AE's Journal Round 5 - Finding Freedom To

[AnalyticalEngine]

Thanks, @inkolore, glad the journal resonated with you! It's been an arduous journey, but I do feel like I'm at least in a significantly more healthy place now than when I started. Going into FIRE/ERE, I was blindly stuck inside a very unhealthy mindset of assuming everything would always suck combined with unrealistic escapism. It's a recipe for never trying anything in life because you've already assumed that work sucks, people suck, hobbies are too expensive, etc. That was a major problem for me because I completely gave up exploring my options and then just settling for something I didn't like. If you assume everything is always going to suck, then yeah it's always going to suck because you don't LEAVE situations that you could easily leave for something better.

@grundomatic - I feel you on that, and it's an absolute slog. This is honestly one of the worst parts about depression--it robs you of the ability to feel joy in anything you do. But then doing nothing will make you feel 100x worse, and so you end up having to force yourself to live some high-functioning lifestyle because functioning is bettering than non-fuctioning, even if everything you end up doing in order to maintain this is completely devoid of anything joy or fun or meaning.

I'm only two weeks into this, so I don't want to get too ahead of myself, but I do feel like it is slowly starting to make a difference. I am starting to feel significantly better, although I anticipate this may take a few months because depression can have a lagging effect.

I've been trying to do some self-cognitive behavioral therapy, which has also been important. One trap I realized I was falling into was somehow deciding anything that could remotely be fun was "bad." Like hanging out with friends is "bad" because I'm "wasting time." Playing video games for an hour after a hard day of work is "bad" because it's "escapism" and I could be darning socks and organizing my pantry lentils. Writing is "bad" because it will "never sell." There's no point in practicing art because I have no intention to ever do it professionally etc etc. It's like if there was any possibility I could enjoy something, I need to not do it because I should be doing some more efficient, productive, important, socially-approved activity instead.

So I've been trying really hard to be positive and let myself enjoy things. Even if I feel like I'm just going through the motions with it sometimes, and even if I still have to be very careful not to let well-earned downtime turn into depression escapism, I'm hoping the mindset will eventually start to stick on its own subconsciously and help.

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Building a Social Life - Part 128

I decided I need to spend more time exploring things I am not familiar with/find uncomfortable this weekend, and so I decided to go to a social party event instead of my usual hobby groups. Damn, was it an entirely different experience!

I've written a lot in this journal about my struggle to make friends, and I'm starting to realize why I have had so many problems here. It's because I keep going to things that attract people who are either not looking to make friends or severely lack social skills to the point going to the group is not even fun for me. Just imagine the personality type who is usually going to Dungeons and Dragons or book club or writing group and you'll see what I mean.

But at social party event, people were, and this is shocking, actually wanting to meet people and actually wanting to be friends and also much, MUCH better at conversation than everything else I've been trying. It was a shocking, night-and-day difference. And it's entirely obvious in retrospect. If you're wanting to make friends, you need to go to places where the goal is to make friends.

It's making me think that hobby groups are really not a great place to meet people because people there usually just want to go to the hobby and then go home. It's these events that are about socializing with no other goal that contain people who are looking to make new friends.

Also, I can treat parties like speed dating where the goal is to talk to everyone at least once and then find the handful of people you click with and try to talk to them more. If there are people you don't click with, it's not a big deal because you can just find other people to talk to. Again, unlike the book club, which might contain only 5 or so people, and so if you don't click, it's the entire event that's a problem now.

I'll try to fit events like this into my schedule more intentionally, as I think this is a way better way to meet people than what I've been doing.

[grundomatic]

@grundomatic - I feel you on that, and it's an absolute slog. This is honestly one of the worst parts about depression--it robs you of the ability to feel joy in anything you do. But then doing nothing will make you feel 100x worse, and so you end up having to force yourself to live some high-functioning lifestyle because functioning is bettering than non-fuctioning, even if everything you end up doing in order to maintain this is completely devoid of anything joy or fun or meaning.

Quite a change to have to turn my "hype man" moves inward on myself, but I found that once I could convince myself that showering and going to work was better than crying in bed all day, I could pump myself up for the little things. "I'll drink their tea instead of mine. Ha!", or "Oh, I think I have one more package of candy in my desk drawer!"

...I could be darning socks and organizing my pantry lentils.

