Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Where are you and where are you going?
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mountainFrugal
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by mountainFrugal »

suomalainen wrote:
Thu Jun 01, 2023 12:16 pm
@mF - yeah, @gravy is wonderful, but no relationship is a cure for personal shit. That's a tip, kids, write it down. We all have to carry our own crosses no matter how much we (codependently) try to foist them onto others.
Completely agree, but I was pointing out something to focus on that is closer to the here and now and is generally good.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

Yeah, understood. I'm just sensitive about the co-dependency angle having been suffocated by it my entire life. And I try not to talk too much about my relationship with @gravy here since we can just be lovey-dovey together without an audience, but yeah, when it's just her and me, life is really, really good. I could easily see looking at myself and saying "I'm so good at this life thing" if we didn't have kids. No offense to anyone who doesn't have kids and recently said they actually do have their shit together *cough* *cough*. But, man, do the kids add in some shit.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

suo wrote:Yeah. I mean, the chaotic (dynamic) vs static and simple vs complex ideas are understood. I guess I gave up the ghost in that realm when I had kids (and added even further chaos and complexity when adding in @gravy's kids).
Yes, I was kind of thinking along this line too, since I am currently helping one of my adult kids out with problems after a ten year plus post-empty nest hiatus when neither of them needed much of anything from me. However, I think it can be generalized to realms in which you have taken responsibility, invested heavily, found meaning/purpose, yet do not have a great deal of control.

When you think about the stereotype of a strategist, as a General giving orders to his troops, or old school CEO, the complex humans within the boundaries of his system have been reduced to cogs in a machine. If you do not want to be "in relationship" with other humans you have reduced to cogs, then you have to tolerate some chaos at the boundary of your complex systems. If you can't tolerate some chaos, then you somehow need to limit or boundary relationships with humans or other complexities not under your control.

NOTE: As a human who believes in embodied language and currently suffers from Crohn's disease, I am rather amused by the use of the phrase "having one's shit together", because I literally do not have my shit together.

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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by jacob »

@7 & sou -

Haha, yeah, I can't help you there. I had a good idea of what parenting would involve (older sibling, mother worked in daycare, previous relationship with someone who had children) so avoiding children was a strategic decision on my part ;-) It's amazing how much the Cynefin framework explains about the situation when you start adding "responsibility without authority or control"-type randomness into the [life] system. Existing complexity either simplifies to deal with problems in more local spacetime ... or extra effort is needed to "contain" those trouble spots. I understand a lot of parents simply outsource their precious little bundles of adversarial randomness for institutions and other people to deal with. I'll stop here though since my input is likely not helpful beyond an intellectual exercise/perspective.

classical_Liberal
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by classical_Liberal »

It is much easier to be happy, or at least not unhappy, with life's twists, when a human has the confidence that is hard earned by successfully navigating challenge and overcoming adversity. Each person may have different ideas of what a challenge is/was. Overcoming medical difficultly(beating cancer and the horrible treatment that entails), overcoming emotional hell (like divorce, or breakup) pushing oneself physically (like climbing mountains), or mentally (like a word game), or becoming financially independent.

The bottom line... The more we as humans put ourselves into the world to make ourselves happy (or just survive unhappiness), the more likely we will encounter obstacles to overcome. The more we overcome, the more confidence we have to put ourselves back into the world. Knowing we have the ability to overcome creates a positive feedback loop. The negative feedback loop of this theory; those who never get the chance to overcome (or those who feel the challenges they overcame were not important) tend to become more and more isolated from the world of happiness. This limiting the chance they are placed in situations in which they could prevail.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

Smashter wrote:
Tue May 30, 2023 2:58 pm
I found that update very soothing. It could be because I am days away from participating in a competitive sporting event that is causing me an undue amount of stress. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that the whole point is to have fun. Thanks for the reminder.
How'd the event go?

Smashter
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Smashter »

The event went pretty well, but my overall mental state was not very good. It's a multi-day event, and I had my ups and downs.

