Project 35

“I’m not a morning person.” At least, that’s what I’ve told myself for years, but I’m starting to questions its validity. Is it the full truth or just a story …

“I’m not a morning person.” At least, that’s what I’ve told myself for years, but I’m starting to questions its validity. Is it the full truth or just a story I tell myself?

I think it may be more true to say, “I’m a night person.” I like the night—I like being the last person to go to bed, to revel in the silence of the darkness and to be the one to close out the night. The problem with that is that it makes it harder to wake up in the morning. I often don’t like to be the first one to wake. As much as I like the silence in the morning, I think I prefer the silence in the night.

But maybe that is dependent on many environmental variables that I often overlook. If it’s warm outside, I love the mornings—when cold, I mostly despise them. If I’m living by myself, I can be the last one to go to bed and go to bed early—if with others, I’m often waiting until they go to bed and then add an hour or two afterwards for me to go to bed. If I have somewhere to go in the morning to leave the house then I often will sleep early—if nowhere to go, then I’d rather stay up late. If I put the internet aside for the evening, then I’m often ready for bed earlier—if I keep looking at it, then I often engage in deep conversations and prolong the bedtime by a few hours.

I think that I want to believe that I am who I am, regardless of the environment. And then I reflect and realize how little of that is true. The environment shapes me so much beyond recognition. Take away TV and internet? I’ll go to bed much earlier because there are fewer distractions. Give me unlimited, fast internet with many shows to watch? Ah, I could keep delaying and delaying the time I close my eyes.

Like most things in life, I think it’s about balancing the two: environment and our reactions to it. There are many things in the environment I can change—internet, TV, time for eating, types of conversations I have at which time—and many things I can’t easily change, if at all—the weather, who I live with, work schedule, noise outside, etc. While some of those things are possible to change, they may require a lot of work and then other things get introduced to the environment.

I’m not sure what the secret is. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe it’s about tweaking and playing with both the environmental things and the internal things. Maybe it’s just recognizing that we’re humans and we’re affected by both.

So, apparently the price of crude oil didn’t go to $5 per barrel, what did was the futures price of crude oil for May 2020—and about an hour after I …

So, apparently the price of crude oil didn’t go to $5 per barrel, what did was the futures price of crude oil for May 2020—and about an hour after I finished writing, I think the price went all the way down to -$35 per barrel. Yes, negative. There is too much oil and not enough places to store it because usage is so low worldwide that people may be paid to take it—if I understand it correctly.

I believe that last point may be the most important: “If I understand it correctly.” This world has so many moving parts and so many avenues of complexity that little old me may pretend as if he knows what’s going on, but I really don’t. I know very little if anything about commodity futures, let alone oil futures. Apparently there are multiple types of crude oil. How does it get sold? Where does it get sold? How does it get transported? Who ships it? Who receives it? How is it stored? What environmental regulations are there for storing it? Does that vary state to state and country to country? How long can it be stored without going bad? Does is it even go bad?

These are just a handful of questions, and I’m sure even many of those answers are multifaceted, leading down an exponential web of knowledge and likely confusion. And that’s just for one thing! While many things have slowed down for us in quarantine, some things have sped up, and yet we may only learn at the same pace. How many layers are there to clinical trials, drug interactions, economic decisions, political decisions, protests, currency policies, food logistics, restaurant dynamics, and on and on and on.

Part of this complexity drives me crazy. I want to control things, I want to predict things, I want to know things. And yet I can’t. Goodness I have tried. I struggle even to know what a very close friend of mine is thinking, how am I supposed to comprehend all of the intricacies of how food goes from seed to table. I think trying to understand all of this has led me to tremendous anxiety.

So sometimes I pause. I look at it and go, “I don’t know…and I don’t need to know.” My body relaxes. Do I need to know how all of this operates? No. Can I know how it all operates? In my dreams, yes, in reality, 99.9% sure no (why not 100%? Because I don’t like to be 100% on things).

When I let myself not have to know how these things are working, not have to control what’s happening in the world, not have to make certain people do certain things, I feel so much more relaxed. I can feel my attention drift back to the present, instead of being stuck at a distance. I can feel my shoulders relax, instead of reaching for the sky. I can feel myself being here, with me.

Oil futures just went down to $5 per barrel. I believe gas prices in the US are now possibly less than $1 per gallon. Wow, what a change one month …

Oil futures just went down to $5 per barrel. I believe gas prices in the US are now possibly less than $1 per gallon. Wow, what a change one month can make.

We’ve been in quarantine/shelter-at-home in Michigan I think since March 19, which would be just over one month today. While it has felt like 4 years in lockdown, it has been just about 4 weeks. Many people are saying that we will emerge from this with a new normal, that things will never be the same, that this is either the apocalypse or the rebirth.

I seem to think that most things will go back to “normal” after the initial burst of being free from our homes. I believe that once the virus is either 1) not so deadly or 2) eradicated through vaccine, then we will interact and be as social as we were before.

However, maybe it won’t be so simple. I think many of us will be emotionally scarred from this experience. The newfound fear of losing our job overnight, the anger/confusion that we direct towards the government, the sadness of having to had grieved our loved ones from afar.

Perhaps that does take us in new directions. Yes, better tools for remote collaboration. Yes, better tools for detecting and treating viral infections. Yes, better tools for scientific discoveries.

