Something about this hit me pretty hard in a way that other similar things hadn’t.
I’m reminded of this SMBC about how you can have multiple lifetimes (it takes 7 years to master something, that’s several different things you could be great at over the course of your life, which’d shape your life in very different ways). But, people tend to get stuck in the thing they know.
In my case...
...hmm… I feel some kind of creeping horror at growing stagnant. But I also feel something like “don’t have the time to actually learn new things from the ground up.” Or, I know that I’m pretty-okay at the stuff I’m pretty okay at. I could learn totally new skills, but, it’d be years before I found out if I was especially good at them and whether they were worth it.
I noticed further that part of the problem is I don’t currently have what I’d call mastery at any particular skill. The only thing I’m remotely close to “world class” at is “rational ritual design”, which is mostly a fact about the rest of the civilization being inadequate.
Huh, I recall a couple years ago I became anxious about becoming a has-been who’s only ever done one cool thing, and then defined myself by that thing. And started trying to ask myself “okay, who is Raemon if he’s not the Secular Solstice guy?”. That motivated me to learning harder into “be good at epistemics” and “be good at programming.”
And I guess that was… 3-4 years ago, and maybe it’s just okay if since then I’ve just been sort of middling at those things. I don’t currently feel on track to be great at them within another 4 years. But, remember, this makes me feel more reasonable about not currently feeling great about diving into Some Other New Skill.
Something about this hit me pretty hard in a way that other similar things hadn’t.
I’m reminded of this SMBC about how you can have multiple lifetimes (it takes 7 years to master something, that’s several different things you could be great at over the course of your life, which’d shape your life in very different ways). But, people tend to get stuck in the thing they know.
In my case...
...hmm… I feel some kind of creeping horror at growing stagnant. But I also feel something like “don’t have the time to actually learn new things from the ground up.” Or, I know that I’m pretty-okay at the stuff I’m pretty okay at. I could learn totally new skills, but, it’d be years before I found out if I was especially good at them and whether they were worth it.
I noticed further that part of the problem is I don’t currently have what I’d call mastery at any particular skill. The only thing I’m remotely close to “world class” at is “rational ritual design”, which is mostly a fact about the rest of the civilization being inadequate.
Huh, I recall a couple years ago I became anxious about becoming a has-been who’s only ever done one cool thing, and then defined myself by that thing. And started trying to ask myself “okay, who is Raemon if he’s not the Secular Solstice guy?”. That motivated me to learning harder into “be good at epistemics” and “be good at programming.”
And I guess that was… 3-4 years ago, and maybe it’s just okay if since then I’ve just been sort of middling at those things. I don’t currently feel on track to be great at them within another 4 years. But, remember, this makes me feel more reasonable about not currently feeling great about diving into Some Other New Skill.
It’s been about 4 years. How do you feel about this now?