I've noticed my biggest problem time is the morning. I'll wake up way too early and all of a sudden I am absolutely bombarded by negative thoughts. I'll question my preparation and then become convinced that everything is going to go poorly. I go way overboard. I become convinced that if I don't do well it will negatively effect my life in dramatic and irreversible ways. And it's of course not just mental activity. My heart rate goes up and my whole body feels bad.

I try to meditate my way out, to think positive thoughts, to send myself loving kindness, etc. Sometimes that works, but this past weekend all that failed me. The only thing to do is to get up and start my day.

I had been doing ~1 hour of focused meditation a day for the past year or so, and I've done thousands of hours of meditation over the past 10+ years. This experience has somewhat shaken my belief in my ability to use meditation as a way to deal with acute stress. If I've done so much practice but I can't calm myself down when I actually want to in real life situations, not just on the cushion, then maybe I need to spend more time exploring different therapeutic modalities.

My actual performance at my sport was totally fine. Good even! Many people commended me on how well I did, at least one person thought I should have been voted "MVP." So, next year I hope to skip all the stressing, do my best, and let the chips fall as they may. It's embarrassing to get so caught up in something so meaningless as a 36 year old, but for whatever reason this is a battle I have to fight.

I still had a lot of fun overall. I deepened a lot of friendships and made new, meaningful connections. The social aspect was great. It's my mental fortitude with regards to the athletics that needs to improve.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

It's a little funny / striking how you seem to try to practice loving kindness for yourself in the moment, but not in the wake of its "failure". FWIW, I don't think meditation has ever been sold as a panacea or even a particularly useful mediator of "acute" stress. As Dan Harris' book calls it, it's only good for about 10% Happier. Sometimes all you can do is grit your way through the shit and then process it on the backside. Congrats on a successful tourney / event. And maybe your event was "meaningless" universally, but it was meaningful to you, and that's enough.

Smashter
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by Smashter »

It's a little funny / striking how you seem to try to practice loving kindness for yourself in the moment, but not in the wake of its "failure".
Dang, this is really making me think. When I've been reflecting on the event, I never once felt empathy or compassion or love for myself. It is always focused on what went wrong and how I can do better. I think it could be very beneficial to spend more time accepting and loving my "failures" as well.

Your points about meditation not being a panacea are well taken. I realize I am doing myself a disservice when I ask too much of my practice. As opposed to, like you say, just gritting through tough times. Or hey, why not just get the hell out of bed and get a cup of coffee or whatever? At a certain point a change of scenery is what's needed.

Often it's when I have a really strong craving for my mental state to magically change on a dime that it refuses to budge. I can hear the experienced meditators chuckling from here.

Thank you for playing armchair therapist for me in your own journal!

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

@smash Nah. I was just making an observation. If it resonated with you or gave you some therapeutic fodder, all the better! We do seem to have a similar brand of anxiety - too much examining, too little living, so perhaps that explains it.

Somewhat relatedly, and speaking of normies, I recently had this exchange with a couple of my lawyer friends who are intelligent, well-read and older (and wiser?), starting with a tweet with the caption "Our species is doomed" for an article about how it's popular or something these days to sun your taint because ... I dunno, it's a magic energy portal or something.
C: And if it weren't for the fact that the three of us and our families were involved, that would be ok.

Me: I'm not worried about the species.

C: The fact that it is only a species won't be acknowledged by 99.9%.

Me: I'm not worried about the 99.9%.

