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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 12th, 2023

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  • He’s a new manager working through a merger. He may be friendly and approachable, but he’s got a lot on his plate.

    He asked everyone to stay in their position. you applied for a new position. In his eyes, what kind of impression might you have made? Now he may still be friendly and approachable. More than likely, he saw it and said, “I don’t have time for this.”

    If you want a change and need to do it through your manager, figure out what his problems are and if you can be helpful. If not, just do your job well. Then when the difficulties of the merger have balanced out, you may have space to ask again.

    During a merger, things are complicated and messy. He has pressures that you may not be aware of. Advancing in your workplace often requires soft skills. They may seem mercurial and difficult, but it’s just a set of skills.

    As for thicker skin, first feel what is happening. Don’t try to change it or wish it different. Gather data about how your emotional mind works and work with what it is and not what everyone says it should be.




  • I think every dad has this story. I remember having my boy talk at me for almost 10 hours straight. I was solo parenting during the pandemic. His mom got home, I served dinner, and he kept talking at me.

    Somewhere in my mind, I thought, “His mom’s home. He’ll talk to her.” Nope. I had a quiet explosion. My wife noticed and graciously turned conversation to her.

    With that said, several years later, it’s a delight to see how he’s piecing information together in meaningful, insightful, and surprising ways. Still obsessed about a few things, but more interesting observations.




  • I figured I’d dig a bit and find the source. It’s from a 2006 NYT article. Here’s the quote in context:

    It turned out that Mr. Buffett, with immense income from dividends and capital gains, paid far, far less as a fraction of his income than the secretaries or the clerks or anyone else in his office. Further, in conversation it came up that Mr. Buffett doesn’t use any tax planning at all. He just pays as the Internal Revenue Code requires. “How can this be fair?” he asked of how little he pays relative to his employees. “How can this be right?”

    Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare.

    “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

    This quote is nominally about the ruling class manipulating the state for their own benefits. However, I don’t think he would do away with class as a Marxist revolution would. Rather, he thinks class warfare would end when the rich are taxed a proportion equal to the working class. The state would still exist in service of the bourgeois, ownership of the means of production would still be theirs, and society would still be shaped by them.





  • It can be interesting to have high moral standards. No one goes around thinking they have low moral standards. Rather, most people conceive of themselves as having high standards that still make them socially relatable. Some people use their high moral stands to isolate themselves. This can lead to either sadness or hubris. Either way, these standards can make it difficult to connect them. How to open up, how far to open, how long to open comes so naturally to most that it’s like riding a bicycle or tying your shoelaces.

    If the learning window is missed, having people explain what feels natural is difficult for them. If you’ve ever taught someone to ride a bicycle or tie their shoes, you know what I mean. Many people who missed this window are not predisposed to type of intelligence and we’re busy enthralled with something else. So they are at the same time, often, advance in one area and deficient in another.

    If they’ve situated their pride and identity in the area in which they previously focused and if they also have a pride that values results over process embarrassment and shame can creep in. Vulnerability is a liability and not an asset.

    In the case of hubris, I think it’s due to a feeling of fear of vunerersbility and shame causing one to harden their resolve so that they don’t feel the shame again.

    In the case of those with sadness, it due to a loneliness. No one else shares their high morals and therefore no one gets who they are.

    I don’t think you’re either one of these and none of this is as linear as I’ve presented it or as clear cut. Just some tendencies. You may find one sentence resonates strong and another wholly off the mark. Of course if your pride is more flexible and you don’t mind the process, that great! The above will only appear as shadows and not currents.

    But it sounds like you have healthy relationships with friends and family, so I don’t think you really have to worry about too much. In my view, vulnerability and empathy create a bond that is strong in a way that you can lose yourself. You can never really lose yourself of course and, I believe, that you never really have yourself as well. But in a space of love and connection we are freer to be a spontaneous expression of self with and through others and they with us.

    This is rather cryptic as experience roots words. But this is a space or mode of living that can open when connections are created. And high morals can isolate one from those opportunities. That isolation can keep us separate from creative acts as well. And these are the types of things that I would say you might be missing out on. I don’t think they are readily available to most, but they seem to appear occasionally.

    Any case… I hope I didn’t get too woo for you or make it sound like there’s anything wrong with what you’re doing. You sound like a high character individual and suspect when your friends and family reflect upon you, there is warmth in their hearts.


  • Cheers! It seems like your attitude is healthy and not self injurious. So that’s good. In posting this, you’re open enough to consider a possible blind spot. You’re curious, but not vexxed.

    I wanted to pursue the answer to the second question in a moment but wanted to ask a couple of follow up questions first.

    • How do close friends and family regard you when you are trying to live this pure life?
    • Are you able to be vulnerable with them?
    • Do you hold them to these standards as well?
    • Do you hold them to standards that they don’t hold themselves to?

    So as whole, I suspect you’re well adjust especially if the above isn’t negatively effecting anyone. The following is a deeper set of questions. Their resolution, as far as I know, doesn’t necessarily bring about increased health and could, for certain types of psyches, be destabilizing. I don’t think you are that type of person, but listen to your own heart of course.

    Regarding the second answer, you wish to die knowing you lived life to fullest. What does this wish give you? If you do stumble and you do have a regret at the time of your death, why does it matter? Another way of asking this would be, if there is no after life and you are dead, what does it matter that you then died with a regret? What purpose does dying with no regret serve? In a similar vein, does not wanting to die with regrets keep you from pursuing parts of life that you might have pursued if you did not have that goal?

    I want reiterate that that these questions aren’t an indicator of mental health. I also want to say that the framing of the issue and the questions lend itself to seeming like there’s a right answer. There isn’t. Honestly, the right answer could be that it feels right. And not having that feels wrong.