On Living (in SF)
Squeeze every drop out of everything: document the grit and mechanics of the world as you move punch-drunk through it—talking, laughing, being an idiot, self-righteous, numb, blase, funny, sharp. Specificity is vital. Look for people who operate with high resolution, who are good at drilling down into how they think, who arrive at solid conclusions.
Being obsessed is currency in San Francisco in 2019. Being 28 feels like standing on a ledge. What else? ensure the people who have your back really have it. Aim for mental and emotional precision - articulate everything you feel and think to yourself, to others, out loud. Articulate things constantly and they will harden from the fog in your mind into something you can grip. Explain the chaos of your drives to people again and again, openly and in depth, so they can map your needs.
Worry less about the daily friction in relationships and more about the caliber of the people you're standing with: good equilibriums have a heavy gravity and tend to lock into place. Find the people you can really talk to, then talk to them until your throat is dry. Be terrified of the exposure and intensity of real intimacy but hunt for it everywhere. Hold onto those moments where you drop your guard, where you feel unarmed in front of someone you respect. Value them for how steady they remain in response. Know that being seen, being backed up, being listened to with intent is the fuel.
Try to build more than you consume. Fail. Okay, go again. Watch other people build things well and reverse-engineer their process. Observe yourself getting sharper at specific genres of thinking over the course of two months, six months, a year, five. Wake up every morning beside someone who wants you there (or so you think). It's critical to have someone in your corner who holds your hand, who thinks you are irreplaceable, ungiveupable. Own up to what you're bad at and what you're grinding to improve. Believe with total seriousness that you don't need clearance for anything. The open world is waiting for you to operate within it.
Building things requires integrity, which is just commitment to the mission. Without conviction there is zero. I'm trying to take input from the environment and output something of value. What do I want to give back? A measured response. To respond thoughtfully requires a level of belief and focus and creativity that I sometimes doubt I have in the tank. But I believe that in attempting to hunt for it, we manufacture it: necessity forces invention. I want to dig into myself, and then keep digging past the clichés, the weak first drafts, the dead ends. To keep myself constantly off-balance, to widen the search radius, to want to know. Life is a two-part excavation: of the mapped outer world, and the unexamined interior.
Honesty is distinct from transparency. In our world today every secret can be broadcast: in the guise of letting you know me better I could post photos of my macros, share my split times on Strava, shout into a mic on Twitch or trade crypto from my bedroom. The paradox of modernity is that you can stream your entire life and still not have said a damn thing that matters. Exposure can be, but usually isn't, the same thing as intimacy.
You've heard, I'm sure, that line from The Little Prince about how what is essential is invisible to the eye. To me that means I could tell you one thing that holds the signal, or I could tell you everything and it could still be just noise. You can spend a lot of time missing the mark, but you only need to hit it once.
The only thing I know about how to be more prolific? Write about the thing that carries the most weight for you, then write about the thing that weighs even more.