• Finished up the rest of the ToDo things mentioned in Shortform #44 that I didn't get to yesterday.

Time for sleep.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #45 Successes and Walking Around

Today was a good day :)

I walked ~20,000 steps, successfully avoided time-wasting on the internet prior to 5pm, logged my time taken on different tasks / spent on things, worked on currently-secret-project for a solid 2 hours, worked on several other things, and more.

Tomorrow I'm prioritizing finishing that ticket on github, need to get that done. I'll also work on currently-secret-project, do some writing, and some other things that need to get done.

Not wasting any time on the internet until after 5pm made for a much nicer feeling day, a more productive day, and a happier me! I'm following those same restrictions tomorrow too and continuing the experiment.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #44 Only Kill Time After 5pm

I want more Alive Time and less Dead Time; b. To facilitate that, I will no longer allow myself to use the internet for any purpose that is not expressly related to what I'm specifically focusing on accomplishing at that moment, prior to 5pm each day except Sunday.

Unfortunately, I waste a lot of time browsing many different sites, watching YouTube, watching Netflix, scrolling through Discord servers, and so on, during any and all times of the day. Thus I'll try living under the above self-imposed restriction and see how that helps. The vast majority of my time wasting happens on the internet, so that's why I'm singling out my use of the internet as an intervention point and will change my habits therein during the aforementioned times.

I will not be using any blocking software because those are not effective for me, I either follow the restriction voluntarily to change my habits, or I don't. I'll include comments about this intervention's efficacy in my daily shortforms over the next week or two so that I gain useful information to use for tweaking or improving the intervention, if necessary.

Specific things I can use the internet for prior to 5pm tomorrow:

1. solving a project ticket assigned to me on github
2. transferring money from savings to checking and paying all my monthly bills
3. logistics, communication, organizing, research, and purchases for currently-secret-project
4. playing music via YouTube, Spotify, or whatever internet music provider, but no exploration that takes conscious effort.
5. reply to DP's email
6. health insurance, AWS, and other billing related concerns
7. I'm sure there are other things, for now this is a good list though.

It's time to get stronger!

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #43 Egress Shell

~27 days ago I wrote shortform #42 and mentioned that I experienced a very low low that day, among other things, and gave a super vague description of said low: "The very low low sucked, but I don't want to talk about it further here. I will be okay, and I have a good support system to talk about it with." For the following 25 days or so I stopped writing, withdrew into a shell, and alternated between hiding in that shell and frantically packing the house up. That sucked :( I don't want to stay in a shell anymore, so i'm kicking it apart and emerging to live a more full and whole life like I prefer to do. Hello world, once again! :)

I had a close friendship with an individual for 6+ years. On Tuesday February 9, while walking through Costco to pickup groceries for that evening's little get-together birthday celebration, I received a text message from said individual wherein they terminated our friendship and blocked me. Over the last ~27 days I spent too much time wracking my brain trying to come up with some explanation for why they did that, for why they threw me away, for why they retreated into a shell of their own, and more., This was [and still is] new emotional terrain (I'd never experienced anything similar before) for me and goddamn did it wreck the shit out of me. It still is in some ways, but some time has passed and the emotional knife wounds don't feel as raw or as open as they were initially, thank you "time passing" and having a good group of friends, family, my therapist, and so on to lean on and help me process everything.

I don't want to stay in the shell I retreated into so I'm writing about what happened (it's feeling well cathartic, it's great), making myself emerge, resuming my social and other habits, and trying my best to live fully again. A few more words on what happened and then I'll move to other topics.

