random thoughts, please take everything with a grain of salt. still figuring it out.
marathon
i feel like this is going to be a long post so i'll start out with the important stuff. finished in 3:57:58 chip time. how do i feel? other than the massive blister on my foot, i feel fine. i'm not happy with the time. i know i couldve done much better. its really upsetting when i spent that amount of time and effort training, sacrificing entire parts of my life just to settle for a time i know was not my best. there were two major bottlenecks and one major mistake. the major bottlenecks for me were: 1. i was not getting nearly enough water from the aid stations because it took me a while to get used to drinking them and drinking them quickly. my stomach felt terrible almost the entire time. the last 10 miles i had a stitch in my side that was really painful but my whole stomach was just not acting well. i knew this feeling from my long runs but it got fixed once i added more water. 2. my shoelaces were too loose and my foot was chafing severely against my shoe. in the beginning i didnt even know why the feeling was there but you run on that long enough and you'll know exactly why it hurts. once i realized the issue i grappled with sunk cost fallacy for basically the next 20 miles. it was incredibly stupid. i shouldve stopped and tightened my shoes earlier but my philosophy was "i can handle this kind of pain so lets just push through it". the major mistake, and this was so unbelievably stupid i still cant believe it, was starting with the 3:35 pacer and running the first 5 miles at 8 minute pace. i was fully planning to just power through and keep going until i realized that i would be throwing the race if i continued, and im glad i made that call sooner than later because i feel like that mistake completely screwed me. now, with all the complaints out of the way, i want to seriously thank the people that were able to make it out, Avery, his Mom (never caught her name T-T), Steb, and my sister Nada (who woke up at 4 am to come with me with a flight on the same day). i even used my caps key for the first time out of respect lol. like i told them, they were like a mirage; it felt like they'd show up how you would imagine someone seeing water in a desert but for me when it was at the toughest points. huge thank you to all the random spectators who were super supportive and screaming their voice away on random strangers, all the pacers/volunteers who were there to help out and especially the ones that would scream out what was in the cup they were holding instead of letting you guess T-T. and of course, a huge thank you to all those who were not able to make it out to bum-fuck long island (sorry) but supported me and bore with me talking about nothing but running for the last four months. i realized when i got closer to my marathon how many people cared at all and it was way more than i would ever imagine. ok now that most people have stopped reading, let me get into the stupid blabbering. first, the concept of a marathon. i personally find it to be a hotbed for vanity, obsession, and hyperoptimization acting as a surrogate for meaning. two rebuttals: 1. you're only saying that because you suck at marathons. yes. 2. everything is a surrogate for meaning. true. complaints of marathons compared to lifting. structurally marathons are something you really only do fully on race day. random things going wrong can mess up that day. it throws everything off. the reason for this is that the recovery time from a marathon is quite long. lifting on the contrary is something you can achieve and test your limits in quite safely and regularly. if you miss 315 at a powerlifting competition you can simply try again next week in your gym and if you hit it you feel just as achieved. almost no one is running marathons for fun in their free time. runners optimize everything for race day. im sure you could make the same argument about lifting if you speak to someone who competes. it feels like maybe im being unfair and comparing casual lifting to competitive running. for me, the difference, and the reason i sound so biased, is because i enjoy lifting casually. i dont just enjoy it, i love it. i would choose doing it over many other things. the same does not go for running. i never once enjoyed a run. it was always type 2 fun. i felt achieved that i did it. maybe i set myself for failure or hating it because i jumped straight to the extreme coming from someone who would do at most 5k on the treadmill before. but ill get more into why i did that later. i think it would be fair for someone to say that if i gave casual running a chance and learned to love it as an activity then the competitions would just be a fun way of setting milestones for and expressing my progress. fair, maybe ill consider it, but for now i want to make time for other things. i dont care about the time. i will admit