Me: Makes me wonder why the fuck I worry about anything at all.
I had already been marinating on that Seneca quote @gravy had sent me ("And so foresight, the noblest blessing of the human race, becomes perverted ... The present alone can make no man wretched."), and the text exchange was a funny example of that very thing. I worry so much about the special snowflakes in my life and their futures in this vague and abstract manner, even though I know to my very core that there's nothing special about me or them. I and they are just monkeys doing their monkey thing. We're all just living our lives, some conventionally, some not, and shit will hit the fan from time to time, but we'll figure it out, or we won't. We'll keep trying, day by day, until our time to try is over. Why fret over the cards that may be dealt tomorrow? Play today's hand.

suomalainen
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Emotional Life and Banking

Post by suomalainen »

I thought this was pretty good. An Emotional guide to 'Fractional Reserve Banking'. It's a little bit of a fun primer on fractional reserve banking, but its analogies to one's emotional life is what spoke to me*.
Most of us run a fractional reserve relationship system. As we grow up we form relationships - with family, friends, lovers, associates, and colleagues. These relationships often require us to open ourselves up to being called upon by those people. They build expectations of us, but these obligations aren't necessarily activated every day. In any one moment, you're not going to have to WhatsApp every friend and family member, and you're not required to finish every single bit of work you've promised to colleagues. Actually, it would be impossible to do that. You have a limited amount of energy, and you can only manage the obligations and promises in increments. You can't simultaneously handle them all at once, because the total amount of promises you've issued out is greater than the reserves of energy you have to deal with them at any one point.

This the fractional reserve principle. At any particular moment you only have reserves to cover a fraction of your total commitments.
there’s actually a real world connection between large-scale bank overcommittment and small-scale emotional burnout experienced by individual people. What the banking sector (and corporate sector more generally) experiences as an exciting wave of ‘optimism’ can be experienced by us at the human level as a wave of frenetic overwork. That’s because corporations only feel good when they’re increasing profits, whereas humans actually value many things beyond that. When making profits comes at the expense of family life, time with friends, and connection to the environment, you begin to feel burned out, alienated and miserable. You don't share the corporate exuberance, within which you may be but a small worker.

The opposite scenario of a financial and corporate sector retraction burns people too. As banks and corporations become introverted, workers might get to slow down, but only at the expense of losing access to income, which for most people is mediated via the corporate sector (either directly or indirectly). And, because corporates don’t like the slow-down, they'll attempt to extract more from their workers for less. Your co-workers get fired as you are expected to shoulder more burden for less pay.

It’s false to imagine that our emotional lives can be separated from the planetary scale economic structures that we are enmeshed within. To strive for holistic emotional balance, in which our emotional reserves are boosted and not drained, we must seek to bring holistic balance to our economic system too. That’s a much larger topic for another time.
I have felt some ... fracturing (fractioning?) given my split lifestyle - @gravy and her kids and her geography on one side and my kids and their (and my ~20 year) geography on the other. Add in to the mix friendships spread across the United States (and one in Finland) and my work responsibilities and friendships, and it's been a demanding few years. Most of the time, I'm able to handle it. Some of the time, boy does it feel like (mixing metaphors) Voldemort tearing his soul to create horcruxes.

I don't really have a takeaway. I just thought it was a good way to frame burnout. It allows that the life I have built is one that is understandable in a way - sometimes it will feel shitty and overwhelming, but it won't always; most of the time it will be just fine. I can pare back some responsibilities and liabilities and it will make things easier, but as Lin Yutang says, the happy medium is "when life is fairly carefree and yet not altogether carefree." It's interesting, reading some more journals and stuff again, especially by people who "made it" (retired) - they need to find something to do! It seems we can't be fully reserved in our emotional lives just as it's inefficient to be fully reserved in banking. Some risks (and liabilities / obligations) must be taken.

* Disclosure - I work in finance, so

7Wannabe5
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Yeah, this is why I say that by midlife almost everyone is polyamorous whether or not they are exhibiting it through their genitals. Although lately I've been "calling in the loan" on some of my relationships by establishing stricter boundaries.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

Pasting here my response to the what if you get zeroed thread. Must ponder this some more.
suomalainen wrote:
Sun Jul 02, 2023 9:59 pm
Perhaps I wouldn't feel responsible for being a fallback plan for my kids any more. Perhaps I wouldn't feel like they have some ownership claim on my future years and earning power to supplement their years, their needs, their deficiencies. Perhaps I'd realize that they have just as much agency and opportunity and responsibility as I do to make something of our lives. Perhaps I'd realize that we're all just monkeys and shit happens and any one of us could die at any time for any reason or for no reason and that to fear the future, even when that future contains death, is absurd. Perhaps it would strengthen us as individuals and as a family. Perhaps it would break us - as individuals or as a family.