Dear individual who used to be my friend, but chose to terminate our friendship by nuking me from orbit via text message: Go get some help, seriously. What you did was cruel, and I don't want you to do that to anyone else, please don't do it to anyone else, because it hurts too goddamn much. I didn't realize that when you spoke over the years of all the people you've blocked, who you said were toxic, or made you too anxious, that that practice and designation would one day extend to me, because I work hard to be a good friend to my friends and work hard to learn from mistakes I make and improve. I make mistakes, and know for a fact that I once hurt someone else I was friends with in the past by saying something off the cuff without realizing the impact, but I never act with conscious malice towards my friends. We had no conflicts over the past number of months, nothing I (nor others I've talked with) can identify as a trigger event for blocking me, so...why'd you do it? Communication exists so that people can talk to each other, and the normal and good thing to do is to talk to your friend about what's going on, tell them if they did something wrong, talk about what you're going through. We had a long history of communicating well about our friendship, what was going on in our own lives, discussing emotions, negotiating boundaries, and so on. Why did you choose to destroy that practice and terminate our friendship? I can't be friends with you again after how badly you hurt me. I know you'll probably never read this, but if you do read it...just go get some damn help and don't do to anyone else what you did to me. If you want to contact me, you can since I didn't block you (I don't do that to friends or former friends, it's wrong and cruel), but I probably won't be a nice conversation partner until another few months have passed, the emotional wounds are still too raw, and I'm angry at you.

Life moves on, time passes, and the wheel keeps turning. Onward to new topics and experiences!

Sometime next week I'll be driving to Virginia and will start living there. I've never lived outside the Houston area and am immensely excited to try living in a new-to-me place, even though I will miss a lot about where I'm from and miss a lot of people (I will NOT miss the weather though). I think it's probably a good thing to move far away from wherever is home at least once in life, so I'm happy to be embarking on that adventure now.

There are so many things I haven't experienced yet that lead to a more whole and fulfilling life. I've decided to prioritize pursuing those experiences and having fun: for too many years I allowed my happiness set point to stay too low, I allowed myself to wallow or remain depressed or hide in a shell, I allowed myself to think deeply and extensively about ongoing problems in my life and the world without taking many actions against them, and so on. Now...I allow myself to raise my happiness set point, to cultivate fun, to experience more of the lovely riches of being alive, to take regular and consistent good actions against problems, and to live more fully and deeply!

Life is better when I write, when I create, when I produce. So, back to it I go :)

Movies and TV shows can have some excellent and inspirational music, lately I've turned to such music for mood improvement and for having a fun sonic environment. I wrote this while listening to, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lovYZqGVPBQ&ab_channel=BillalKamali, and I've really enjoyed listening to it.

I read this yesterday and it was profoundly impactful, probably in a positive way. Reading that felt a lot like reading about myself in many ways, because I have ADHD and saw much of myself in what was described (though there were differences). If you have ADHD or know someone who does, go read that article.

I've noticed an uptick in "a year of lockdowns", "quarantine retrospective", type posts around LessWrong and elsewhere. That surprised me because I'm surprised we've all been in quarantine for over a year now, it feels ridiculous that life in so many ways for so many people had to shrink or stop for so damn long, it sucks. One benefit of where I've lived during quarantine is that going outside has always been permitted, more things have been open, and people (after the first 2-3 months or so) didn't have to basically shelter in place in their dwellings for so many months. What I've heard about the restrictiveness of lockdowns in many Californian cities, in New York, and elsewhere scares me, because that would be hell to live through for me, personally. And so many of the intense lockdowns just...didn't have to last this long, or be put in place at that level of intensity in the first place, if decisionmakers had made more prudent, "rational" decisions (I'm basing these opinions off of Zvi's COVID posts, discussions I've seen on LW and other forums, and the little bit of research I've done myself) regarding how to effectively handle the pandemic. This last year has increased how much I value living in an area where personal liberty in many specific contexts is usually prioritized (not all contexts are priortized here in Texas though...this state's government is too damn obsessed with regulating people's bodies, and some other things; but it is a pretty good place to be for freedom of association, movement, and some other things) at the expense of the collective in some ways. Living in a political monoculture scares the hell out of me, because that seems to be when there's the highest probability of losing freedoms I care about, among other things. This has made me reevaluate how quickly I want to move to Seattle or other blue-tribe dominated places, mostly because I'm not familiar with living in a monocultural blue-tribe place and am almost exclusively familiar with living in a deeply mixed blue, grey, and red tribe area like Houston (I have no interest in living in a purely red-tribe place, though it would be culturally familiar and easier for me to deal with in a lot of ways versus a purely blue-tribe place). Ugh. I think I'm ranting at this point and am not being very specific, so I'll stop the politics stuff for now. This paragraph rant is mostly me venting quarantine related frustrations cum "where do I want to move to / live" considerations.

