Summary of Raw Topical Thoughts
These were collected from various musings I posted in the DSCAFE Discord and elsewhere. The raw text is at the end of this document.
- Embodying Animal Archetypes for Friendship and Whimsy
- Rationality in Support of Emotion for Improved Executive Function
- Public Reflection: The vessel for productivity are the people in the boat, not the boat
- The vibe of productivity is catalyzed from feeling of collaboration
- Finding The "Srikin Goddess" Within
- Empathy through Showing, not Telling
- Productivity as seeking opportunity, not results
- The Double-Edged Sword of Principled Work and Unwanted Negativity from Conflicting Needs
- De-emphasizing Excellence in favor of Co-humanity and Friendship
- Focus on Team Play, not on being a Team Player
- Public Reflection: on Alignment with Values, Team Play, and Psychological Safety
- Catalyzing Self Care by Offering Care to Others
- Public Reflection: Seeking Collaboration and Opportunities for World Building is My Jam
- Can World Economic Forum Mission/Governance by applied to Srikin Grassroots Level?
- Not just comfort but matching comportment with others
- Competence- and material-based attraction strategies are a form of procrastination toward Team Play leadership
Categorizing Topics
This is a distillation of the above summary into groups.
Friendship
- Embodying Animal Archetypes for Friendship and Whimsy
- Public Reflection: The vessel for productivity are the people in the boat, not the boat
Srikin Traits, Self Care, and Embodiment
- Finding The "Srikin Goddess" Within
- Catalyzing Self Care by Offering Care to Others
- Not just comfort but matching comportment with others
- Competence- and material-based attraction strategies are a form of procrastination toward Team Play leadership
Motivation
- Rationality in Support of Emotion for Improved Executive Function
- The vibe of productivity is catalyzed from feeling of collaboration
- Productivity as seeking opportunity, not results
Leadership Styles
- Empathy through Showing, not Telling
- The Double-Edged Sword of Principled Work and Unwanted Negativity from Conflicting Needs
- De-emphasizing Excellence in favor of Co-humanity and Friendship
- Focus on Team Play, not on being a Team Player
- Public Reflection: on Alignment with Values, Team Play, and Psychological Safety
- Public Reflection: Seeking Collaboration and Opportunities for World Building is My Jam
- Can World Economic Forum Mission/Governance by applied to Srikin Grassroots Level?
Consolidating Topics
There are two prosocial contexts:
- Sri's Personal Prosocial Proclivities
- Sri's Desire for Compatible Prosocial Environments
Sri's overall desire is to be more productive so she can create a sharing, caring world where like-minded people can form genuine friendships.
Appendix: Source Text
FEB 07 (Ed. Embodying Animal Archetypes for Friendship and Whimsy)
today I am feeling not cat, not bunny, not dragon...but GOOSE honk! Goose, Crow, and Magpie are critters that I like for their opinionated noises. Hm, I can imagine all of their sounds and movements and that makes me squee with contentment. Except for dragon, which I don’t have an intuitive feel for either sound or movement. I haven’t mentally selected a dragon archetype. I don’t like the chinese dragons (haru from spirited away was ok). I don’t like the children’s european dragon either. Movie dragons tend to be overwrought sinister critters that seem like a collection of scary ideas rather than an actual creature. Animation tends to have baby dragons and they are overly generic. I think Id like my dragon to be about to sit like a loaf cat or contented bird. She would be very happy to sit in the middle of her hoard, preferably on top of a sturdy nest of supporting rugs and luxurious textiles, with mounds of collected treasure forming different foci depending on her mood. Goose honks are rather one dimensional. I think that is its appeal to me, an “everything is a nail and I am the hammer” attitude Corvids have a sense of fun I think with their noises and inquisitive nature. Cats are similar but will forget themselves as they get absorbed in the moment. Corvids give me the impression that they are highly self aware and embarrassing things are foreseen even as they play. Perhaps Sri can transmogrify her soul into different animal archetypes. I feel a strong urge to be a cat loaf or dragon loaf, contented. But I also saw a video of a little girl that made friends with a goose and it made me happy! She had a goose friend! moar friendship and moar whimsy rawr goals, they are, yes honk honk!