I laughed out loud when I read this. Coming from a place of depression, nothing is ever enough. Even if the socks were darned and the pantry lentils (lol) were organized, the insidious D would tell you that you suck for not yet building that automatic rainwater catchment and irrigation system from a discarded trash can and an 80's swatch watch. Furthermore, you are not up to par, getting your plants from Home Depot instead of starting from seeds that you collected from bird poop at the top of a 14er you bagged after cycling a century to get to the base of the mountain.

Building a Social Life - Part 128

You are on a roll today!

Just imagine the personality type who is usually going to Dungeons and Dragons or book club or writing group and you'll see what I mean.

Well, that's it. I guess you aren't welcome in the treehouse anymore! Someone's mom made us cookies, too, so there! I'll give you DW's # and you two can go be socialites. I'll teach @DustBowl to play MtG instead. *mumble mumble had even saved a mythic dragon for you mumble*

Now I'm cracking myself up.

[Jin+Guice]

Wait were you not partying?!? i feel like I've failed you in every possible way.

[ertyu]

was this a social event someone invited you to or a general meetup?

[AnalyticalEngine]

@grundomatic - I know, I know, I've lost my geek card. In all seriousness though, I think my biggest problem is I've been really unlucky at some of these geek events and the specific type of social dysfunction is something I'm tired of dealing with. The issue is not the well-adjusted people who happen to like DnD. The issue is everyone crazy I keep running into. I will list actual examples now because I don't think I've communicated to the forum just how bad this has been:

- One person who literally insisted they literally identified as a cartoon character and would get mad when people didn't address them as such (I am not making this up).
- At least two instances of people who were clearly involved in abusive relationships.
- Someone who would talk at length about their teen wolf erotic harry potter fanfiction and would not stop.
- The schizophrenic with the criminal history.
- 60-year-old dude who got dumped by his girlfriend the day before and would not stop trying to ask me out.
- The guy who wanted to know if I was interested in overthrowing the US government.

So you see now why I just want to talk about work and the weather at this point. Additionally, the normal people I do manage meet at these things tend to be so introverted that they don't want to be friends or do things outside of the club.

After reading the Kegan book, I think the mistake I'm making is trying to filter along hobby lines first when what I really need to do is filter along Kegan level as the first metric. It's a hell of a lot easier to get along with someone who is Kegan4 and emotionally stable but who shares none of my interests than it is to get along with someone who shares my interests but is stuck at Kegan2. The more normie events seem to just attract more stable people who are genuinely interested in doing things with other people, so they seem to be a better place to start. From there, I can find the handful of people who share my hobbies/background rather than start with people who share my hobbies/background while trying to (painfully) filter out the Kegan2 people.

@J+G - Rest assured, given that I am currently abstaining from alcohol (and sugar, and caffeine...) for reasons of mental health, there is no danger of me having too much fun. Still, even going to these things completely sober and eating salad is proving a better way to meet people than other things I've been doing.

@ertyu - It was a general meetup for people in their 30s-40s. I think the age limits here were actually a big reason I found it easier to connect with people. Most people going to specifically social club meetups (as opposed to hobbies) seem to be single and without kids, which makes sense, and this background of same age + same life circumstances helped a lot. Plus everyone at general social events seem to be genuinely looking to make friends instead of just doing the activity and then going home.

[AnalyticalEngine]

More on Kegan and Social Strategy

After reading more Kegan, I have been able to formulate the essence of my community problem and propose a solution.

The issue I've been running into with finding community is I have an uncommon cognitive style combined with a minority identity status. Specifically, I self-diagnose myself as being at the MHC-Systemic cognitive level combined with a Kegan4 social style. Per dearest Hanzi, MHC-Systemic is about 20% of the population, while Kegan4 is about 35% of the population. Given these two populations are likely to share some correlation, I'm going to guesstimate the number of people who are MHC-System + Kegan4 to be 15% of the population. Uncommon but not impossibly rare.

The problem happens if I want to find people who are MHC-Systemic/Kegan4 and share my life experiences, which are much, much rarer. Lesbians, for example, are only 1% of the population. So if I decide I can only have community with MHC-Systemic/Kegan4 lesbians, this is limiting my friend pool to only 0.15% of people. Ouch!

Clearly this is a terrible strategy, but these numbers are what I've been banging my head against in the past. The way forward needs to involve reformulating this problem so I can solve it with a better strategy than trying to find a needle in a haystack.

