Revisiting this I realize I want to make sure all of this is in FAN2.
(thread) There’s a recurring moment in multiple conversations I have had with childhood friends (90s kids) that’s quite bleak. They’re 29-30 and realising they’ve been holding on to vague scripts. not done much self-authorship. These are smart people who feel trapped but avoid facing it
The bleak/sad thing is they aren’t technically trapped. Or rather, they could free themselves if they devote themselves to it over the next 10 years or so. But I can see it in their eyes and hear it in their voices that many of them don’t want to do that.
I have met multiple people who’ve said they want families, but haven’t met anybody yet, don’t know how or where they’re going to find anyone, and it’s like “haha guess I’ll die alone”. I try to be hypersensitive to what people want+need to hear in response to that. It’s a mess.
My sense is: the trapped feeling is real, but the feeling is actually caused by a set of expectations and assumptions people have, that they haven’t thoroughly examined, that they’re yet unwilling to let go of. It’s an exquisite sort of self-torture & peers enable each other, too.
It’s kind of like meeting people who are in early-ish stages of a drug addiction, alcoholism, an abusive relationship, etc – and you try to point it out to them, and it turns out they actually already know. And they know it’s going to get worse and it might not get better.
I feel like maybe I got lucky & had my version of this crisis really early on, when I was ~17. Maybe talking through that experience might be helpful to somebody. It can maybe be boiled down to: “how do you not accidentally end up being miserable at the end of your life?”
I’ll queue up some threads that I think capture my personal thinking and learning on my personal journey through this. Caveat of course being that this is just my POV:
- unpaid work thread
- unfuck your life
- Conversation with wife: an existential crisis is really a sort of expectation crisis- it’s the horror of falling from the height of your expectations, down to the reality you actually already inhabit. It’s interesting to consider that staying up takes more effort than coming down. What is true is already so.
- How do I build more intimate relationships with people?
- wifelaughing: nobody is gonna upset, disappoint, annoy and frustrate you more than your spouse
- taste FAQs
- everyone loves to make a great introduction
- why compete when you can collaborate?
- top 10 things I’ve had to unlearn
- vvmemex
- project management
- low res models
- on ass-kickings
- take note
- don’t feel qualified to lead
- alan watts 2015
- therapeutic DIY IFS – this contains multiple subthreads
- empty your cup
- tactical stfu
- ugh fields
- art of the reply