at second sky, gave one of my flowers to a random guy who hit on me. Reminded by how our smallest acts can make the biggest difference.

i’m doing “fun” things with friends but a lot of the time it’s not actually in the moment fulfilling for me? like I only need these really stereotypically “fun” things in small dosages depending on my current mood. For example, I’m about to go to porter robinson’s second sky music festival, but I actually want to stay in and read about techno-optimism and exploring the relationship between software and people. For now I’ll go since I made a commitment to my friends, but I want to keep being intentional and mindful about how I feel from moment-to-moment. I want to actualize my best self and manifest the things and enabling environment for what I care about.

why dont i just ask people to be friends that i think are cool? Literally the simplest thing
the simplest things are the hardest to do.

In all of our daily lives there’s so many layers of things that could be analyzed deeply. Reminded of the advice from a professor to a student to just write about a single brick on a house. The problem is that there isn’t enough content, it’s that there’s too much content for us to talk about. As writers, we have the responsibility to extract the ones that matter, to craft the most interesting and enlightening vignette from daily life. Daily life is relatable while fantasy and fiction give us the distance to learn and perceive without getting defensive.


This is the 51st installment in my experiment of publishing raw, lightly edited mini-essays every day towards achieving 100 public pieces. Check out the rationale and the full list here.