FEB 08 (Ed. Rationality in Support of Emotion for Improved Executive Function)
It seems plausible that my executive function for the day is highly compromised due to (emphasizing my conscious concerns)
- stress factors+hyper vigilance
- lack of positive reinforcement
- lack of social warmth The hyper analytical, rationalized emotional processing that I do may not be an ideal way to experience life, but it’s the thing that allows me to even function. I do feel the emotion after all; the processing allows me to cope and make some progress toward ameliorated it. This makes me think that when someone says I’m overrationalizing my emotions instead of feeling them, they may be misinterpreting what I’m doing.
FEB 09 PUBLIC POST (Ed. The vessel for productivity are the people in the boat, not the boat)
I feel my first week was productive, and somewhat aligned with my stated goal of prioritizing meaningful collaborative work, but not in the way I imagined. At the time I conceived of the goal, I was thinking that the projects (eg work, self-improvements) were going to be the focus of meaningful and collaborative work that resulted in tangible persisted benefit. I called these “project vessels”, imagining them sailing toward the “strategic horizons”. But it may be that being in DSCAFE with y’all is the actual vessel of something else that underlies everything. I suspect that the shared experience doing GHDR changes the way it feels quite a lot compared to when doing it by one’s self…more to ponder.
FEB 10 PUBLIC FOLLOWUP (Ed. The vibe of productivity is catalyzed from feeling of collaboration)
I'm starting to feel too disconnected from my GHDR goals, as I haven't dedicated time to writing about it. Instead, I've been focusing on work and dread tasks for the past week. That said, I think I've been successful in prioritizing meaningful by "indulging" in my hyper-communicative approach to work, though collaborative has failed to materialize for my own projects. Today I started to log my work as "we" though I don't have more than surface peer discussion from dev partners. It's an ongoing frustration. That said, I do feel the vibe from other GHDR mastermind participants and this DOES feel collaborative in a different way. I'd like to spend Tuesday on personal writing, but I am also making good progress on work in a way I haven't in a long time. Maybe my emotional needs are being met well enough?
FEB 14 (Ed. Finding The "Srikin Goddess" Within)
Processing unexpected sadness! It is also around the cyclic depression time, so feelings may be extra extra, but assuming they are not. One thing that reliably makes me cry is the idea that someone feels alone, unseen, and unappreciated for their desires and ideas, and gets their spark crushed out of existence by lack of caring and kindness. (see, I am crying again just from typing that, and I’m just talking about it in the abstract) This must be the SRI CORE I don’t think anything else matters And yet I can be very cold to those who I suspect don’t have a strong affiliation with such issues. At the same time I recognize that survival is not easy, and that different perspectives create different priorities for the billions of life experiences that go on every day. Who am I to judge? Well I don’t need to judge, right? I can instead embody the Sri Core that I feel is so beautiful and worth existing through both action and heartfelt desire for all animals to flourish. I am having a moment that is like I’m seeing the goddess form of Sri for the first time in my heart and mind. “Finally you see? Are you ready to accept me?” It feels like the goddess form is vast, like golden light that softly hugs the hills and mountains. But largely it feels like s powerful source with a bright female made of light that warms and encourages. Letting mind drift for a while to see if I can find my way back here. Mews with hopeful anticipation! ...later... I took a short nap, and images of the “Sri Goddess” has faded. What I find is left is the self-image of being a small cat that enjoys crawling through life experiences looking for things to sit on and purr contently. There is a mild feeling of being magical, which goes with cats. This is like my default vessel. It’s like there is a small cat driving around the AMAB mechanical suit, which is an improvement from just feeling like “I” am stuck like this. The trigger phrase I’ve come up with is, “small cat! what is in your heart? why do you purr so when you are dreaming?” That almost does it, but small cat is a proxy isn’t it...it’s the internal masked sense of me. I hide myself in the cuter form, probably because my love for cats is the strongest and most genuine emotion I can muster. It defers the desire to be loved and cherished to a form I believe in inherently innately suited for such. Id like to put the cat aside and think of the kind of energy that actively sees and cherishes others as a way of being. I think maybe it’s hard to cherish others when one is not cherished in kind, but are two levels.