i cared and was quite upset afterwards but when i thought about it, given the option to have a solid training period and a mid marathon time or a mid training period and a good marathon time id pick the former. as with lifting i care much less about the numbers beyond them representing my own ability. obviously i shoot for milestones but it would make no difference to me personally if i miss 335 in a comp but hit it two weeks later. i see the training block i did as very successful, taking me from 10 minute/mile long runs to comfortable 9 minute per mile long runs with 8 minute negative splits. i unarguably significantly improved my cardiovascular ability and health and im proud and happy about that. ok the biggest question, why even run the marathon? i was absolutely never a runner before. if you ask my dad or my sister they will tell you how terrible i used to be at running. i would get terrible shin splints from just a mile of running. A SINGLE MILE, and SLOW. obviously not slow enough. i kind of just accepted it as an area i was not good at. but yes it was a huge surprise to them when i told them i was running a marathon. many of my friends have heard the excuse which was "my coworker ran it and rubbed it in my face". with all due respect to the man, he did not run that marathon he walked it (you better actually train this year). those who know me know i would absolutely do things out of spite but genuinely i did not care whatsover about his marathon. it was a convenient excuse and it was fun to add a competitive element. i wont dwell too long but the two ways i kind of prove to myself it had nothing to do with my motivation were: 1. i had promised him i'd beat his time by at least 30 minutes. if that was my motivation then i would be ecstatic with my time, i also would not have trained nearly as hard. 2. i did not think about him once during the race, and i thought about many people. so why did i do it? i needed structure, desperately. i decided i would do it early in january. without going into further detail, the period between the end of december and mid march was one of the worst times in my life. i have had maybe 2-3 times that put me through a doozy but they were not nearly as intense nor salient and also did not last nearly as long. there was a week in february im remembering now where even waking up and going to work felt like the most painful thing ever. i leaned heavily on ai at the time. i did not really want to talk to anyone and i could ask it literally anything. i made those months so ultimately structured that there was no space for my mania to derail my life. the marathon was perfect for this. regular, extremely structured training that was intense and took up all my mental energy. it numbed things well enough. but even beyond the marathon i had concrete plans of what books to read, what kinds of things i should do with my free time, etc. this was all useful but those walls i put around everything ended up becoming a prison. it was all by design, but still. i decided to throw a wrench, something unstructured, the climbing trip, into my life. it really saved me. that was the first time i felt seriously happy in a long time. i sucked at climbing, that part didnt matter. being away from everything, being with friends, that was game changing. im still so grateful i was brought along. but now we're really going on a tangent, back to marathon stuff. on the topic of the previous paragraph, even after life became more bearable i still had a marathon and goals and training and i couldn't give it up just yet. the structure helped a lot and ill be grateful to the sport of marathon training, but man the training can go on forever and it takes up your whole life. ok but what now? what did i learn? my personality type is definitely obsessive. having these kinds of large goals is gold to me. it is incredibly easy for me to sign myself up for these kinds of challenges and letting them be surrogates for meaning. i have no idea what might even be close to the meaning of life but id like to try some other form of searching before i inevitably start training for an iron man. i could be more flexible, less routine, less structured, more free spirited. i've always yearned for the mountain nomad aesthetic but i ignored it as pipedreaming but the fact its stayed consistent for this long tells me i should try leaning into it. ill give more time to my social life, maybe a creative outlet, and leave my day unstructured enough to skew to random action and serendipity. i am a man of extremes but going from extreme structure to extreme freedom is terrifying to me and ill probably still lean towards structure for the most part. but yeah i really need to try developing in a direction that i havent touched on much before, something that is not measureable, quantitative, structured, optimizable, but felt, because thats where real growth is, not in the next surrogate.
