The best thing that happened to me this week was the car breaking down. The realization of the cost of my stupidity was a motivational wakeup call. I thought of a footnote from a trilema article:
Same thing with people : “unde-i multa minte si prostie destula” quite literally means that people, irrespective of how tall, fat or intelligent, are nevertheless homeostatic, systems in equilibrium. An intelligent fellow will, voluntarily if disavowedly, balance himself out with stupidity. If he’s ten pounds intelligent he’ll find in the environment ten pounds’ worth of stupid, and go about like that, at the same pace as another, one pound intelligent, who therefore has the smarts (involuntary, he just can’t drag more around) to only carry one pound stupid, and also at the same pace as another, ten thousand tons’ intelligent, who’s decked himself in a small cruiser and goes about thusly. Among humans, the conservation of pace’s the foremost concern (a problem aggravated by an overvocal female herd, but not created by them). I, on the other hand, am not particularly intelligent — I’m just very systematicaly dedicated to not being stupid. A ten gram’s intelligence saddled with merely a gram’s stupidity will (unsurprisingly) blow out of the water a ten ton’s intelligence saddled with a battleship.
Be less stupid. I’m not even fucking kidding here.
Overcoming past problems (for example, spinning for hours before writing) has afforded me more time to be stupid. This past week I returned/created some bad habits such as: waking up late, eating unhealthy, playing the guitar and surfing as avoidance behavior, and doing subpar saltmines work.
At various times during the week I was making decisions that were against my better judgement. I knew when the fatlogic was taking hold but I still let it let play its tricks. I had the contiuous “this is the last time I make this stupid decision before I fix the problem for good” mindset.
Being more aware of my stupidity as I engage in it has brought a sense of guilt and worthlessness that I am struggling against. That sense of worthlessness my stupidity fosters is debilitating and I can see that if it’s not stopped in its tracks I will quickly spiral back down to ~my weed addiction state.
On the bright side this problem is within my ability to solve. I don’t have to move a mountain or anything, I only need to change my mindset. ((Maybe moving the mountain is easier.))
And in good news, I recovered from my bad sleeping schedule and woke up at 7:50AM today. I did this by reading Candide before going to bed (I’ve now finished the book.) I have found bliss in taking the time to learn new topics/fix misunderstandings instead of answering one-off questions. TheFleet has been humming along nicely, it has logged over 1.5million lines and has done some successful reconnects. ((It has disconnected from 4 of the 100 original networks it was logging on the first day.))
You certainly did insist on that car stupid – and add to it retracing smaller stupid because not enough otherwise or what?
If you imagine that I’ll keep somehow at bay all stupid and moreover against your own stubborn push to indulge – it’s not going to happen. Either you choose to kill your own stupid or you choose to cuddle it further and *you* will live with the results either way, regardless of whatever you try to cover it with otherwise, words or silence or weed or anything else really.
And you know, as an aside, remember you were weighing $200 for VMs that weren’t even yet clearly needed but you didn’t quite feel much need to properly weigh some thousands of $ for this purchase.
Comment by Diana Coman — February 24, 2020 @ 10:14 am
> You certainly did insist on that car stupid – and add to it retracing smaller stupid because not enough otherwise or what?
They went hand in hand. The car afforded me more ability to waste time. I went to a further location to surf and went out to meet people for lunch more often, which wound up eating hours throughout the week.
> If you imagine that I’ll keep somehow at bay all stupid and moreover against your own stubborn push to indulge – it’s not going to happen. Either you choose to kill your own stupid or you choose to cuddle it further and *you* will live with the results either way, regardless of whatever you try to cover it with otherwise, words or silence or weed or anything else really.
Ack that this is 110% on me.
> And you know, as an aside, remember you were weighing $200 for VMs that weren’t even yet clearly needed but you didn’t quite feel much need to properly weigh some thousands of $ for this purchase.
I have seen this penny wise, pound foolish bs with others and it infuriated me. I can see it with myself now too. Stupidity of the car aside, the contemplation of tiny fiat denominations for my primary tmsr task i’ve been working on for months is absurd.
Comment by Will Haack — February 27, 2020 @ 8:31 pm