- The personal level, where the cherishment of being scoopable is something I believe does apply to me
- the prosocial level, where the act of seeing each other and cooperating toward a community-wide cherishment is the culture that nourishes everyone The strong emotional vision though still feels inaccessible, though. However, I know the goddess of this feeling is there. I might have just needed a good cry, and the goddess of the srikin then made herself known. This might be an important revelation, the goddess of the srikin! In any case, I feel reassured by the experience and doubt has been pushed back. I do believe in something!
FEB 16 (Ed. Empathy through Showing, not Telling)
Contemplating a change in outward presentation from transparent / authentic / prosocial to something more steeped in confidence of vision and correctness of following the way. Theory is that you can be vulnerable to lead the vulnerable, or attract talented collaborators without showing talent. I feel I have been wallowing in self reflection too long. It’s necessary and I’m fortunate to have this private mroospace to examine it out in the open. That said, rebalancing my duality with new insights about how to understand people might be a good move. I’ve thought about the old Dave 2000 construct coming back to help the Envoy of the Moon, Little Sri, to help with the message of the Goddess of the Srikin. There are both practical and emotional aspects to the message. The practical, tangible, functional aspects are what provide attractive benefits. The empathic, friendly, prosocial aspects are the way to engage. Srikin is being a good person with other persons, writing the empathic cheques that are backed by benefit-producing action consistently and with integrity to a set of articulated values. Maybe it is just difficult to balance empathy and ambition. It took me a long time to emerge and develop my empathy, and I had to struggle with how to relate it with ambition, which abandoned me. I really have been going through the motions I think. The new epoch might be about this. The ambition is to see my friends happy, perhaps, and to be happy and aligned with them. But I think these friends might be a different type of person. Empathic and also ambitious in the way I am thinking, committed to building the tools that go with it. I feel that Ive said something similar before here. I don’t think I can describe the empathic goals to a general audience. I can instead conduct myself with empathy and positivity, while staying grounded in pragmatism and positive in expressing how my approach could by applied by others. Much of my writing hasn’t followed this lately, being more about myself than for the benefit of others. I think the message is too confusing or unrelatable to be compelling. That’s because no one trusts a message that leads with empathy as its hook. We are too cynical and wary of PR flacks paying lip service to it. Instead, lead with the gift of an idea linked to hope and novelty, with the experimental curiosity that transforms uncertainty into data. And lead it in a way that shows compassion and empathy as the grand back drop without exposition. Like the first Marcia Lucas-edited Star Wars. ... Late night dive into diagetic storytelling, as it seems relevent in some ways to the how of presenting empathy, whereas non-diagetic and expository storytelling is more useful for presenting benefits
FEB 18 (Ed. Productivity as seeking opportunity, not results)
woke up late. stretched while in nest, carefully. quelled lizard fears and took long deep breaths. turning off brain, disabling analysis until there is an actual problem that can be resolved by it. Perhaps productivity could be said to merely be the use of one’s brain toward creating opportunity, rather than reflecting and ruminating in non-opportunistic applications
FEB 20 (Ed. The Double-Edged Sword of Principled Work and Unwanted Negativity from Conflicting Needs)
I am concerned that I am too fussy to be a professional programmer. This is where I see autistic patterns about (1) logic not matching intent not matching naming and (2) inconsistency in following established patterns causing more emotional stress than seems common. I get literally angry, which rises in stages as each inconsistency piles up. I've learned maybe to dissociate from the anger to have an outwardly calm demeanor, but it results in such vengeful thinking which I don't think is good for team building. Perhaps it's exacerbated by (3) not having control over software goals or stakeholders and therefore (4) having to work with people who are not meeting (1) and (2) in the first place. It could also be that it's just that I have not worked with professional developers either, so I'm assuming that I'm the one who is fucked-up. My priority is to engineer solid understanding and clarity so straightforward load-bearing functionality can be built on, and this is at odds with delivering work on-the-fly to meet immediate needs. It is so demoralizing. I dislike it so much. Hate is too strong a word because everyone is genuinely accommodating and positive, and I am the only one who seems to have this resevoir of negativity so I feel like a jerk. I need some way to balance this so the negativity is transformed before it creates snippy and vengeful thoughts in my head. I dislike the feeling of having to promise something that's based on the timetable of people who are not thinking deeply about process and architecture with me, but maybe that is something I can just assume in an entitled way because why not? I've avoided it because I associate entitlement with being an asshole, but maybe there's a positive version of it. Sigh.
