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 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 #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 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.