self improvement
self improvement is a narcisstic reflex to an inability to accept uncertainty and lack of control. it is a self defense mechanism. it usually starts out as a reaction to a deeply hurtful or destructive time in one's life, "i'm going to make it so that nothing can get to me again" "i will get strong enough so that whatever happens wont hurt me". there is no defense against life. any fortification for that purpose is for naught. on paper you can be very strong, smart, fast; it means nothing to life. at the end of the day all you get is a feeling of control. you cant control the past or the future so you exercise that control on your every waking moment in preparation for an uncertain future. functionally and logically this makes so much sense. you building physical, spiritual, and intellectual strength does likely dampen what life may throw at you. but there are limits. one may extend the fear of life for years and years. eventually they run out of bricks to lay. or at least the marginal benefit is so low. and much too late, they realize they haven't built a fortress but a prison. the defenses they put up to defend themselves from life force them to keep life at a distance. for better or worse, life is an animal far beyond the reach of our spears. you will shiver as it walks by you and hope that it does not notice you. but it is also indifferent to you. philosophers have ranging views on how to deal with this colossal being ranging from loving and admiring it, to surrendering to it, to recognizing its absurdity. that is not to say "do not try to improve yourself". do it. but don't do it thinking you will become larger than life. and do not let the fear become what drives your life or become an endless momentum driven quest with no tangible nonmarginal goal. the journey you put yourself in danger for is often far more fun than the safe one. be strong, stay scared, and live.
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the role of morals and philosophy
the triune brain is a theory of the layered evolution of the human brain which breaks down the brain into the various layers that progressively developed as humans advanced. the first is the reptilian brain which handles base (ironically the word reflects both meanings assigned to the associated functions, primative and immoral) survival functions and it developed first. the mammalian brain which manages emotions, memories, habits, and socialization developed next. the human brain which handles language, abstract thought, reasoning, etc developed last. there is a profound disconnect between the three segments of the brain. the fight or flight instinct coming from the reptilian brain influences our emotions and interactions in ways we could not expect or usually anticipate. this one is more obvious, but our emotions very often override or go against our common sense or reason. there is a scientific reason for this which is that the signals that your cns transmit to your brain go through the brain stem (where the reptilian brain lives) first so it gets first dibs on the reaction. then it passes through the limbic system (where the mamallian brain lives) next so it can distill some emotion out of the 'stimulus + reptilian message'. lastly it reaches the neocortex (where the human brain lives) which gets the 'stimulus + reptilian message + mamallian message' and outputs some thought. between each layer is an order of magnitude of time which is what gives the feeling of "catching yourself". this is all intended to allow humans to survive, the reptilian brain does that directly, the mamallian allows for survival within social groups, and the human allows for survival in a more complex tool and role based society. it's all fine and dandy when the three brains are in some harmony on their roles and responses but often that isn't the case as previously mentioned. this leads to anger and confusion of a potent and less common and tangible form as it is directed at oneself in an abstract sense rather than at an externality. when the brains betray each other, it is not forgotten. the grudge is held and the operation runs less smoothly. the human brain allows us to use the processing layer of logic on top of emotions to strategize, plan, and reason. if we run into a predator, the reptilian brain makes us run away, the mammalian brain makes us shout to warn other humans, and our human brain allows us to plan to come back again with the biggest sticks we can find and circle the predator. the human brain was incredibly useful as one could imagine back when physical survival was an actual difficulty. as were the other two brains, and this question applies to all three; what do these brains that were geared for survival do in a world where survival is almost a given. the reptilian brain will misfire often. you will freeze in situations where your life is not even close to being in danger. you will hang onto emotions that no longer serve survival. you will think yourself to the point of exhaustion. as the role of the reptilian brain became less important and less utilized, the gap widened between the reptilian brain and the mammalian brain. and likewise with the mammalian and human brain. arguably morals evolved with the mammalian brain to overcome the impulses of the reptilian brain. we may be extremely hungry and want to steal food but we know through our social brain that doing so would put us at risk of exile or death so we dont. in a similar fashion philosophy evolved with the human brain. there are things that may be socially acceptable but not concudive to longer term happiness or health. existential philosophy goes a layer up. as all of our needs are met we have time to think things like "why am i here" "what is the meaning of life", and other such abstract questions. philosophy, and by extension religion, aimed to fill that gap as well as the previous. philosophy addresses both of the lower brains, so it includes morality in many senses. it addresses dealing with base instincts like fear by promoting courage. it also addresses the emotional caprices of the limbic system by promoting temperance. i see existential philosophy as the human brain trying to defend from itself. when the world becomes too logical one sees the meaningless of it all. the human brain is so incredible it can come up with salves for that too, existential philosophies like that of camus or nietzsche which address a world that has no meaning and gods