GHDR Report 0404: Finding Whimsy and Creating Handholds

⊕captionSometimes, an unexpected sandwich comes back into your life after a long absence, like this banh mi. Quite similar to this month's insights about whimsical expression.

Happy Groundhog Day Resolutions (GHDR) Review Day! I'd like to start this report by reviewing the insights I've had from the beginning, as I find their progression quite interesting.

Recap of GHDR insights so far...

I started the year with this question:

So far, the answer has been yesMy core values are to seek authenticity, transparency, and truth in my conduct.. The hard part is meeting my emotional need for meaningful conversation and shared purpose to motivate me through difficult tasks. Expressed in terms that Winnie the Pooh could understandInspired by the story In Which Tigger is Unbounced from The House at Pooh Corner, which lives rent-free in my brain melon.:

⊕ note

I couldn't stand looking at this as a source of inspiration. It has the wrong emotional energy for me to connect with it.

Link to source diagram

While establishing a sturdy hypothesis was a great start, I found that I hated reading it. While I like the clarity of the statements (see right), I didn't feel the heartfelt connection. Nor could I see a clear picture of what this was. It was still abstract, and I craved something that felt more tangible.

To compensate, I added a mission statement that helped conjure the right emotional tone, then added

I've split the quote into two parts, an emotional statement followed by pragmatic acknowledgement, which together implies a social contract that I think should govern operations. However, there are now two new issues:

• It didn't directly address the need for psychological safety, which I see as a prerequisite for sharing, caring, and friendship to flourish.
• It was far too serious in tone, which didn't help with heartfelt connection.

At the time, I didn't have an answer to this. Luckily, I stumbled upon a video about team play in video gamesSee the YouTube video My Case for the MOST UNDERRATED STRATAGEM in Helldivers 2 from QuantumBucket. This is an excellent video essay that journals the fun aspects of team play in a terrifyingly challenging game. that made me realize that TREMENDOUS psychological safety is a prerequiusite for the most enjoyable shared activities. This is more than mere tolerance. It must be actively cultivated.

With that in mind, I jotted this hypothesis down:

At this time, I'm not quite sure where to go with this. We'll come back to it, but first let's review how the month actually went for me.

Intermission: The month of stress and toil

I'm stressed. I'm currently focused on finishing projects this Spring without the meaningful conversation/shared work that I need to feel engaged. It's a problem that's not going to go away, so I have to gamely push through it. I'm also preparing for a month-long trip overseas, which brings with it a lot of additional stresses on top of finishing my taxes before I leave. The house is a huge mess, my emotional energy reserves are being drained by the work situation, and I'm trying to keep my body from devolving into mindless stress eating. You get the idea.

A side effect that I only now have identified is revenge insomnia and social media binges as a response to not getting my emotional reserves replenished. This also manifests as a being easily distracted from tasks that feel unrewarding. As a result, my productivity levels are "getting by" but this is not enough to create my sharing and caring land of friendship. That's a lot of work, and I haven't contributed materially to developing it. My early discussion of needing a heartfelt connection that is simple to visualize is perhaps a manifestation of my current emotional depletion; I literally have no reserve unless the work itself provides emotional energy. I feel I am constantly starved of such energy.

That said, there have been many good things to happen this month:

• Weekly gaming sessions with friends, where I was able to put some of what I learned from the Helldivers 2 video into practice
• Being invited to help with planning of a local meetup group by the librarians who were running it
• Realizing that I was being recognized in a friendly manner by more people, as I had been letting my enthusiasm show more when out and about

That said, I'm still stuck in a familiar place: I'm not able to muster the energy to build stuff that makes "the place for sharing and caring" to really deliver on my mission statement.

Revisiting the nature of psychological safety

As I mentioned above, I've been wondering how "fun" could be incorporated into my architectural planning. However, my idea of fun is really weird. I ased ClaudeAI to digest my past GHDR reports, cross-referencing them with other writing that described what I was concerned about. ClaudeAI seemed to think that my sense of fun consisted of:

• Deconstructing complex systems into components that can be recombined in novel ways
• Creating intellectual frameworks that generate practical insights
• Helping others experience things they enjoy while building relationships
• Engaging in analytically rigorous exploration that leads to shared discoveries
• Authentic exchanges where people can be transparent about their thoughts and processes

ClaudeAI described "typical ideas of fun" as being less cognitively-demanding activities that deliver immediate pleasure and entertainment, but noted that my notion of fun was not that uncommon among people who enjoy learning with strong systemizing cognitvve styles. However, I want my sharing, caring space to be be appealing to more than those who share my idea of fun. What's more important is finding the variety of heartfelt, authentic, genuine sharing. What was a fun way to do that?

Maybe "fun" is the wrong idea?