FEB 21 (Ed. De-emphasizing Excellence in favor of Co-humanity and Friendship)
I’m feeling a bit adrift today...it’s been a pretty focused two weeks prioritizing work with fairly good commitment. Switching my dev log from slack (where no one retains it), to dscafe (where people who might read it might be interested) is a small-but-significant increase in motivation. It occurs to me that part of my frustration with work has calcified into the belief that dev partner is not committed to good programming or is capable of learning it at this time, and isn’t actually retaining anything I’m saying. So it feels futile and unrewarding even if I do something “interesting” Appreciation is genuine, but superficial. It reminds me a bit of talking to my dad, actually, and the few memories that I have of him interacting with anything I was doing. They are all flat responses at best. I wonder if this one reason I am so sensitive to this. My friends back then also were, in hindsight, more due to familiarity and maybe I was too distracted by my own thoughts to take have made good friends. High school friends were a bit better. The new epoch of Sri might be about friendship and co-humanity (I don’t know if this is a word)...a deeper look into the practice, nurturing, and development of friendships. I think I could have been a better friend, but I did my best. Maybe this is also the hidden appeal of romantic returner villianess manhwa recaps?
FEB 21 (Ed. Focus on Team Play, not on being a Team Player)
I've been inspired recently by a video about a Helldiver 2 player named QuantumSpace who loves the idea of forming a Roman-style Phalanx with energy shields, and it's a surprisingly warm and heartfelt video given the subject manager. So he explores the idea solo, then invites 3 of his close friends to all equip the energy shield and see how it fares against the giant bugs and then the killer robot factions. It goes terribly but they are all having a good time and not taking any of their losses with anger (something I tend to do)...I think it's because they just enjoy playing together and feel safe playing with each other (not game-safe) And then the video starts to resemble a segment on This American Life. QuantumSpace asks for help from a popular Helldivers 2 streamed named Commisar Kai, who's a big promoter of positive teamwork in play, and dispenses wisdom of teamwork as they are in the field. QuantumSpace then has an epiphany, puts together a plan where everyone has a role and has to rely on each other, and gives it a try. It doesn't go that well, but his takeaway was that everyone was having fun and the shield had the subtle effect of reminding that everyone that they are not alone (!) Sharing two time points in the video specifically about those two points that I thought were worth listening to, but trigger warning this is practically a video game version of Paul Verhoven's Starship Troopers, right down to the satirical hyperviolence and similar commentary on fascism as its lore. There's a lot of shooting and lasers and explosive rockets with a bunch of dudes running around laughing (but somehow not being mean or toxic, to their credit!) which may be upsetting. It's not entirely avoidable in the excerpts, because of the gameplay itself. I'm thinking of how this applies to my development issues...I'm not really thinking like a team player, and I'm not having fun. The idea of having clear roles and specialization, then finding ways to stick together, and distinguish between strategy (our effective means to do something) and then practice adaptability through application of specific "moment-to-moment" maneuvers. I'm fixated on trying to be a good developer, and this is a solo stance that is not inclusive in itself. My overall desire is NOT to attract other good developers, but to have a good TEAM and what goes with that is FRIENDSHIP. This video is hitting me at the right time. I think in games like this and also in development work, I get stressed by the desire for us to be "good" and this creatives negative reaction. I embarrassed to admit I don't have a good stratagem for being a positive team player, but I have a wealth of experience that informs what my role is, and how I can identify and assign roles to others so we play together Also, this video has the best like and subscribe interlude featuring cute cats Is this how I should frame being Envoy of the Moon?