But what about the downsides? Perhaps there will be increased desire for local decision making, not trusting distant institutions that we don’t know. Perhaps there will be increased desire for walled national borders, not wanting “infected foreigners” to taint our lands. Perhaps there will be increased starvation, overdose, suicide, homicide, and other crimes springing from despair, not knowing how else to resolve so much internal pain.

I don’t know what the future holds. Maybe the US is stronger after this, maybe weaker. Maybe global governance is stronger, maybe weaker. Maybe I feel stronger, maybe weaker.

I believe that we have an opportunity to frame this situation as we want. It will have plenty of “bad” things and plenty of “good” things, and I believe we can choose on which we want to focus. Do we want to focus on how the world is falling apart, causing ourselves to feel more fear, anxiety, and hopelessness? Or do we want to focus on how the world is coming together, causing ourselves to feel more joy, gratitude, and hopefulness?

In other words, is oil at $5 per barrel the end of the world or an opportunity for us to come together?

I see the former and I believe the latter.

Last night, I started watching a documentary about Michael Jordan. I grew up idolizing this man, everything from his jumpshot to his tongue sticking out. He seemed to have the …

Last night, I started watching a documentary about Michael Jordan. I grew up idolizing this man, everything from his jumpshot to his tongue sticking out. He seemed to have the ability and the drive that so few had, alongside of flair, and seemed to pique my interest as a young kid who wanted to go pro. The other person I really admired was Jerry Rice. He as well was known for a very serious commitment to working hard and having one of the most grueling personal workouts in the league.

When I was in high school, I remember going to my guidance counselor and asking him to review my applications for college. In one of them, I think for Northwestern University, I wrote an essay with the abbreviation NBS: Never Be Satisfied. He took issue with this and said he was worried. In the moment, I wasn’t sure why he said it, but looking back on it, I’m pretty sure he said it because at that time I was basically anorexic.

Yes. A 4-letter high school athlete being anorexic. I don’t tell many people about this and I was hesitant to write it here, but I knew if I didn’t, I would only be telling 10% of the story.

I had grown up as the chubby kid playing sports. Not very chubby but slightly chubby. Kids used to make fun of me for having slightly enlarged breasts, giving me “titty twisters” and causing outsized attention on it. Perhaps they didn’t notice it as much as I did. So sometime in high school, I think junior year, I said to myself that I would get 6-pack abs. I was determined. I ran a few miles every day. I drastically cut my calorie intake. The problem was, I never was satisfied. I kept exercising and kept cutting calories. At one point, the varsity football coach called my mom and said that he thought I had a problem. It broke me.

Over the next few years, I got better at eating more and became a lot more lax when it came to exercising—I let my discipline go a bit. I got scared at how disciplined I could be and how dedicated I could be to a goal, ignoring all of the signs along the way.

I think this is what the counselor meant when he took issue with Never Be Satisfied. I kept going and going and going, never believing that it (or I) were enough.

I write about this today because I think I sometimes don’t sleep well because at the end of the day, almost regardless of what I did that day, I believe that I haven’t done enough. Even if I wrote three 10-minute essays and audio recorded them and helped people process deep emotions—nope, not enough. Even if I ran life-changing workshops—nope, not enough.

Even now. Did I write enough? I hope.

Is it OK to change the rules in the middle of the game? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself over the last five days as I’ve been on this …

Is it OK to change the rules in the middle of the game?

That’s the question I’ve been asking myself over the last five days as I’ve been on this writing journey. After the first day, I realized that I didn’t want to write at 9pm because after dinner, I just wanted to chill—so I changed the evening writing time to 5pm. After a few days, I realized that I wanted to create the name of the piece before I do the audio recording so that I could read the name before going on with the text. And now today, I had the thought that while I could invite people to watch me live journal, I could also invite them to live journal themselves. I started thinking in so many directions—people could publish them as well, maybe I could built a site to help people publish, maybe this could be an app, ooooo, I could also include some of my audio reflection questions to start the show, etc.—and I quickly felt overwhelmed.

I don’t know what’s the answer about changing the rules in the middle. I don’t think there is AN answer. I read a book about finite and infinite games, and in it, the author states that in finite games, one cannot change the rules in the middle because the goal is to have a clear winner; in infinite games, one may change the rules in the middle because the goal is to keep the game going. I loved how he framed that and I guess sometimes I feel frustrated that I believe the world wants me to play finite games but that I love infinite games.

So which is this? This writing experiment, this “I will write for 35 consecutive days and do X, Y, and Z?” Maybe it’s about keeping some of the rules the same and tweaking some of the less important ones. The 35 days will stay the same, the 3 times per day, the writing live, the no editing, etc. But perhaps I can allow myself some flexibility to either change the rules or know that I may break them and forgive myself so that I can come back to following them.

I think I often worry to commit to very strictly defined games because in the past, I have been overly strict with myself into following the rules even if I didn’t want to. I can get into mindsets where I say, “No, I won’t do that because I said I would do X.” And no matter what situations would arise, I would commit to that, and it often led to much heartache in myself and in others.

What’s the answer? I don’t know. Maybe having a little more compassion for myself to let things flow, but also having more trust in the rules that I set up. I seem to fall into either the very strict camp or the very loose camp, and I’m trying to sometimes hang out in the middle.

That all being said, I’ve made a lot of typos in these writings, mostly noticing them when I have to read the piece outloud, sometimes cringing at my glaring errors. But that’s OK. Perhaps it’s about being OK with the errors in content but also in process.

Carry on.