I became aware that there was a specific kind of expression that I practiced only when I myself felt psychologically safe instead of merely secure.

Up to now, I've emphasized the shared benefits that the creation of a sharing/caring/friendly place would bring to all participants. I've spent a lot of effort to pick the right words and to evolve the operational parameters that would make such a project manageable and successful, starting with just a few people. My original mission statement is targeted in this way. What if I allow myself to be selfish? What would the mission statement look like then?

I asked ClaudeAI:

What would be a more concise and fun way to express Sri's operational goals? This is where system thinkers like Sri needs the most reminding

and it generated this:

"Build cozy nests for curious creatures! Friendship needs both warm feelings AND sturdy branches arranged with care. The best meadows don't just happen—they're lovingly crafted so everyone can play their way toward belonging."

While I didn't find this text to my liking, it did sound eerily familiar. It reminded me how I used to roleplay a character in the MMORPG Wildstar. As I figuring out how online roleplay (RP) worked, I could express all the whimsy I wanted. Soon it became second nature, and developed such an attachment to my characterCharacter profile: Sri Nutmoon that I adopted the name "Sri" for myself as I navigated gender transition just to see what it would feel like.

What I liked about MMORPG Sri was how her quirky playfulness burbled cheerfully over a ironclad belief in friendship and personal development as she sought to overcome her limits. Her dialog didn't make a lot of sense at first because her mental frame of reference was deeply personal, but over time I hoped that her themes would slowly reveal her character to others.

Maybe I haven't pushed the coincidences far enough for myself. What it comes down to is that I don't know what it means to be my authentically whimsical self. I feel that I have to be guarded in what and how I express, unlike MMORPG Sri. This is, perhaps, what underlies my unsecurities about fitting-in and making sense to people, concerned about being misunderstood or evaluated with skepticism. This is the kind of thing that triggers my core values; as someone who believes in practicing authenticity, transparency, and truth-seeking as a way of life, it's extremely disconcerting when I think the way I talk is itself the barrier. The public writing I do is edited to be more reasoned and logical, but it's restrained.

Perhaps I have internalized the need to systematize my understanding of the world as a way to protect my own heartfelt emotions. And I have to admit that my writing benefits from restraint more than not. That said, I think there’s a hidden vector that could link feeling safe from judgment with authentic expression of whimsical notions that burbles beneath the surface of my outward analytical presentation.

I don't know that looks like. It's a big transition! But let me make a note of what question I'll consider over the next month:

If I can find some answers to this, I think that will help link the mission statement to a sense of something that's not-so-serious. Ultimately, I want to be having a good time, but "fun" is not a useful metricThis is strongly related to my aversion to applying gamification techniques to non-games without understanding that it is genuine connection to meaningful outcomes that are at heart of a successful game. It often associates "fun" with mechanics alone, which is stupidly shortsighted..

Making progress on the mission statement

As interesting as this insight is, the point of this year's Groundhog Day Resolutions is to make progress on doing the things that lead to that Happier and Successful Sri. I've identified the place where this version of Sri lives, her own vision of The Hundred Acre Woods where Winnie the Pooh and friends inhabit. Now I need to operationalize the vision into tangible form, which I'd like to implement as intriguing artifacts that pique deep responses in those who stumble upon them. I'll define these as such:

Let me break that down:

• A psychological handhold is something that serves as a bridge to further interaction. These are tangible, useful, adaptable, and shareable by anyone who comes across them. Ideally, they are perceived as treasures by those who recognize the implicit traits as mirroring their own values.
• A Sri-kin is an individual who shares some personal values with me AND also finds the ideals of Groundhog Day Resolutions and my desire to create community spaces in alignment with their own efforts.

The psychological handhold artifact is the linking mechanism that doesn't just demonstrates ideal traits in tangible form. It also serves as the proof that this is not must empty talk, as it is useful in itself. With consistent delivery of additional artifacts over time, this helps show that I'm serious about doing something rather than just talking out my ass. To date, I feel that a lot of my grand vision has been mostly talk, but arguably I've been building a more precise understanding of my limitations.

Will this be another failed attempt, or will I make it a little farther down the path to implementation? I think I can focus on something I can make and share as this is what I have enjoyed in the past making productivity tools and writing documentation. Linking this innate drive back to the mission statement might help with motivation, and the more people who decide they want to camp-out with me nearby with their own projects the better. And such artifacts could serve as hard currency to lubricate future conversations: "hey, here's the thing I was talking about." It's a lot easier to decide to act based on something in your hand rather than just an idea, after all.

There are quite a few organizational ideas I'm writing about that I'll share later, probably once I'm overseas and am away from the distraction of work. But that's it for now...thanks for reading along, and I hope that my words made some kind of sense.

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