pacing in figure eights outside julietta's

cogito ergo sum?

a few weeks ago, i was waiting for a friend outside of julietta’s, which is, in my opinion, the best gelateria in new york city. granted, that’s a bold claim coming from someone who hasn’t tried a particularly high number of gelato establishments here (ballpark <10 in new york, but they’re probably all fairly recognizable). but what is life without low stakes incendiary statements designed to instigate conversation!?!

as i loitered near a fire hydrant, my phone started buzzing. this is pretty notable because i live most of my life with my phone on silent. it’s only on vibrate or ringer if i accidentally hit the volume button at some point, or am actively awaiting a call (9/10 times i am awaiting a call its from that “why wait in line? we’ll call you when the next agent is available” thing on a customer service line.)

this call, however, is from a very different kind of customer service, one where the customer is not always right. also, where the customer-proprietor relationship is actually a child-parent relationship¹. it’s my dad.

i pick up the phone. i’m not sure how long i have left until my friend arrives, but no call is too short when it’s my parents — sometimes I just say “hi I can’t talk right now but what’s up” and then we proceed to not really answer that last part and just hang up.

i let him know i only have a few minutes until i gotta dip since i’m waiting outside the best gelato place in new york. but then i keep talking, as i tend to do sometimes. a trait i’ve inherited from my father.

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earlier that day, i had drawn/painted this:

and I was super proud of the hand. i generally avoid drawing anything human because they come out looking halloween-themed (read: creepy), but this looked like a pretty decent hand!! and I even got the watercolor to concentrate in some reasonable spots to resemble shadows. generally speaking, i was impressed with myself. like holy shit. if i can do this with not that much practice and effort, i can probably do a lot of things this well. and i should be able to some of those things insanely well if i put focused effort. i just need to do that. (you may recognize this recurring theme in my life from a previous post: taking life by the reins.)

so of course, this is not a new revelation. i know this, you know this. it’s just that we are human, and humans tend to deprioritize creativity and happiness when we’re faced with priorities essential to survival². unfortunately, sometimes we confuse superfluous desire for necessity, and things get out of hand.

taking life by the reins

the same day i drew this, i had a friend call me earlier to show me some progress with their ongoing experiments in charcoal. by ongoing, i don’t mean years-long research to be peer-reviewed (me?) and published for public access on arXiv³. i mean a couple of days.

not gonna lie, even the first iteration impressed me, because i thought nothing of this person’s drawing — i’d never seen them in this context. but then i saw the third iteration of the same drawing, and it was already significantly more precise. dramatic shadows, crisper lines, attention to detail.

so sure, it’s trite. humans are incredibly talented at learning, and we’ve created a wealthy repository of knowledge that we share. it’s how we’re on top, as far as the hierarchy on this planet goes. but this is an instance where i really felt it — not just read it or thought it. that this is a human thing. we are incredible learners, our brains flexible and agile.

i feel alive, and grounded.

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the learning curve for a lot of things looks like this:

ok that initial slope is pretty optimistic but still — the point is, the first ascent can be exciting and fast. then it takes grit to keep up with the rest. for hobbies, one is usually aided by enjoyment.

i have feared at times that the reason i am a serial hobbyist is that i don’t possess the grit, and am instead chasing easy wins. i just have to remind myself that i also do plenty of things that require grit. also, alongside being a serial hobbyist, i’ve also been a dedicated one. the learning curve actually most often looks like this, with an initial flatline period at the beginning:

this painting and consequent revelation made me realize why i love serially dabbling:

1. once i acquire the basic abilities, i feel free to remain that that first plateau forever — this is not my “main gig.“

2. it increases how many people i can create common conversational ground with — they might be the domain expert, but i have enough knowledge/experience to talk beyond the surface level. it helps break the ice!

make no mistake, i still simultaneously want to be incredibly good at things. the reason i rotate domains so often is because i have this burning desire to master everything, which is obviously impossible, so this is a mechanism to get somewhere close. and for some reason, i did not take the approach of serial mastery. it would feel slower, because mastery is impossible.

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i tried explaining all this to my dad in the few minutes until my friend arrived.

as she was walking down the sidewalk approaching me, she saw me frantically making figure-8s around two poles in the sidewalk animatedly talking into the air (technology has advanced, i don’t need to hold up the phone to my ear these days).

distilling this experience onto paper screen makes it feel banal, almost, but i guess that’s the point. in the moment, it felt so much more….substantial?

i know no other way to describe the energy i possessed besides to say that it’s discovering things that makes life exciting, not learning them. or rather, that to truly learn something IS to discover it for oneself. being aware of a truth and knowing it are not the same. truth cannot be original.

cogito ergo sum? maybe it’s scio ergo sum. i’ll have to think about this one…

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inspired by the questions at the bottom of the piece format from

Alex Dobrenko`

‘s

Both Are True

, which is one of my favourite things to read on the internet (and inspired shifting my public writing to a more personal/conversational tone), here are some things i’d be curious about:

1. what’s something you feel like you’re pretty good at + how did you get there? (i know when you’re inside the domain you see the future potential of growth as unlimited and thus never feel like a pro, but really, you’re pretty damn good at that thing — just own it for the sake of this question)

2. do you think being aware of a truth (ie having read about it) and knowing it (internalizing it) or are distinct feelings? have you ever internalized something without having experienced it?

3. what does the average conversation between you and your dad look like?

4. what’s your favourite gelato place in the world? please don’t say “italy”, i need a specific google maps link.

5. what ringer setting do you leave your phone at, and how do you balance getting inundated with notifications vs being reachable?

6. what’ve you been dabbling in lately? is dabbling part of your life?

1. i flipped parent-child to child-parent for parallel structure here and now these are both c-p!

2. classic maslow’s hierarchy

3. complete sidebar: arXiv is an open-access archive (their words) for academic papers in a bunch of domains i find interesting (my words). i once tried to build a habit of periodically reading new papers to just stay in a learning mindset but failed to cultivate that, and also there are a ton of other ways to learn that currently align w/ my goals more so i’m reading books + newsletters more often these days!