If you are reading this, how has a year of lockdowns, of quarantining, etc. affected you? How are you doing now versus before the pandemic?

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #42 Ah, more writing.

Today had good highs and a very low low. The high points came from having a very small birthday dinner and consuming good food with a few others, being virtually social with friends (we played some rounds in Paladins and did okay, twas fun), and from being reasonably productive during the "4 hours of digital tasks" time in the morning. The very low low sucked, but I don't want to talk about it further here. I will be okay, and I have a good support system to talk about it with.

I was successful regarding 2 from yesterday's ToDo, but not 1 or 3. I will repeat the same ToDo list for tomorrow. I did my taxes today, and the tax prep software indicated I likely will get a refund of some amount, yay.

I listened to Leylines by Aes Dana

Upon going to YouTube to find that link, I saw that ContraPoints is streaming!!! Time to go enjoy ContraPoints Live for a little bit before bed! If you aren't familiar with her, ContraPoints is a trans YouTuber who makes videos about philosophy and politics, but does so really well and with a fab aesthetic. Go watch her stuff, here's her channel description and link to her channel: " YouTuber, ex-philosopher. Sex, drugs, and social justice. 🌸 "

Be Well!
Willa

Shortform #39

Today was a decent day :)

1. I read Worm more than yesterday, but less than on the 1st, so that was good.
2. I job hunted for an hour.
3. I was virtually social for 3 or so hours, and also completed an errand I needed to do.

Had a strange and stressful thing occur today, but I will be okay and things are fine.

Be well,
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #37 Obsession

Today was a decent day.

I've become obsessed with reading Worm, I'm at section 24-something. I'll dial the reading back tomorrow so that I can do things I need to do.

Be well,
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #36 Taking It Easy

As the title says, I took it easy today. Not much physical activity nor much strenuous activity really of any kind. I continued reading Worm, being virtually social, and effectively chilled for much of the day. I'm happy I did that and feel eager for the new week to start.

Here's to a great week!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #35

Today was a bit stressful, but otherwise was quite nice :) Most of the stress came from cleaning + organizing the house, there was a lot to do but it got done.

1. I did virtual co-working for about 2 hours, though couldn't focus on anything digital during that time so I completed purely analog tasks. I've found it's always easier to focus on analog tasks than anything that requires the use of digital tools / is digital, uncertain as to why. Perhaps the immediate physicality of analog things is nice?
2. I walked about 2.7 miles today.
3. I wrote this shortform today.

I am utterly addicted to Worm and as of writing this am at the beginning of section 15.3, apparently around halfway through according to the table of contents.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #33 A Good Day

1. I walked ~4 miles today, and consumed ~2080kcal (other physical activity included ripping rotted boards off a car trailer since we're putting new boards on it prior to actually using it to tow things; destruction like that is fun)
2. I was virtually social for > 3 hours
3. I wrote this shortform

I started reading Worm and it has been quite fun so far. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, lot's of good things going on.

Be well!
Willa

Shortform #32 Yay for Life Logging

Not much exciting to report, I existed for another day and that was lovely :)

1. I was virtually social via phone calls for over 3 hours (pacing included!)
2. I left the house to run an errand, and I will be leaving the house tomorrow to run another errand (masks on of course)
3. I wrote this shortform instead of skipping writing it :)

I'll be back tomorrow, ciao.

Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #31 VE404, Title Not Found

I'm back! A day later than originally planned, but, I have returned and am continuing to write these daily shortforms, because they are helpful and good to me. I'm writing and posting my week 3 review tomorrow evening, and there will be a shortform for the day posted after that.

Not much I want to say right now other than I'm happy to be writing these again, the two days not writing them (effectively three days because Saturday's shortform was bad and almost nonexistent) felt off in ways I didn't expect beforehand.

Writing a daily recap, even if it's bad and/or very short, feels great, is cathartic, and I'm relieved to be continuing that habit.

Y'all have a great night.
Willa

Shortform #30 Sabbath hard and go home [LW · GW]

I'll be back Monday, ta!

Shortform #28 What's going on?

I woke up feeling fried, extra crispy, with no motivation and everything was grey, even the outdoors (the weather was literally a hazy drizzly grey all day, and not the good kind, was more of the bad swampy kind). What I noticed feeling yesterday and then throughout today correlate reasonably well with a depression episode trying to take root. I'd prefer for that not to happen, because those aren't fun, and I have things to do. Time for interventions! (to be detailed later in the post)

1. I practised Swift for about 1 hour and 30 minutes today, up from yesterday at least.
2. I did not exercise today.
3. I did not log my calories today.
4. I hosted today's Houston Rationalists Virtual Meetup, thank you to all who came, it was fun!
5. I applied to a really cool software engineering volunteer-work opportunity, I hope I get to join that team!

Interventions; I don't know for sure if what's been impacting me is an oncoming depression episode, but just in case I'll stage the usual interventions (it's fully possible that not exercising at all has caused my mood and happiness set point to plummet, but not exercising could also be comorbid with oncoming depression episode. brains are complicated; changing diet could be an impact too)

1. Tomorrow I will operate under an actual schedule:
   • 9 to 13: practise Swift
   • 13 to 16: be virtually social and do messages, emails, etc.
   • 16 to 18: exercise and be generally up and about doing active stuff, this is a great time to sort and pack things in the garage, for example.
   • 18 to 20: shower, eat dinner, do a few things around the house
   • 20 onwards: Freedom!
2. I will turn on more lights than I think necessary, and keep them on.
3. I will play fast paced upbeat music and not listen to slow or sad music.
4. I will focus on having fun and noticing through fresh eyes.
5. All experiences and phenomena are temporary, this, whatever it may be, shall pass, and I will be okay!

Saturday will be somewhat similar to Friday, but a bit more relaxed, I'll detail that schedule in tomorrow's shortform. Sunday will be a rest day, no shortform that day, no expectations, nothing. Just fun, rest, and relaxation. I will write my weekly review Saturday night :)

Take care of yourselves, it's important to do that, you're important!
Cheers,
Willa

Note: I listened to a wonderful, upbeat, and smooth liquid drum & bass mix of Feint songs while writing this, go soak up those silvery beats and enjoy!

Shortform #27 A Day of Meandering

I don't think today was a bad day, I definitely enjoyed many parts of it, but I wasn't really a focused human being today. I didn't begin coding practice until 14:50, and I suspect that's part of why I was so less focused today. Instead of practising coding first thing after waking up like I had been doing, I instead read Hacker News, LessWrong, and elsewhere, finished a task that required some concentration, and had several interruptions. I was considerably grumpier today than usual as time passed too, which was odd.

I think my main noticed for the day is that I need to start my day with practising coding first thing, otherwise I may never really get on track for the day. Yesterday for example, I had a big interruption but made myself code for a few hours in the morning and managed to return to that and do well at it even after the big interruption.

1. I ate about ~1815kcal today.
2. I did not exercise today.
3. I practised coding for about 1 solid hour.

Tomorrow I'll practise coding first thing in the morning, hopefully that'll help me be a focused human being for the rest of the day.

I wrote this shortform while listening to Zoe Keating's "One Cello x 16 EP, it's fantastic and you should listen to it especially if you enjoy cellos.