I think what I need to do is cast a wider net inside environments that are going to pre-filter out Kegan2 people or incompatible Kegan3 people and leave more people who are either compatible Kegan3 or Kegan4. How I'm determining compatibility on a Kegan3 level is if their social paradigm has a social role that I'm comfortable filling. So if their social background demands that all gay people go to hell, for example, we are probably not going to get along. But if their social background says going on cruises to Jamaica are the highest goal in life, honestly I can work with that. Maybe I'm not into cruises to Jamaica, but I can find some overlap in my experiences here if I try, and being asked to fit into the travel buddy social role is something I would enjoy. And while its true I'm not a part of the consumerist Kegan3 tribe, I can play the role when needed to foster connection in a genuine way by finding overlap in my authentic experiences, especially if I simply accept this person is Kegan3 and I can't expect them to have a sudden epiphany into the nature of consumerist society instead of going on cruises.

In retrospect, a lot of the social conflict I've had in the past was because I expected Kegan4 behavior out of Kegan3 people (or even worse, Kegan2 people), and this just is not going to happen. As a general rule, I try to avoid Kegan2 people now, but making friends with Kegan3 people, who are over half the population, is a skill I can actively cultivate. And I can do this by finding Kegan3 people who are compatible who are looking for more connection.

On Intimacy and Intersubjectivity
Connection with other people depends on intimacy. We can define intimacy as experiencing the same subjective state as another person at the same time. Now obviously, the more median you are, the easier this is going to be. You are the norm, and most other people are the norm, so you are likely to have more overlap in subjective states. Of course, even the most normal normie is still going to experience occasional alienation, but there is less barrier to entry in subjective overlap with others.

There is a serious danger in long term alienation, however, if you are any kind of minority (cognitive, personality, racial, sexual orientation, whatever), and you fail to learn the skills to build connection along other identities and experiences. Because what happens is that you are so used to failing to experience the same subjective state as other people at the same time such that you come to the conclusion that you will never experience that kind of intersubjective overlap and simply give up trying. This becomes a self-fulfilling cycle of not even trying to connect with other people because it never worked in the past, and you can get locked into alienation. And then "loner" and "alienated" become identities, and you start to see yourself as someone who just can't connect to other people, and thus we have a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Way Out
The solution to this problem is to cultivate diversity in experience so you have more avenues for connection to make up for what you're missing in your minority status. Then seek out people with whom you can connection along these avenues. Even if they are coming to the connection from a place of Kegan3 social roles, you can still make this work with enough awareness and experience. Understand that no one person is going to be everything, but that's fine because your interactions with other people are what communally build the experience. You just have to be more strategic and intentional about what you're doing and looking for.

[Jin+Guice]

Hey, I'm sorry you are feeling isolated alienated and having trouble making friends.

I'm not sure that self-diagnosing yourself with various disorders and relying on complicated mental models is the best way to make friends.

Based on what I know about your situation, I think you are experiencing a demographic problem. You aren't exposed to the types of people you want to meet.

I'm not sure this group is limited to lesbians with MHC-systemic who are Kegan4. Why is 1 level of connection down from this Kegan3s who think going to Jamaica is the pinnacle of human existence?

What types of people are you meeting? Where and how are you meeting them? What types of people between Kegan3 Jamaica Cruisers and Kegan4 MHC-systemic lesbians are you interested in meeting? Where do these people live and where do they go to have a good time?

[AnalyticalEngine]

@J+G - What I'm really trying to do with this post is communicate a subjective state. This isn't really how I act in person, and the examples are mostly to make it easier to read/more entertaining. Although I do agree I'm having a demographic problem.

My current strategy is to get to a more mentally stable place before I upend my entire life. To do that, I'm trying to make a few more connections here to practice my skills.

I think I've largely made the mistake of trying to meet people at classes (people at classes don't always want to do stuff outside of the class) or just been in social situations where everyone has a bucket of personal problems and have just been unlucky.

In the very near future, I'm going to take two more classes at the police academy and DA's office (these are probably going to have the class problem still but I already signed up, and I genuinely want to take these classes) and try to make more connections at the 30s-40s social club. Also I was going to try a coed softball league after I learn to play.

Where I've been trying to meet people is board game club/DnD (highly do not recommend), writing groups (mild success here but again, it's hard to do things outside of the group), and a book club (meets too infrequently, although i am slowly making friends).

The issue is people at most of these things skew nerdy introvert and just don't want to hangout much. I basically need to put more effort into meeting extroverts.

