These are all the things I have noticed in October and tweeted under #october.
See The best self-improvement trick so far: a giant board for the details re/ why I am doing it. The short version is that noticing things is the best way to fix things.
Goal: treat social interactions as slot machines, be social effortlessly and often
- Noticed a guy struggling to communicate with someone on the street, “hey I can translate”, spent the next hour walking with him — moving towards treating past things as valuable even when imperfect.
- Asked the driver whether Uber gives them full-width shields for free, turns out it does.
- Proposed and had a call with a friend who I haven't talked to for a long time.
- Talked to another taxi driver, and to two people at the airport.
- Wrote a former boss because I was bored.
- Went ahead and asked the shop assistant whether there was a cozy coffee shop nearby, without thinking almost at all.
- Talked to a waitress about the situation in Belarus for a while.
- Mentioned a bunch of people!
- Socialized with a barista for a while.
- I have started DM'ing people much more easily.
- Came to a coffeeshop with cheese, offered it to everyone, some people took a bite but only one guy took two bites. Might bring a better cheese later then.
- Offered food to neighbors next door and then watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with them — it was good.
- Asked in my Telegram channel whether anyone would agree to use brick.do for half an hour in a video call.
Goal: broadcast and advertise my things
- Had a call with @Antibodhi, it was g r e a t.
- Offered Elodes a call, just like that, and then had a call about Kegan stages and conflicts and universal morality, it went really well.
- Asked two IRL friends if they want to come to the Artemis call and they both said yes.
- Did another call about the self-improvement board! It went well again, people were engaged and we talked a bunch about things and I'm glad.
- And also announced the Artemis call on the main twitter.
- Did a call about @artemisfeels.
- Had a call about Kegan's stages of adult development with four people and it was very very nice — probably my first talk where people asked many questions and good questions as well.
- Had a call about my extremely non-coercive self-improvement workflow with @Antibodhi, @natural_hazard, and my sister. It went well!
Goal: do things quickly
- Wrote two posts in like an hour.
- Bought a notebook and a candle in like four minutes after deciding to.
- After getting a visa, booked the flight to Kyiv for the same day *super quickly* and called the landlord for the Lviv flat and arranged that I can just leave the key outside the flat.
Goal: care about myself, have a low-key-nicer life
- I’ve been doing a mood log for almost a month by now. Still don’t know if I can get any useful data out of it but it’s been effortless and I like it.
- Noticed I was feeling meh, sent myself money to feel better.
- First time ever I have “rad” entries in the mood log.
- Didn't make a TODO for starting another like=X thread for tomorrow. Want to be easier on myself and only use TODOs when necessary.
- Closed a task (the translated article thing) that's been weighing on my mind for a long long time.
- I am not putting things on my plate as much, and I can have lazy days most of the time nowadays.
- Went through priority boarding for the first time and it’s great.
- Had a choice of two desserts and started with the better one, not the worse one.
- Purposefully went to a park.
Goal: try new things often
- Tried girl clothes.
- Got a temporary tattoo.
- Made pancakes for the first time ever.
- Ordered a burger with peanut butter because recently I’ve been moving towards “if it’s on the menu it’ll be good even if it seems weird” — it was good.
- Tried sushi with eel for the first time, was sure I'd be able to eat it even if it turned out to be bad, but it turned out to be very good.
- Went to a small health foods store and tried literally grass juice — It has very strong taste, partly unpleasant, partly super interesting.
Goal: produce more content; write down everything that interests me or that can be a self-investment
Goal: do the things that I know are the right things to do, effortlessly
- Decided a while ago that vitamin D was a good idea. Ran out of vitamin D. Did not think "ok whatever"—nothing has changed so I’m keeping the D. Got more D, resumed the D. (See My current Covid assumptions for details.)
- Added contact info to phone, both laptops, luggage, backpack.
- Went back outside to get food just when I was already almost home.
- For the first time ever in my life took an item of clothing off so that I would not spill any food on it.
- Cleared the next week completely and arranged so that I don't have to be at work at all — all of that a week in advance.
- Killed Keybase at work, moved to Slack.
- Brushed teeth after lunch instead of "what, do I have to brush teeth after every meal now, no way".
- I have started asking whenever I don't understand something, instead of just mentally going "oh well".
Goal: be alright with fighting; fight more often
- First time someone got publicly angry about things I've said on this acc. Well, first time I get to find out about it, anyway.
- Another negative reaction! Handled marvelously well, didn't argue with any of the things I disagreed with, didn't retweet, didn't block anyone, didn't start writing a long explanation, didn't feel like shit.
- Had a fight with a friend! (I have more and more fights with people and I'm glad.)
- Didn’t notice that a crossing had a street light, showed the cars “hey I’m crossing”, got beeped at heavily, only afterwards realized there was a street light and it was red. Didn't feel bad about it.
- Complained about the broken soap dispenser to Airbnb people.
Goal: do more illegible human things and enjoy them
- Started enjoying songs even tho they don’t have a specific ‘memorability’ quality
- Added emoji to all Things lists
Goal: get more feedback
- Got a video with Brick feedback, it was very useful and I want to do it more.
Goal: have more clients
- Had a call with a prospective client, it went much better than I expected and much less scary than I expected and I’m happy.
Miscellaneous
- Started dating all posts. It's a small change that *significantly* changes how I feel — a) I have a demonstration that I am writing posts often enough to feel good about it, and b) I am less afraid to post notes or unclear posts, for some reason
- Got the Polish visa!
- Visited Sweden for the first time.
- Made a list of personal subscriptions, found that I spend €118/mo on those.
- Played Askhole with a friend and it was much better than I expected; I feel that if I go through the whole set with them our friendship will be like 30% better.
- Received a good objection to one of my earlier tweets and decided to ignore it completely.
- Progress since the past year: I have gone from "almost no calls ever" to "multiple calls per day".
- Came out re/ main on alt and re/ alt on main — so that all the things that are actually important to me (like the stuff on this alt) don't have to be "in hiding".
- Made a short outline for the Kegan call and it was helpful.
- Got a new routine: washing feet before going to bed.
- Started waking up around 8-9am most of the time, let's see what happens when I'm in Sweden. (Update: waking up even earlier when I’m in Sweden.)
- The first savings goal is done, I have extra money now to enjoy Sweden without having to worry about work.
- Hazard copied my “like to subscribe” thing and Elodes said my thread was good.
- Was just thinking about sex with a guy again, and for the first time ever felt like I *wanted* to connect with a guy emotionally — ask him what he feels, etc. I think now I’m not 100% against a relationship with a guy. Maybe just 95% against.