I didn't do very much, but I feel the overall year theme has been one of trying to learn how to better govern myself emotionally and managing a lot of unprocessed stress.
Off the top of my head, the big insights this yearhave been
- Recognizing the desire for prosocially-motivated culture with other people like me, which I call "Sri-kin", as I am not motivated by anything else without sustained energy from this.
- Identifying and naming unprocessed anxiety that comes from a mismatch in my expectations and those of others. Some of it is due to neurodivergent thinking and communication patterns, and reluctantly admitting that I have inflexible moral/ethical standards that are at odds with the general population.
The past few months have been less about doing things as it has been finding a way to moderate my expectations such that I can co-exist with society by balancing my needs with those of others. The initial approach was to resurface negotiation mindset, but more recently there is also a deep feeling of rejection that surfaces a neediness that then triggers subsconscious stress and anxiety. The prosocially-motivated aspects of energy is closely related to rejection.
In my most recent reflections, I'm realizing that the closeness and intensity I crave is not shared by most people. People prefer to maintain a comfortable and friendly distance, not be challenged or questions under normal interaction rules, and are not thinking about forming bonds with everyone they meet. I seem to have developed this expectation over the past few decades of my life because I thought it was within my control to be able to negotiate/communicate/relate to everyone I met if I just tried hard enough to understand people so they would understand me in return.
This desire to be understood is a common issue, I think, in people who relate to having the so-called "neurodivergent lived experience".
The balancing act is to not cut myself off from people and at the same time not be frustrated by the different rules of engagement. I have a very limited capacity, though, to handle the dozens of small uncertainties throughout the day, as I crave stronger alignment with people in conversation, sharing data and stories, and having a shared aspirational desire to do cool things.
If I were to put this more bluntly:
- there are few people who meet the criteria. the last time was when I was working in the video game industry, but the misalignment between caring culture and commerce turned me off of it
- I have difficulty holding in the frustration and managing the anxiety that comes from being uncertain whether I am accepted/understood. I'm trying to convince myself that I don't need this, but that takes a lot of emotional self-regulation to constantly remind myself that "I'm okay" and there are "plenty of opportunities to talk to someone else". This is an enormous mental drain.
- I also have difficulty communicating with people who are not data-driven and direct in expressing their thoughts. In particular, I am tripped-up by people who use social agreeableness signaling and face saving as the primary communciations mode, and are uncomfortable admitting they don't know something. This is the big big disconnect between neurodivergent people and neurotypical people; we just don't think of stuff that way. I know this now and I still misinterpret it all the time.
Summary of 0909
I theorized that sensory starvation was at the root of lack of energy, motivation. Using the morning energy I have to increase sensory input through physical motion is probably a good thing, as well as avoiding energy sinks such as eating complex carbohydrates and lying on the couch scrolling through social media.
So what do I think about this now?
- I'm feeling more like an alien. However, I do know there are people that enjoy talking to me. I had a nice interaction with Surprise Michael visit, when I experienced that he seemed to be someone I could speak to on a similar wavelength. I also know a few dragon-kin that "get" some of what I'm talking about.
- The idea of the Colony being created by people like me (Sri-kin) but being more broadly enjoyable by aspirational people with pro-social inclinations still holds.
- I am buffeted by people who don't think like me, and I feel I should get over it and not expect anything from people. As I had written before about intensity in data and bandwidth, I can't expect most people to have the same style of communication. It's very very rare, and unless one is born this way it can never be understood.
The takeaway, I think, is that I should purposefully restrict my circles to reduce exposure to people who don't share my thinking/communication style.
While this might come across as anti-social, I can still have non-commital social relationships with people where I don't expect understanding at all. Getting along with people by making small talk or telling little white lies to sooth social connections isn't being fake or insincere as I had thought. It's how people learn to trust each other, because it's a form of showing consideration.
Most people, I think, reciprocate in kind, so long as I am fitting their expectations by responding to their cues. There is a culture of asking permission in various ways before proceeding with a conversation or inquiry by suggesting "possibilities" that do not make a direct demand on someone. In more patriarchal societies there is a pecking order of what you are or are not supposed to do, but in the US it's less of an issue with "everyday people" than it would be in Asia or elitist circles.
Groundhog Day Resolutions has fundamentally been about doing more things, but it hasn't worked for a long time because there is so much mental processing. I think a more realistic approach to things would be to count the things I've managed to do despite dealing with all that stuff. At this point in 2024, I have a much-improved model of how I am different from other people, what my tendencies are, and how my productivity is impacted by the amount of emotional stress I have to deal with due to frustrations with mismatched expectations. While my ethical/moral systems are inflexible, they are also GOOD in many ways that allow me to conduct myself well; a lot of frustration and anger has arisen by feeling I am constantly forced to abandon standards because of the expectation mismatch / lack of aligned interest.
I'm trying very hard not to say PEOPLE SUCK because that's not productive or kind. The Sri-kin vibe is still about people getting along and learning to understand and communicate in a way that empowers and lifts everyone. That is the prosocial motivation that is at the heart of my sense of self. Some people aren't into it, and are manipulative or limited in their perspective in this regard, and I don't need to take that so personally. That is something I have to work on.
Things I'm good at:
- systematic thinking and writing
- completely understanding what I know and don't know
- clarifying and sequencing thoughts
- applying visual systems based on knowledge
- relating information across different domains and people
- modeling and succinctly summarizing people's desires, aspirations, and unspoken needs
- integrating logical and emotional thoughts into a handful of themese
- writing fast
Things I'm bad at:
- Doing any task that is not directly seen by or benefits someone else I can talk to in realtime. If there is no immediate application or benefit, that’s also hard.
- Dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity that comes from dealing with unsystematic communication, steps, or expectation.
- Dealing with process that is not founded in identifying principles and context, but is instead just a list of steps. There is huge resistance to this.
REPHRASE
To increase energy, I had come up with a list of energy management mitigations that I've paraphrased below:
- prioritize meaningful connections
- feed sensory experiences, despite expense (getting out of the house)
- prune projects by priority and meaningfulness
- indulge rabbit holes and enjoy rabbits.
I was successful in just getting out of the house every day, going to Starbucks daily and working in their sunny cafe space. This did help lift my mood and give me something to look forward to that had the possibility of novelty. In other respects, I was unable to find meaningful connections or find interesting side diversions. And so, I ended up doing what I wanted to avoid: lying on the couch mindlessly scrolling to feed my brain with some scrap of novelty, eating sugary and carbohydrate-laden foods that made me sleepy. There has also been a change in work, moving into a maintenance mode, so interaction has diminished even more as I try to finish some future tech in isolation with no one available to talk to. In my case, this is the worst case scenario for productivity.
As I come into this month,
The theme for Groundhog Day Resolutions 2024 was creating The Colony to alleviate the energy issues. While I've made good progress in defining various aspects of how it would work for someone with my particular bag of personality traits, the body of people itself has failed to materialize. I've come up with various plans to contact and meet people, but each month I've been unable to push through to make it happen.
Rather than burn so much energy on diagnosing and proposing theories, perhaps I should fully