[grundomatic]

So if the struggle is prying introverts from their house for a second time in a week, the struggle with extroverts will be that they already have plans with someone else. Jackpot would be connecting with someone that will invite you along with them. "Saturday? Can't, pub crawl. Sunday? Sorry, disc golf then BBQ. During the week? Well, Monday is toastmasters, Tuesday is rock climbing, Wednesday is...say, do you want to just join me?" DW has had luck meeting people by being the meetup host and just posting all the things she wants to do anyhow, but she is built for that kind of stuff (FeSi).

I think I get what you are saying with what you seek. You want to interact with adults. If not someone that is super interesting, at least someone that can be expected to behave, and that paying to do something "consumery" with them would beat the hell out of doing free things with K2 man-children. Have I got that right? Also, you have new stories since we discussed it. The weirdness never ends for you, does it?

I also think you are right about having to cast a wide net. It's been discussed around here a lot, nobody is going to check all your boxes. You are going to have to be the person from the previous paragraph and have your history friends, your FIRE friends, your running friends, your Hanzi friends, your Russian friends, your philosophy friends, your PD friends, your computer friends, your dog friends, etc. If you are flexible, one strategy might be to just do whatever else your existing contacts are doing, even if it's not your first choice. Make your go-to question "what else do you like to do?" Knitting party with your writing friends, bowling with your PD friends, paintball with your dog friends, and so forth. Branch to new nodes from existing ones, while strengthening the bond to the first node. What you lose in diversity may be worth it for reduced effort in branching out, at least when starting from a place of limited energy.

[AnalyticalEngine]

So if the struggle is prying introverts from their house for a second time in a week, the struggle with extroverts will be that they already have plans with someone else.

This is a good point, and something I've also noticed with my more extroverted friends. As an introvert who is extremely intentional with how I spend my time, the extrovert with a bunch of other obligations completely baffled me at first, but I've since come to see this is just how some people are. Again, the key really is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Ideally, if I have enough friends who are all well-connected, they will invite me to stuff and then I'd have a wide range of activities to choose from. Actually, getting continually invited to stuff by someone who is well-connected is a goal of mine, because then you can meet new people who all have their own networks. I just need to break into this social area by finding a handful of people to get me started, so I'm hoping the popular meetup groups might be able to do this.

I think I get what you are saying with what you seek. You want to interact with adults. If not someone that is super interesting, at least someone that can be expected to behave, and that paying to do something "consumery" with them would beat the hell out of doing free things with K2 man-children. Have I got that right?

Yes, this is 100% what I'm trying to say. I've noticed I've developed this habit of being evasive with what I'm trying to say on the forum to keep it politically correct, and I think it's becoming a problem because it makes what I'm trying to say unclear.

As an example from personal experience, I've been trying to make friends with regular FIRE people in Denver, all of whom are high on "shit togetherness," but are somehow also extremely spendy. I just accept the spendiness and try not to let it influence my own behavior.

More specific example: I was talking to someone who was spendy this weekend about their recent trip to Europe, and I find out they went on an expensive guided tour to Croatia. While I'm not one to spend a ton of money on vacations, and while their tour was spendy, consumery, tourism, I am still able to have a very interesting conversation with this person because I have an interest in Eastern European history, they went on the trip there, and we both have actual conversational skills. Whereas with Kegan2 man-children, the conversation usually turns into me getting continually talked over.

Also, you have new stories since we discussed it. The weirdness never ends for you, does it?

It really doesn't. I'm even sanitizing these stories for the forum. It's about 100x worse than it sounds.

I also think you are right about having to cast a wide net. It's been discussed around here a lot, nobody is going to check all your boxes. You are going to have to be the person from the previous paragraph and have your history friends, your FIRE friends, your running friends, your Hanzi friends, your Russian friends, your philosophy friends, your PD friends, your computer friends, your dog friends, etc. If you are flexible, one strategy might be to just do whatever else your existing contacts are doing, even if it's not your first choice. Make your go-to question "what else do you like to do?" Knitting party with your writing friends, bowling with your PD friends, paintball with your dog friends, and so forth. Branch to new nodes from existing ones, while strengthening the bond to the first node. What you lose in diversity may be worth it for reduced effort in branching out, at least when starting from a place of limited energy.

This is a good strategy, and I'll give it a try. Spending more on exploration is important when you're trying to decide a new path, so doing more stuff that isn't my first choice is going to be important in expanding my horizons.