that are dead. the greater the imbalance between each system the more complex a response framework needs to be. one who has very strong reptilian impulses will need very strong morals to counteract that and stop them from killing all those around them. one with a very strong limbic system will need a strong philosophy to keep them from living a life of decadence and decay. those who are simple can often find a balance fairly easily. they have no need for complex morals or self indulgent philosophies. they have a self evolved guide for their own lives and are happy with it. those who are complex and unstable are the opposite. many wisdoms may come to them seeking hospitality and are met with hostility, doubt, and mistrust. the more a person fears their lower systems and favors their utmost system, the more complex a philosophy will be needed to make up for and fill in the gaps between the incohesive systems. philosophers like nietzsche argue that reason is often an unsuitable replacement for feeling. and also one that is brittle. remember that each previous system is quicker and therefore more wily than the next. no matter how high ones defenses are in the human brain, there is plenty of time for the stimulus to dwell in the reptilian and mammalian brain before rushing past the gates of the human brain and overwhelming their defenses into submission. the goal of any philosophy should be self aware. it should recognize its utility, not in building a stronger fortress of logic, but in sowing harmony into the system as a whole. reconciling oneself with their own passions and instincts allows them to see and develop them rather than shunning and repressing them and tormenting oneself over the inevitable slip ups. interestingly seneca argues that misery in humans is due to their incredible skills for memory, looking into their past, and foresight/planning, looking into their future. memory is said to live in the mammalian brain and foresight in the human brain. any philosophy that aims to placate human misery must recognize that the mammalian brain is not evil and niether is the reptilian brain. less intelligent by definition, yes, but not evil. stoicism is often confused to be "turning off" one's lower two brains. it is not. it is retraining the lower two brains to build a better temperment to stimuli that are not dangerous. recognizing the existence of these sections of the brain and their roles allows oneself to be more understanding and forgiving of their own instincts but also allows them to override the default behaviors in a productive and sustainable way.
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why in the world do you have a website
i have heard this question many times and i would also like to answer it for myself. i have heard many different insinuations on what my intents could be or what it reflects within me. i have heard it labeled as egotistical, immature/childish, silly. maybe all these are true to some extent. by nature it is very much egotistical, yes. it is all about me. it takes solipsism to the extreme and focuses entirely on the self. but i would like to think, and i will try to elucidate why this self-centered-ness comes from a place other than malice. it is immature, childish, and silly. the premise of having a website by itself is not the issue; many have websites, but these tend to serve the purpose of furthering or solidifying their career, a noble pursuit. whereas my website just acts as a central place for my hobbies and my life. it very much feels like a child taping their drawings to the fridge. i'd like to explain how i see it using an anecdote. while talking with my friend, the movie "the truman show" came up and we were talking about how terrifying it would be to have your entire life exposed to the world. i ruminated on it for a bit and said that hey at least then people would know exactly who you are and can take you at face value. any connection is built on honesty and transparency, if the whole world knows you deeply then you fulfill that criteria without much work on your end. those that know you and hate you can keep their distance, those that know you and like you can be comfortable getting close to you. it is a win win. my website is meant to be an outlet for being honest, although admittedly not fully transparent of course. it is still a level up from my default which is sharing a limited set of experiences with a limited set of people i trust. i have still been getting my feet wet with these journals but i can say that i have shared more than i ever would normally, especially with what is essentially the whole world. i want to keep pushing that boundary until i can reconcile my external self image, my internal one, and my sub/unconcious one. if the price of that is embarassment then so be it. athur miller (who i have not read but found this quote from) said "the best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always." the really great thing about using a personal website over some shared social media like strava or goodreads or twitter or facebook or whatever, is that it is hard to find, annoying to lookup, and specific to me. with those central platforms the friction in following a person is almost nonexistent. it is meant to be that way. when someone comes onto my website they are essentially saying a few things: 1. they care (whether positive or negative) enough to type it in and check. caring is a rare commodity nowadays, there are so many other things to care about. if you care enough to dedicate time to check my website or even read up until this point, in my mind you deserve to have whatever embarassing information you want on me. 2. its all in one place. you see all the things i care about in my life in close proximity. 3. any comments left are fully anonymous. i am too stupid and dont care enough to add any tracking. i love criticism. i hope some day someone cares enough in a negative way to call out my own flaws. i consider that a very great and valuable gift. the secondary reasons for all this are: 1. i like self expression in general (both my office and home have a curation of that. 2. i feel connected when people talk to me about something i added to my website. 3. owning and tracking my fitness data and progress. 4. everyone wants small web to be revived but dont no one wanna small web. but please please please do not read out my own writing to me in person i will crawl into a corner and die. thanks!
