maybe
(quote is from succession, which i have not watched but i have seen memed excessively on twitter)
(i was originally going to link visakanv’s tweet about how most people are not ready to deal with someone that is seriously prepared but i accidentally found this substack post he wrote from january of this year that from the first few paragraphs seems like it’s exactly what i’ve derived here. so i’m choosing not to read it right now to avoid accidentally melding what’s mine and his ideas while i scaffold all of this out, so that i don’t hallucinate what’s mine and his. it sounds stupid, but it’s really important to me that i derive my guiding life principles by myself. i know we’re endlessly influenced by others and make up a mosaic of everyone we’ve ever loved but it feels bad for my fragmented identity to feel deeply like a piecework right now. i’m finding my way back to the teenage me, the time i had it all figured out, and i want to really find a foundation in that so that i may feel like a peer and not collection of subcomponents. you feel? but i’ll link it here anyway for reading back later.)
ok prelude over
something i have just come to realize at the ripe age of 26, amongst the crises and shit and everything and coming to terms with what your hand is and how short life really is, and how quickly it passes if loosen your grip, is that you must take your life seriously. most people do not take their life seriously. i think about this all the time. how hard would you try to find your soulmate in this world? most people date 3-4 people, settle on someone in their hometown, and continue living their lives just content with it. or it’s like roulette, whoever you’re dating at 28 is who you pull the trigger with. but you know that who you marry is one of the single biggest determiners of your overall life happiness. knowing that, how would you not take your choice of partner as seriously as your choice of college? would you not do obsessive amounts of research? would you not focus on iterating as quickly as possible to meet your goals? would you not plan a strategy and a timeline? twenty-six summers in, how hard would you go? i just don’t understand (now) how you can be given only a single life and you’re not going as hard as you possibly can with it. you don’t want to see the absolute most interesting shit you could get away with? what’s the point of living another idle life, a copy of a life that’s been lived a trillion times over and over. you are conscious, do something interesting, leave a scribble, leave a splatter. do it.
“but i can’t” — learn how! how hard would you go? if i wasn’t born with the charisma cards i needed to live the life i thought was the most interesting, then i would work feverishly to teach myself charisma. the boulder is already rolling down the hill. you will not get a re-roll. see what you can get away with. gamble everything for love.