FEB 22 PUBlIC POST (Ed. Reflection on Alignment with Values, Team Play, and Psychological Safety)
Broadly speaking, my goals this year are to live more in alignment with values, prioritizing meaning conversations and realtime collaborative efforts over merely doing work. The past couple of weeks have been pretty productive, but low in either meaningful conversations or collaborative effort. This might explain why I feel so drained this weekend. I prioritized work and didn't leave the house either for several days this week, including today. I also find that the poster I made had too much detail. I think I had written it more as an explainer for OTHER people, but it's not very accessible or relatable. It's not even very relatable to ME. So I'll restate the hypothesis:
By seeking meaningful conversations and collaborations in the moment, productivity and fulfillment should follow organically This past week was the inversion of that...I pushed myself to do work, harnessing creativity and short work sessions with a a LOT of recovery time. There was one all-nighter that helped push through to a deliverable, once all the uncertainties suddenly seemed to have been handled. I think one issue is that this work pattern requires too much recovery...I end up watching media to feel emotion, vicariously experiencing characters who are forming meaningful relationships through their ambitions and struggles. They all have friends. An interesting insight was a helldivers video essay that has a lovely conclusion about the role of a particular piece of gear call the Directional Shield, and how it brings people together unlike other more BOOM-oriented equipment. It promotes team awareness and team play. Combined with my observation that the people playing were genuine friends who were (1) safe in each other's company to do stupid things and (2) having fun playing together brought a new insight home. INSIGHTS (regarding having people I am directly collaborating with): I'm not a good team player because I don't feel safe around people, and this leads to distrust and desire for independence so I am not trapped. I'm not having fun anymore, as I am no longer in direct contact with the people with whom I do feel safe or at least appreciated for my contributions to the group zeitgeist. The distrust exists despite my natural proclivity to take what people say at face value, and assume they want to be trusting so I lead with being trusting. Life experience has taught me that people rarely say what they really mean, and are unwilling to put the energy into negotiating understanding because it's too much of a hassle for them. The takeaway is that "meaningful communication/collaboration" is like a technical requirement, but I also have the broad common emotional need to simply have people around me who I find reassuring and provide psychological safety because they enjoy being around me, and me with them. This is related perhaps to my thoughts about whimsy last week, how it feels like I can't express it. Also, related to the discussion of professional soft skills and comportment.