This ^ is the only challenging part of the question. As to the rest of it - I'd just get to it.

Perhaps this question is really a gut check of whom do you trust to be competent, capable, skillful, resourceful, clever, resilient, driven and yes arrogant enough to rise to the challenge. I, unhesitatingly, trust myself. I guess I don't trust my kids. And the real question is: is that my failing, or theirs?
My initial reaction to this initial reaction to the question of what happens if you get zeroed is that I think I've unknowingly / unconsciously become my father ... I mean ... conflated a few things:

1) I never wanted to be a helicopter parent and I always tried to teach my kids that I believed in them to figure shit out, but
2) I never really found the right balance of giving them enough rope to try things out while not giving them so much that they'd hang themselves with it.

Once, way back when, we were at an acquaintance's home and they had a real shit kid. There were maybe three or four families with young kids there at some gathering and we had one or two kids, like age 3 or 4 or something. Maybe 2. In any event, the shit kid like hit my kid or something and I grabbed their kid in front of them and gave him a talking to, right in front of them. I was pissed that they hadn't disciplined their kid. Recently, I've been thinking about that story and wondering - what if I did my kid a disservice by not letting him get bullied and having to figure it out on his own (or perhaps with me talking about it with him "offline" how to deal with bullies)?

Another story: I was at the playground with @gravy and her kids. There was a merry go-round and this one shit kid (I hate shit kids) was trying to spin the merry go-round as fast as he could while a bunch of little kids were on it. I stood next to the merry go-round and as he ran by pushing the thing, I would grab each pole as it spun by slowing it. He yells out "What are you doing? I'm trying to speed it up." And I say, "And I'm trying to slow it down." I did this not because I thought @gravy's kids would get seriously hurt if they fell off the thing (the playground has like this rubber stuff on the ground), but because I did not want to have to deal with a crying kid, no matter how short-lived the episode might have been.

So back to the zeroed question and my feelings about being a safety net for my kids. Where's the line between pushing them out of the nest for their own good and telling them to fuck off for my own good?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

My current take would be that it's less of a line and more of a "both/and" solution. IOW, you are kind of trying to find the right place on a continuum between respect and care, but maybe it would be better to exhibit both "radical care" and "radical respect." (Not to be mistaken for anything like what the reactionary "tough love" camp might prescribe.)

Your kids are always going to be important members of your network, whether or not they are still "in your nest." And taking care of your social network is an aspect of self-care.

Anyways, could be worse, at least you aren't fretting because you are the parent of the "shit kid." You're always going to love them, but it's easier if you mostly like them too.

suomalainen
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by suomalainen »

Fair enough. Maybe I judge myself too harshly for designing and using the "product" in parallel rather than sequentially. Especially when the "product" has its own form of artificial (sub-)intelligence. Teens are hard. In any event, maybe it's enough to keep trying, to stay open to learning, to keep making adjustments, to "being there".

I guess going back to the quote above, I was sort of fascinated by my reaction being this idea that I could reset my orientation to them from being anchors around my neck unable to figure their shit out to them being responsible and capable of building their own lives*. From a safety net with an air bag and a parachute and an ambulance waiting nearby to bring them to a private ER room staffed and equipped to the gills to a true bare-bones safety net. And I wouldn't need a meteor strike to do it. After all, I was young and dumb once. I jumped out of the nest without even looking down to see how far the ground was and I ended up ... "fine". My parents jumped in to provide me with all of about $10,000 in financial assistance from the time I was 20. I could certainly manage that for each of my kids without any heartburn.