Good luck y'all,
Willa

Shortform #24 Reflecting and Doing

Today was a good day!

1. I wrote and published my weekly review before my deadline!
2. I talked with a friend on the phone for 2 hours and walked around the whole time, netting me 7555 steps for the whole day
3. I practised CS fundamentals (including algorithms, mostly the wall follower i.e. right-hand-rule algorithm) via coding in Swift for 4 hours and 30 minutes.
4. I found a calorie counting app and logged my calories for the day: ~2050kcal
5. I used gtimelog to log my time for the day! (I didn't log literally everything, just the major parts of the day)
   • I wrote my weekly review, 1 hour, 10:37-11:37
   • found calorie counting app and ate breakfast, 52 minutes, 11:37-12:29
   • practised coding but also did other things for 45 minutes of the time, 5 hours 16 minutes, 12:29-17:45
   • ate dinner while watching the last few episodes of The Magicians Season 5, which were actually the last few episodes of the show, ever...since there's no season 6, and I'm salty about that because I love the show. Ended well though, I guess. Time: 2 hours 29 minutes, 17:45-20:14
   • talked with my friend on the phone and walked around while doing so, 2 hours 19 minutes, 20:14-22:33
   • did a few small things for 5 minutes or so and wrote this shortform, 30 minutes, 22:33-23:03

Best of luck to everyone this week :)
Willa

2021 Week 2 Review 10 Jan - 16 Jan: Co-Working FTW! Also...Stop Signalling, WTB Quantitative Data and Reasoning!

I recall enjoying last week, but wow did I endorse each day strongly in my shortforms. It is true that last week was substantially better than the week prior to it, and I don't recall nor have records of bad things or bad feels occurring last week, so I'll stand by my strong endorsements of the days last week.

Thus, what an excellent week!

Re, Stop signalling: "I spent most of it going through things, throwing away, organizing, sorting, and packing said things depending on what they were, and got a lot done in preparation for moving because of that. I'm looking forward to finishing up my resume tomorrow and getting feedback on it then finishing up my profile on the job sites I made an account on." (from 15 Jan shortform)

Without quantitative data backing up what was said above, I effectively signalled for that entire shortform and the truth of that day was obscured. Really I only did 2-3 hours (memory estimation, don't trust it much) of work and spent the rest of the day occupied with watching television shows or being social. It's okay to have a lazy day from time to time, but this wasn't a designated rest [LW · GW] or "sabbath" day [LW · GW], plus, I obscured the truth by signalling (one could also say "employing rhetoric", potentially). I've done a bit of signalling in other posts throughout the shortforms, but this one was the worst yet.

Why I care so much about not signalling, being truthful, being quantitative: These shortforms are not just me howling into the void about my life, I'm trying to improve myself and my life [? · GW]! I write these shortforms so that I have data from each day to reflect on plus use in aiding memory / recall, am somewhat publicly accountable, and keep track of what my explicit goals are and how well I do at making progress to or achieving them. I need more data (and accurate data!) about my own life and actions so that I can become a more effective person! Signalling and obscuring the truth are antithetical to what I'm trying to do and who I want to be, so I'll stop that nonsense immediately. Any remaining signalling will be the kind of noise and signalling you either can't get rid of because we're tribal animals, us human beings, or will be based on truthful quantitative data and thus an endorsement of particular actions. In short, be truthful and quantitative or be square AND unhelpful to ones own self.