[fingeek]

I find it quite useful to have a few different groups of friends, each having their own level of groupthink. I tend to disagree with them all in various ways, but not enough to hate the whole meetup experience, and I also find it gives me a reflective surface to either expand and change/fix my thoughts or strengthen my thoughts on a particular idea.

[ertyu]

Right, but if they're only mirrors, how deep or meaningful is that "friendship"? If one settles for it, one deprives oneself of authentic connection, which imo is where the true importance of friendship lies

[AnalyticalEngine]

Interestingly, what @fingeek is describing is known in sociology as the looking glass self. The general idea of it is that we can't really know ourselves without other people to contrast our self against or provide feedback. An example is that I never felt "American" until hanging out with a bunch of foreign nationals where I'm the minority. Then suddenly all the ways in which I'm "American" become very obvious and I suddenly very much feel "American."

More on topic, what I'm slowly learning here is that a wide range of social connections are important. Some people will be genuine friends but some people won't, and both types of relationships are important in different ways.

I think another way to go about this might be to make an inventory of all the activities I'm doing by myself then try to replace them with a social equivalent. For example, gym class instead of solo treadmill time, meetup instead of going out to eat alone, etc. Working in an office, leaving activities as solo was fine. But working from home, it's more important to turn normally solo pursuits into something social to meet people.

[fingeek]

Thanks for the link! More down the rabbit hole I go .

FWIW, I do have a number of good friends in each group where we do have very polar opposite views on various things (politics, beliefs, life plans), but because we are happy to engage in opposite views then the mutual respect is there. In all cases we have some sort of commonality - interest, goal, or hobby - which I think is probably the key to keeping the relationship more sustainable long-term.

So I agree that having a range of social connection is important, you may find that your deepest connections are the ones you strongly disagree with in certain areas - promoting growth.

It's also interesting to see you're kinda battling with two opposing beliefs of your own - that solitude is important (easier? less risky?), and that belongingness is important too. Resolving that, I've found, is challenging, and has involved me digging into my true beliefs and values hierarchy, working out what motivates myself to want those things.

[grundomatic]

More on topic, what I'm slowly learning here is that a wide range of social connections are important. Some people will be genuine friends but some people won't, and both types of relationships are important in different ways.

I remember "the literature" indicating that lots of loose connections has health benefits (probably psychological), at least for the "average" person in their data. The barista that knows your order, the ladies at the library that recognize you, the person you see in the same place on your weekly run.

Furthermore, the best connections (like jobs and partners) often come from people 3 degrees separated from yourself. Your PD friends know about all the same jobs at the police department, the FIRE crowd knows all the same single people for you to meet, but the spouses of these people have friends that are embedded in entirely different networks.

[AnalyticalEngine]

It's also interesting to see you're kinda battling with two opposing beliefs of your own - that solitude is important (easier? less risky?), and that belongingness is important too. Resolving that, I've found, is challenging, and has involved me digging into my true beliefs and values hierarchy, working out what motivates myself to want those things.

This has been a big theme of the past year. I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually an introvert or I've just been in terrible social environments my entire life (aka Mormonism) that trained me into believing it's easier to do things by myself. When social situations are tiring, I find it's because I'm constantly shoving away my first impulses and trying to act like how everyone wants me to act. This is a habit I'm trying to unlearn because being pathologically accommodating makes socializing draining and not fun.

So instead of all socializing being bad, I am slowly trying to learn the idea that some situations are draining (being nice at work to crummy coworkers, my former experiences inside Mormon hell, dealing with Kegan2 folks), but not everything has to suck. I can, in fact, go to parties and talk about history, and people will actually find this interesting.

A lot of my passion hobbies are things I do by myself (writing, drawing, etc), so my plan going forward is to spend roughly ~4 hours a day (the maximum daily focus ability per the research) on solo deep work pursuits then attempt to socialize after I've already drained all my good focus time. This is still a bit challenging because working from home and living alone means I always have to go out of my way to do things/meet people, instead of having socializing as a byproduct of other activities, but this is a good start toward rebuilding the system for more connection.

Furthermore, the best connections (like jobs and partners) often come from people 3 degrees separated from yourself. Your PD friends know about all the same jobs at the police department, the FIRE crowd knows all the same single people for you to meet, but the spouses of these people have friends that are embedded in entirely different networks.

That makes a lot of sense. If you're looking for completely new leads, people who are connected but separated from you are a good resource. The fact they are inside degrees of your network means they have opportunities that are close enough for you to act on but far enough you would be unlike to find them all by yourself.

