Procrastinating again

I blog as a form of procrastination that also jumpstarts back again my productivity. Not sure if I have anything interesting to share other than I got my wisdom teeth extracted. What fun!

Part of this is kind of like, journaling to increase my motivation or to reaffirm my values and my sense of purpose. 

The work on climate change continues, but maybe I don't feel as much crunch time because I'm not working directly on climate, and it's not clear how we are going to veer into main climate. I don't know. Maybe I'm just settling into new grad and part of that is the removal of pressure / guilt that makes you want to go fast as a student all the time. Not sure. 

Like the "urgent mission" part of stuff is not really hitting me right now. But I am also doing some climate advocacy stuff on the side. So I don't know. I think the urgent mission thing will come back in a hot sec. I mean the thing I have learned about life is that you need to learn to not depend on inspiration or motivation, and that it's better to learn how to have a peaceful discipline or consistency with working on your thing for a long time, and then looking back your successes will be part of a narrative that then gives you juice to motivate yourself. Yeah.

Al Franken, Giant of the Senate (book)

You know, I think this book actually deserved 5/5 stars. It's 400 pages of some really fun stuff. 

So like, the tl;dr is that this is the memoir of the former Senator of Minnesota, and like he was one of the original comedy writers for SNL before this. The memoir is obviously therefore very funny, but moreover he spends his time talking about how he keeps getting in trouble during his campaigns and during office for making jokes. 

Unlike other celebrities, I think comedians are actually well fit to be politicians because they are highly charismatic, and moreover humor is a very strong sign of intelligence (he was also a Harvard grad) in terms of being able to connect dots in unexpected ways. If anything, I'm surprised more politicians aren't comedians. I do think it's interesting how much flak he got for his past life as a comedian, because it he made a bunch of jokes that are, I guess you would say inappropriate. But also it just shows how American politics has shifted so much where all the things he got flak for, comedy writing wise, is really minimal compared to current discourse.

Ode to sales (Dec 31, 2021)

Sales is a specific skill you can accrue over time and yet it makes full utilization of your wide variety of skills and interests. Do you understand a little bit about business, technology, engineering, economics, design, a company’s mission, philosophy, psychology, statistics, math, various industries, politics, literature, specific life experience, travel, general wisdom? All of this will be employed in the act of helping someone else through sales. Do you know about random stuff like how to nanny a child, hobbyist marine aquariums, or basketball? Great, now you can relate to other people in unexpected ways

Do you have strong empathy? Do you have good listening skills? Can you communicate with other people in a way that they can understand? Can you take your comprehension of an idea and compress it and transmit it and then have it reconstructed in the other person's head perfectly like a ship in a bottle? This is sales

We live in the future

My little cousins (you know who you are) are currently getting their piano lessons via zoom as I am writing this. And what's remarkable is that this is not even remarkable anymore. But there's literally a telepresence teacher in our room right now. You know? Crazy.

Procrastination musings December 2022

 Eh, I'm a little antsy tonight, so I figure I'm just going to blog some stuff here until it wears off. I've been jumping through a number of 5-10 books and haven't been sucked away by any of them. But I read 200 pages of Stranger in a Strange Land. In terms I've been skimming through and then putting down: Animal Liberation, Scout Mindset, The Power Law, Crying in H Mart, Smart People Should Build Things, When to Rob a Bank, The Armchair Economist, Business Adventures, The Power Law, and Idea Man. 

Well, right now I'm started getting into Factory Girls and Programming Rust (O'Reilly), so I think I will have these two as my books right now. But yeah, I think I am seeking a book that is going to be more optimistic, or give me more inspiration and centralizing focus. I do think this is a nice balance where the Rust book is instructive and the other is giving me some insight in what it's like to live on the other side of the world. But I guess I would say I'm bored right now. Something like that.