How I will be obtaining more (and more accurate) data about my actions and my life:

1. I don't have an internal clock that's consciously accessible to me plus I rarely experience the feeling of time passing, and am notoriously bad at noticing how much time it takes me to do something, the passage of time itself, and timeliness.
   • Using gtimelog on my desktop lets me keep an accurate time log of what I do and how long it takes me to do. Downside: everything must be manually entered. Upside: it's really simple and easy to use, plus I've gotten good at both remembering to enter things and at using the software itself. Intervention: create twice daily repeating reminders on my phone that will say: "Did you do the time log? Go do the time log" and will occur in the early afternoon and late evening.
   • Wearing a watch helps me observe the time when I'm up and moving around, so I'll commit to wearing my watch more except on rest / sabbath days. My watch has stopwatch, timer, and alarm apps so I can use those to aid in time-related things as well. I'll check its app store to see if there's a decent time-log app as well.
   • I will experiment next week with setting alarms at different time intervals (e.g. I'll try setting a "hey check the time" alarm to go off once every 2 hours initially) to see if that helps me be more cognizant of both time passing plus the actions I'm taking or not taking during that time.
   • I will take some time this next week to search for time log apps that work with the platforms I use (Linux [primary], Firefox, macOS, and iOS mostly) and see what options are out there.
2. I will use a notes app on my phone and carry around a notepad so that I can jot down whatever it is I'm working on or doing at any given moment.
3. I'll find a calorie counting app and actually use the damn thing. I've always found doing this particularly tedious and annoying, but there's no getting around calorie counting if I want to be effective at accomplishing my weight loss goals.
4. In addition to the above methods, I will be actively searching for more options that help with this endeavour and try to quantify even more parts of my life. Any suggestions?

Last week I started virtually co-working and did 3 or 4 sessions, for about 6 hours in total. I'm pushing for 10 hours of virtual co-working next week, time permitting (I am in the process of packing and getting read to move, so...things might become real chaotic real fast). I'll establish regularly scheduled sessions that repeat, should help with consistency over the long term.

My main goals for the week:

1. Look for software dev /eng jobs, preferably fully remote
2. Practise coding everyday, in particular, practise algorithms, architecture-building, and data structures.
3. Pack and get ready for moving
4. Get vaccinated
5. Continue doing the several things I've been doing either since late December or have recently identified as good for me.
   • writing shortforms, weekly reviews, etc.
   • exercising daily; focus on strength training over cardio now, but still do some cardio
   • be virtually social each day
   • virtual co-working!
   • calorie counting
   • time logging

Here's to another great week! What are you working on and trying to accomplish?

I listened to Wlad Roerich's Background Mode 0.1 while writing this. It took me 60 minutes (1 hour) to write this weekly review and then publish it.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #23 Extant

I enjoyed today, but it definitely wasn't a very productive day. I woke up late, then jumped in for an hour of virtual co-working and looked a resume templates / ideas + discussed resume and job site profile strategies. Afterwards I cleaned and organized the house for an hour and a half, followed by showering + getting ready. I drove into town for an early dinner outdoors with three friends then picked up my Dad from the airport, and have been relaxing since getting home.

I think the best thing to do is go to bed early and wake up tomorrow ready for a new day!

Yay it's the weekend!
Willa

Shortform #18 The downsides of procrastination, otherwise a great day.

Today was a mostly great day!

1. I spent about 4 hours today engaged in virtually social activities, split relatively evenly between hanging out with friends versus structured social time (trans support group, game night, etc.)
2. I spent about 2 hours skimming 2019 posts and selecting what to write reviews on, about 20 minutes of that time was actual review writing.
3. I made cookies :)

Unfortunately, because I started the review process (skimming nominated 2019 posts, writing actual reviews) way too late in the LW 2019 Review project, I wasn't able to publish three reviews like I had originally hoped to do at the beginning of the 2019 Review project. I haven't even finished one review, and don't have time to finish that one before midnight.

Noticed: If you procrastinate on something important to you, you will miss out on that or submit whatever you wanted to produce, late...

This [procrastination] is something I've struggled with for years, and it frustrates me to no end. I'm publicly discussing my most recent failure due to procrastination (not writing and publishing three reviews for the LW 2019 Review project), because I want to keep better track of how often I do that, plus, it hurts to talk about it and fail publicly, which feels like a good thing. I.e., that feels like it'll reduce how much I procrastinate on the next project I publicly commit to.

