Again, I’m late to updating my Now page for September, but this time I think I have a decent excuse: my son was born at the end of the month. Anyone who has had children will likely know exactly what I mean when I say that they suck up all of your time and energy like a vacuum; especially the first. A lesson learnt from this experience is that it doesn’t matter how much one prepares for parenthood, one will never really be prepared. However, though it’s exhausting and has made me occasionally contemplate jumping out the window, it’s a very rewarding endeavour and I’m absolutely in love with this little creature I call my son.
Before this wonderful event, the month had largely been spent reading. I took some time to reflect on leadership, and to form thoughts on what I see as ‘stewards’ of creative talent versus leaders who merely seek power and influence. Coordinators, of a sort. Combing through my logs, I seemed somewhat preoccupied at the beginning of the month with what makes a person ‘great’, and it appears my definition is quite a bit stricter than the general consensus I’ve encountered. For me, greatness is not purely about the scale of achievement or about doing something unique and interesting, and it’s certainly not about accumulating power or wealth, but instead it is about protecting and fostering talent, skill, creativity, and a positive but realistic, innovative attitude among a group. No man is an island and all that. It’s about recognising the potential in others, providing the means to realise their potential, and being focused on delivering something to the world that solves problems. It’s about quality over quantity, ethics over profit, integrity over ego.
On this matter, my thoughts shaped my reading and my reading shaped my thoughts as I found myself researching the history of Disney, Pixar, and Apple and read an array of books and articles about the various related leaders and their many ups and downs. Of course, these three companies have threads that tie them together in some fashion, though I think choosing these as my point of focus was likely influenced by the fact my spouse and I had been watching Disney and Pixar movies due to the fact we were soon due to have a child.
Out of curiosity, and partially self-indulgence, and despite my deep scepticism and reluctance, I decided this month to ask AI to analyse my logs for September and provide insights and patterns and such. (It’s worth noting here that I use prompts to discourage the incredibly irritating sycophantic nature of LLMs, and actively sought criticism and notes about where I repeat mistakes, lack self-awareness, and haven’t learnt. Alas, even so, many models are reluctant to decimate the user’s ego and sense of self no matter how much they request it.) I figured an outside viewpoint might be interesting and potentially revealing, though I was prepared to take its input with a large grain of salt and to read a lot of contrived connections with little creativity. Some of its insights predictably missed the mark, while some illuminated aspects of myself or my behaviour of which I wasn’t completely conscious, but many were shallow observations I could have easily made myself. Nonetheless, it wasn’t a fruitless endeavour.
At risk of being further self-indulgent, I’ll expose some of the more curious or surprising notes here for the sake of filling my Now page with what’s actually on my mind now. Firstly, it suggested my detailed critiques of books, essays, and films within my logs purportedly revealed a strong and coherent moral framework, noting as well that I ‘consistently favour [media] with complex themes of sacrifice, duty, and the consequences of greed, while rejecting [media I] find morally simplistic or shallow’. As someone who once saw themselves as moral putty, with changeable opinions and a penchant for playing Devil’s advocate, the certainty with which the model had about this observation caught me off guard. However, I can’t fault the arguments it made, and it cross-referenced multiple entries and other logs to support its claim about both the strength and coherence. Upon reflection, it seems to be a surprisingly accurate assertion. My impression of myself had aged and become a skin I had shed aeons ago unbeknownst to myself; time and experience appear to have greatly changed me. Or rather, honed me, though I have a long way to go yet. And this made me wonder about how many of us, and how often do we, hold impressions of ourselves that we’ve outgrown without realising. I thought about those people who seem to lack self-awareness to a noticeable degree and wondered whether maybe at some point in time their self-image was accurate, but they simply haven’t updated it recently.
The AI also scolded me for being, in a nutshell, emotionally clueless and guarded. Hardly original; this has become such a trope that even I’m aware of my stunted EQ nowadays. According to it, I process the world through intellectualisation and observation, using humour and an analytical lens as defence mechanisms, but the upside was that I’d been slowly shifting toward emotional vulnerability. (The downside it neglected to mention is that I’m not very funny.) Apparently I learnt that ‘true strength lies in surrender’ — whatever that means — as I navigate ‘the humility of a language barrier’, accept physical limitations, and allow myself to rely on others. AI has informed me that I’ve started to learn that I can’t simply ‘think’ my way through every problem, but that almost seems like one of those AI platitudes that really doesn’t mean anything.
Where the machine cut me back down to size after praising my growth was in pointing out that I may be addicted to ‘work’ and activity, even when my physical body is demanding rest. And when my physical body makes rest non-negotiable by betraying me through becoming ill, my mind goes into overdrive; the internal drive for productivity appears to be out of control and is going to steer me to an early grave if I don’t get a handle on it. And while I have intellectually come to understand this in the last year or two, I don’t appear to emotionally understand it at all, so I probably will continue burning the candle at both ends until I’m hospitalised. Hopefully it doesn’t really come to that; I hate being in hospitals. (Incidentally, if any readers have ever learnt what ‘to relax’ means, I’d appreciate advice. If, however, I read nonsense like ‘take a bath’, ‘start a new exercise routine’, ‘meditate’, or ‘watch television’, I will find you, and I will express my dissatisfaction in a two thousand-word essay.)
Coincidentally, my spouse and I ended up discussing an adjacent topic recently, and I was scolded and cornered for the same reasons then too, but with more nuance. Allegedly, my idea of moving on from events and not dwelling on the past looks suspiciously like simply not processing emotions, and a lot like abusing the notion of compartmentalisation. I argued, and argued, and argued, in that competitive, debate-team way that usually gets me out of the hot seat, but I sort of know deep down they’re right.
A part of me wants to share this simply so someone can write in to tell me that I’m right that emotions don’t need processing and people should just move on from the past without thinking about it, and that dissecting events in search of emotions or trauma or whatever only leads to abundant self-victimisation and copious self-pity. But I know on some level that I’m wrong. Or at least, wrong in specific circumstances. And I have tried lately to consciously think about these things and examine them; to try to experience emotions in the way normal people say they do, and I genuinely believe I’ve made progress. Yet it often feels a little artificial when I try to do the whole processing or ‘opening up’ thing. Sometimes it seems like I’m merely performing the emotions expected of me rather than actually feeling them. Like I’m forcing it. I try to explain that, when I say something doesn’t matter to me after matter-of-factly relaying events that others think I should have feelings about, it really doesn’t matter to me. I don’t feel anything. My spouse doesn’t believe me. Or rather, sees it as further evidence that I’ve disconnected myself from the grid and need to do the work to come back online. They say that burying things is only ever meant to be a temporary coping mechanism and one is supposed to process events when the time is right, not indefinitely act as though it never happened or that it has no effect. Again, I know this theoretically — sort of — but something in me won’t fully accept it.
On another note, I recently read that the compound vanillin could potentially help the body to fight infections, wounds to heal, and could reduce inflammation based on some recent research, which gives weight to my argument to my spouse that, yes, I should and must eat vanilla ice cream when my throat hurts.
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