FEB 23 (Ed. Catalyzing Self Care by Offering Care to Others)
I still feel apathy and disconnection from meaning. The lack of time spent with other people seems like the crippling factor. Perhaps I can find a nice weekly group going back to school in some way, as student or faculty, could be another compatible activity. maybe light, low effort part time work. Maybe a study group The apathy Im feeling right now applies to myself too. I could do something but I don’t see it as mattering. To catalyze caring, I maybe have to find someone to offer care toward, but make sure it’s not too demanding of my energy. DSCAFE could be a good place to practice that. Simply having something to share would be a reason to do things, though lizard brain is already resisting the idea as I think it. Make stuff to share seems like a good thing to practice this week. Add the idea of seeking team play (rather than being a team player, which carries negative connotations to me) maybe that works
FEB 26 PUBLIC POST (Ed. Seeking Collaboration and Opportunities for World Building is My Jam)
I think overall, GHDR has gone well because I've been thinking about my goals, and have distilled that down into a simpler core...my starting goal declaration was much more complicated, as it was more about the theorycrafting and exploration of my particular pain points. In the past I've just done a WINS, BLOCKAGES, INSIGHTS, and ADJUSTMENTS report, so I'll stick with that. I'll do an initial sacrificial outline sometime in the next couple of days. The above is sort of the "leading insight" so it would be the hook around which the report is structured as a piece of writing? Maybe. Typically I don't know what I'm going to say in a report, as the patterns only become clear after I force myself to read the first draft and ponder it. Building-in that draft process is super important. My "hook insights" are currently
- Constantly seeking meaningful communication and looking for collaborative opportunities is enough of a hook to provide a base level of motivation, though too many days without new interactions with people will drain this battery flat.
- Related is the constant seeking of opportunities to share what I'm doing in places where people might see and be interested. Unlike the first point, sharing requires creating, which eats energy up. This is probably something I should prioritize as even more important than seeking
- The imagined payoff of the combo share and seek is more exciting prosocial collaborative days, which would then lead to increased productivity because I'm happier and more fulfilled working towards a mission with others and care very little about doing something solely for my own curiosity.
- My curiosity itself is driven by a love of world building and people's journey through such worlds (including our own), so it's a lot of interest in "how to" and "psychology" and "tool making". World building and personal journeys mean NOTHING without other people engaging with them.
FEB 27 (Ed. Can World Economic Forum Mission/Governance by applied to Srikin Grassroots Level?)
I was browsing through the world economic forum website after reading one of their articles, and though I don’t know whether it genuinely strives for public good or is just a collection of nice-sounding sentiments, I like its declaration of systematic approaches to cooperation and understanding in the mission statements and their various centres. Then I saw their staff list and it’s all top achievers, in which a small cat such as myself would feel out of place! I wondered if their was a grassroots level organization, and it occurred to me that the colony of sri-kin could have something similar to a “model UN” except it’s a “model world economic forum”
FEB 28 (Ed. Not just comfort but matching comportment with others)
Still in a pretty happy cat mood today. Energy levels overall have been improving. Is it the longer days? It is also progress in work. It is also becoming more at-ease with GHDR goal for the year, and finding out where this small cat can find comfort in her identity and matching comportment.
MAR 01 (Ed. Competence- and material-based attraction strategies are a form of procrastination toward Team Play leadership)
Lately, I’ve been thinking about perfectionism, feeling like an outsider, and the desire to be competent. Theres a negative byproduct where I expect too much of others and flip the bozo by bit on them. It also makes me overly conscious of wanting to be around people who only want to aspire to greatness and disparaging those who do not. These are not good Sri-kin attitudes 😦 One of my versions of safety is to be stronger and better than everyone, to be the reliable anchor and nurturer in control. This is an inflexible and immature outlook, though it’s totally understandable. There’s another Sri mode that I want to push to the surface over that. It ties into how to lead through shared interest and flexible freedoms. One of my modes is to be comfortable “knowing what I know and don’t know” and being fine with that in public. When I was more of a freelance consultant type, I had no issue indicating this to director-level and above folks in conversation, as my focus was building a rapport based on negotiation theory of expressing what you want and workshopping mutuals. Applied to the kind of leadership I want, it’s being comfortable just saying what I want to people and actually recruiting them actively, without the control safety concerns based on competence. Instead, facilitating open communication to share the mission needs with those who are drawn to itz A corollary to the “negative model of safety” is feeling that I need to produce stuff before being able to recruit, as a means to “prepay for following”... while having this is great, it’s not entirely neccessary especially if it is keeping me from asking/recruiting Thoughts are still a jumble, but there is something here.