The three posts I was going to review are:

1. Gears-Level Models are Capital Investments [LW · GW]
2. The Power to Teach Concepts Better [LW · GW]
3. Literature Review: Distributed Teams [LW · GW]

I know writing reviews for those posts past the deadline won't include them in the voting phase of the LW 2019 Review project, but I'd like to finish what I set out to do, so I'll be writing those reviews and publishing them this week. Additionally, those three posts are great, and I want to review them so that maybe others can gain more benefit from those posts.

I walked indoors for about 30 minutes today. I did not listen to music while writing this shortform.

Be well!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #17 An accomplished yet peaceful and nice Sunday.

Today was a great day!

1. I walked 3 miles indoors (the weather here today was...the definition of bleargh).
2. I had great phone call conversations with several friends :)
   • One call resulted in scheduling a virtual co-working session and another resulted in scheduling a virtual working-out session!
3. I wrote my weekly review and published it by my deadline, FEELS GREAT (warning: loud and explicit).

What a great start to a brand new week :)

Also: if you enjoy ramen, try putting jalapeño guacamole sauce in it, it's so good. One might even say...sugoi You can also put that sauce on nachos or a lot of other things, is similarly great!

Noticed: Typing when it's really cold and your hands are cold is similar in discomfort to playing piano when it's cold and your hands are cold, except, playing piano will warm up your fingers much quicker and more thoroughly than typing will.

I continued listening to a really long Two Steps From Hell / Thomas Bergersen & Nick Phoenix mix while writing this.

Have a great week!
Cheers,
Willa

Shortform #14 and Shortform #15

#15 I have learned an important lesson!

If I stay up all night trying to be more productive because I wanted to get more things done and "make up for" a day where I didn't get quite what I wanted done...then whatever I stayed up for had better be damn important otherwise I've just wasted a lot of time and lowered my quality of life.

Staying up all night to be more productive for the sake of showing off (to myself and/or to others) that I had accomplished more things in one day is not a good enough reason to stay up all night, so I won't be doing that again for such a lame reason.

I woke up today at noon, having fallen asleep the previous day (the 7th) at 6pm (18:00) or so due to being way too tired. Today was pretty good all things considered! I had a good phone conversation with a friend, walked for about an hour, did some messaging, tidied up multiple things as part of my "Dedicate 1 hour of my time tomorrow to doing tasks that take <=5-10 minutes each." efforts, and had fun watching (The Great Pretender)[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11680468/] on Netflix.

Given that I won't be staying up all night tonight nor recovering from a prior day where I had stayed up for way too long, I expect slightly better things from myself tomorrow :)

#14 I was frustrated about having such a lazy day on the 6th and wasn't feeling very tired after writing that day's shortform (#13) so I decided to stay up...and did. I drank a bunch of coffee around 2-3am to "seal the deal" and managed to stay awake until around 6pm in the evening of the 7th.

I will not state what I accomplished nor how much or how little I accomplished because I'm unhappy I decided to stay up all night just for the sake of productivity signalling in response to being frustrated by how my day on the 6th went. I won't be doing that again, it wasn't worth it, and it rarely is. Out of all the times I've stayed up all night in my life, only a few times felt like they were actually necessary and worth it, or were rewarding for some other reason. Most of the time staying up all night is a sign of bad execution or inaction with regards to accomplishing some specific goals or meeting certain deadlines, it shows that either a person is just not doing well or they are slacking too much. That has been the case for me, at least. So, no more unless absolutely necessary for survival! Sleep is too necessary to sacrifice for anything less than that.

Reflection: I want to achieve my goals, but I must do so with kindness towards myself and others. Staying up all night is usually unkind to myself, so I will only do so in extreme circumstances where doing so is necessary for survival. Additionally, if I notice myself being frustrated by a lack of progress towards goals, I need to take that seriously and reevaluate how my actions, habits, reactions to current events, and other "inputs" contributed to the buildup of that frustration plus led me to whatever situation I might be in during that moment. Then, take some deep breaths to release the frustration and follow through with better actions. Sometimes that means changing goals, oftentimes that means changing actions and building better habits. Plus, don't ever forget about selfcare!