[Jin+Guice]

Ok, noted that you are not using mental models while at events meeting people.


Perhaps I am only projecting, but I think the key to improving social skills is to figure out which part of the social dance you are messing up in extremely specific detail. Because thinking about social engagement doesn't work very well, you can only really "practice" one thing at a time. It's difficult to keep the whole framework in mind.

Based on what you've said, it doesn't sound like you are getting exposure to the right types of people. This is probably a macro problem (I can't find a FIRE person here to save my life, but I am awash in broke lesbians who won't stop talking about history), but it still exists at the micro level. So I still ask:

What types of people do you want to be meeting?

Where are these people likely to hang out?

I'm starting to wonder if I'm actually an introvert or I've just been in terrible social environments my entire life (aka Mormonism) that trained me into believing it's easier to do things by myself. When social situations are tiring, I find it's because I'm constantly shoving away my first impulses and trying to act like how everyone wants me to act. This is a habit I'm trying to unlearn because being pathologically accommodating makes socializing draining and not fun.

So instead of all socializing being bad, I am slowly trying to learn the idea that some situations are draining (being nice at work to crummy coworkers, my former experiences inside Mormon hell, dealing with Kegan2 folks), but not everything has to suck. I can, in fact, go to parties and talk about history, and people will actually find this interesting.

Ok this sounds like a lot of the problem. I am again sorry this happened to you. Working to undo mental blocks is I think a lot of what holds us back. And it's so frustrating because they are so hard to see and so hard to undo. *sigh* Ask me how I know.

What would it look like if you were yourself in social situations?

What are the warning signs that you are slipping into accommodation?



I also meant the partying comment literally. I find the most engaging social activities are house parties (I think suburban breeders usually call these BBQs), dinner parties and small gatherings of 3-5 people. Bars are a weak but still viable substitute for house parties. Do you dislike these events bc of introversion?

[AnalyticalEngine]

Alright so

What I ended up doing was ditching all the weirdos I know and instead trying to be as active in the Denver FIRE community as possible. Holy shit, was this a great decision. FIRE people are usually actively looking to make friends outside of work and have their shit together, so it's a vastly better place to look for friends than Manchildren-R-Us.

I could write about this for paragraphs, but I'm going to spare everyone the words and just say the mistake I was making socially was the same fucking mistake I was making at work. Mainly, I assumed everything was going to suck, and so it did suck because I wasn't taking action to get myself out of situations that sucked or actively look for situations that are enjoyable.

Like about 95% of my issues in life, what I realized is I'm just repeating Mormon lessons in my adult life. It's a big belief in Mormonism that this earthly world is fallen and terrible and we should endure suffering and be a martyr because happiness is evil and anything you might enjoy is sinful etc etc.

Actually this same damned attitude is what drove me to FIRE and is what's been driving me to spend zero money and just be vaguely sad and poor and staring at the window at people playing in the streets while very sad film noir music plays in the background and I drink cold, overbrewed coffee.

So what am I going to do about this?
A few things.

1. I am going to change the format of this journal. I think this will be my last entry in this Round 5 journal and then I'm going to start up a new journal that's written in a more memoir-style with fewer updates (perhaps only quarterly updates?). The focus will be running prototypes of changes I want to make because I need to put more effort into exploration.

2. I am going to be spending more money on these prototypes. Viewing spending as the root of all evil is coming from Mormonism for me, and given I have the damned money, I'm going to spend some of it going outside. Really my main focus is going to be travel, classes, and social events, so I expect mainly to spend more on those categories as well as housing. Because again, I'm putting more effort into exploration before I over optimize anything.

This round five journal has been a transformative experience in my life, even if many of the things I wrote about here were personally very painful. I feel like I went through a massive shift in clearing out mental baggage and regaining my sense of agency. I couldn't have done it without the support of everyone here, and so I thank everyone. I think I've finally done enough personal growth to move on from the depression, and hopefully these prototypes will lead me somewhere interesting for the next phase in my journey.

[AxelHeyst]

Congrats!! Looking forward to the memoir journal.

[grundomatic]

...just be vaguely sad and poor and staring at the window at people playing in the streets while very sad film noir music plays in the background and I drink cold, overbrewed coffee.

I love the new tone and imagery. I'll be looking forward to reading "AE's journal round 6: Don't expect much, I'm busy now", complete with upbeat music and a montage of you laughing in different locations.