* In fairness, this could result from the "trauma" of my oldest who took a gap year to do fuck-all with it and has zero visible runway to becoming a self-sufficient adult. And this is not a complaint about having to care for an adult-child who needs permanent long-term care. This is about a child who seems fully capable, even if there may be some unique pathways we need to tread to unlock that capability, but has not engaged in her life in any meaningful way. for over a year.

suomalainen
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Together Apart

Post by suomalainen »

If you're turned off by PDA, you may wish to look away.

***
suomalainen wrote:
Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:39 pm
Marriage is so stupid and there's no way I'm ever doing it again. :?
Biscuits and Gravy wrote:
Fri Mar 24, 2023 3:56 pm

Riiiight. Fast forward to page 34 of your journal.
Sigh. B**** was right. We got engaged last week. I'll never hear the end of it.
jacob wrote:
Thu Jun 01, 2023 8:18 am
I'm the other way around. My temperament/personality is mostly strategic. As such, "my shit [actually] is together" and life almost never throws anything at me that I didn't foresee or prepare for well in advance. This also means not having to pay to maintain an arsenal of tactical skills that are rarely used anyway. As such I thrive in complicated and complex environments, whereas I struggle in chaotic environments (by Cynefin) that requires those tactical skills I rarely need to practice. However, I'm usually capable of avoiding the latter strategically ;-)
I do find it amusing* that at every turn I seem to take steps away from ERE-level strategic thinking and towards chaotic environments. But,
mountainFrugal wrote:
Wed May 31, 2023 5:19 pm
Out of all of this though... you also have a super capable, smart, (I assume attractive) partner to whisper sweet stoic nothings into your ear as you fall asleep. Seems pretty dope to me.
There's Something About Gravy. I've spent my whole life wanting to be with someone like @gravy. It wasn't something I chose. It just was always there. I tried so hard in my first marriage to make it work. I beat myself up a thousand times trying to figure out what tweak would finally seat and level the foundation to stop the creaking and teetering. But it never did. Such ineffectual effort broke me and soured me on marriage as an institution. I remember the day when I realized that while divorce wasn't what I wanted it was something I had to do.

Since meeting @gravy in this forum; feeling a spark with her from her mere words to meeting her in person; feeling incredible passion and connection with her from her touch and gaze; watching her give herself freely to her children, to her friends and family and even to strangers while not expecting anything in return; sharing in deeply stimulating conversation about topics requiring deep mental and emotional intelligence; sharing in laughter and grief; and sharing in the restorative effort of walking, hiking and biking together, I knew that being with her was something I had to do, notwithstanding the obvious logistical challenges and inefficiencies a long-distance blended family would present. If being in a relationship is important to me, and it is, I had to resolve the "strategic" considerations of the lifestyle with the "strategic" considerations of the relationship.

This is a relationship I need to try. Yes, it's complicated and it's messy and it's inefficient and it's expensive and it's exhausting. But in those moments that we steal together - when the house and the kids and the jobs and the travel and the exes melt away, there is deep and profound sight, acceptance, connection, passion, peace, love. Being with @gravy has opened my eyes to what an intimate relationship can be at its best, and to how safe and comforting it can be even when working through its worst.

Chaos and peace. Connection and differentiation. Together and apart. I spent the last month or two making a wood ring with which to propose to @gravy. It's made of layered veneers - half walnut and half maple. Dark and light. Abraxas. I love you, @gravy. Will you marry me?

* Is that the right word? Perhaps this one time I'll be generous to myself and go with that word.

mathiverse
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by mathiverse »

Congratulations! I'm very happy for you both!

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mountainFrugal
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by mountainFrugal »

Stoic nothings as you fall asleep it is! Congrats!

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Congrats!! This was awesome to watch unfold over the past few years.

PS- we're all invited, right?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Suomalaisen Päiväkirja

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Congratulations! Wishing you a lifetime of happy collaboration :D

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