Happy Friday Y'all :)

Note: I did not listen to music while writing this. Also, adding a sentence or few sentences to serve as a summary, abstract, or catchy title right after saying "Shortform #X" seems neat, I'll try that intentionally going forward, did it by accident this time.

Shortform #13

What a promising and good day, that ultimately turned out not as good as expected.

Other than doing ~2 hours of messaging to catch up on my inboxes, today has been quite the lazy day.

Oversleeping and then reacting to crazy political events can put quite a damper on being productive :(

Tomorrow I will do better!

This is the most boring shortform post you'll see from me in the near future, expect moar better for tomorrow :)

Good luck and be well!

This shortform was not written while listening to music, only the ambient hum and whooshing of my room fan occasionally interrupted by typing noises pervaded my local audible soundscape.

Shortform #12

Mmm, today was a nice relaxing and restorative kind of day. Definitely helped me with item #4 from yesterday's shortform, I feel energized and eager for doing lots of things tomorrow.

I didn't go outside and exercise, rather, I paced inside while on the phone with various people over the span of 3 hours or so, and that was nice, I enjoy walking while talking on the phone. My step count for the day is ~19,500, seems good enough.

My text, messenger, and email inboxes are overflowing, and I desperately need to deal with those inboxes tomorrow, so I shall. I'm looking forward to responding to all those messages and continuing all those conversations, tis good stuff!

ToDo:

1. Order groceries
2. Schedule Houston Rationalists meetups for this month
3. Discuss virtual coworking schedules with the friends who've expressed interest thus far then create calendar events for the times we choose
4. Make an inventory of my stuff, including bulk and moving difficulty ratings for each item; this inventory will be helpful since I'll be moving twice within the next 6 months and can get rid of stuff, know what's easy to move and what'll take more work, and so on. Note how often I use each thing and whether I'm particularly attached to it or not, with a bias towards getting rid of things and having to prove why I either want to or need to keep something.
5. Dedicate 1 hour of my time tomorrow to doing tasks that take <=5-10 minutes each.
6. Set a timer for 15 minutes sometime in the early afternoon and write whatever comes to mind in a notebook using a pen.

I did not listen to music while writing today's shortform. I'll be keeping track of the music or not metric going forward, as well as if music then what type of music.

Good luck and be well!

No shortform today. Go enjoy the holiday :) That's what I'm doing!

Shortform #68 This shortform's for July 6, 2022

Yesterday was quite a long day, though mostly enjoyable, especially the Norfolk Rationalists meetup which was wonderful :) I enjoyed the Guild of the Rose workshop on Advanced Epistemics last night but had to leave halfway through because by 9:30...I was literally falling asleep in my chair. Who knew waking up at 5:00am and working ten hour days plus doing social things and class would be so tiring!

I don't have much to say about yesterday besides it felt quite long and the meetup last night was wonderful :) We had two new people join us and about five/six people total, we are growing which I'm quite happy about.

Time to finish getting ready for another day of work, may today go well for all!

Shortform #90 I changed the title more than five times so this is now the title.

Tonight I keep writing sentences and deleting them. Not sure that's the most fruitful state of mind to write with, but I shall do so anyways.

I believe that the adrenaline or excitement which propelled me through the week after returning from the organizer's retreat has finally worn off. I'm very sleepy and have been very unfocused tonight (which is in stark contrast to how well I performed at work today, I was very focused & on top of things), scattered, and a bit drift-y. Sleeping in tomorrow plus hanging out with my neighbor & later my family sound like nice things, I'll do those and a few other things (yet more retreat debriefing / idea integration and reaching out to people) tomorrow.

For now though, it is time to rest well and wake tomorrow fresh for the new day!