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an ignoramus’s review of hamilton (and theatre overall)
today i went to see my first ever broadway show, hamilton. i went into it not really caring. i had promised a friend i would try out broadway but i was honestly not super enthusiastic. im not going to lie if my friend didnt come upon tickets and offer to bring me i likely wouldve kept stalling forever. i never cared for musical episodes in tv shows. they felt forced, unrefined, and often just obfuscated the plot in favor of the flashiness. i also cared little for american history or politics and especially about alexander hamilton. i saw people obsessed with hamilton and honestly just put them in the same category as grown up band kids. that was all highly ignorant. coming out of it i have to admit that broadway is one of the greatest forms of media. the first thing you notice is the incredible antique atmosphere, taking you out of the hustle and bustle of times square and into a calm sepia colored grandeur auditorium that teases what is coming. ill discuss plot less since no one cares or needs a history lesson but the parts that i thought made the experience so special. the actors are genuinely (and obviously) some of the most skilled performers i have ever seen which doesnt say much since i havent see many performers but anyway. they are able to get their voices out so far and utter each word so clearly. i did not notice a single mistake in the full 3 hour performance and trust me i was looking for them hard. the lighting was really incredible, it told you where to focus, evoked emotions, danced with the music, and still let you take in everything else in the background. at times i felt the same way you do when tasting a fine dish with many different components that are well thought out and you feel almost a duty to deeply expand your senses to taste all the effort as thanks to the chef. the turning circles were really well used and im impressed with how the actors were able to navigate them so well. like i said you could sense the thousands of hours of practice that went into making them what they are. its always fun to see an expert craftsman at work. the costumes and how they changed over time both with the development of the characters and the environment was impressive and added to the immersion. the dances were so well performed and not clumsy at all. the music itself was catchy and yet not distracting. there were lots of funny parts, mostly just slapstick humor but maybe i was just too dumb or uneducated to catch the more well thought out parts. i didnt mind either way it was fun to just laugh with the crowd. the messages sent were very powerful. the “its harder to live than to die” is already popular but still hit pretty hard in the context. the drama of hamilton and the skylars was entrenching. i remember thinking to myself at the moment where they are asking him to come upstate with them “if he goes with them then we are all human, if he stays then i guess some of us are infallible.” when he chooses to stay to focus on his address to congress i was almost disappointed. “i guess there are some permanently principled people out there,” i bemoaned to myself, almost in self contempt. but the scene immediately afterwards proved just how human we all are, how human it is to err, and what follows: how divine is really is to forgive. elizas character and her relationship with phillip was idyllic but some parts of life just are. phillips fate and hamiltons reaction actually brought me to tears. murr as a character is really interesting as a rival and you see hamilton become more of a talk less smile more character than him towards the latter part of his life. hamiltons fate was really really beautiful. how they played out the life flashing before his eyes was so awe inspiring, it felt like you were witnessing something divine. him staying true to what he taught his son was really just amazing despite where it got him. and elizas reaction, starting the orphanage, was just so beautiful, so penetrative to the core of hamiltons struggle that i couldnt help but crying. overall what a beautiful experience. if this is what circus is then i can see why people dont revolt.
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fortified mental and emotional defenses
becoming physically stronger is very easy and straight forward. you come to know exactly what good pain feels like compared to bad pain. you get used to the good pain and become better at achieving it as a segueway to growth. over time you notice numeric improvements. how in the world does one gain emotional strength. if we look at physical growth as being adjacent then emotional or mental growth requires some pain. there must be bad emotional pain but also that implies there must be good emotional pain. the bad physical pain corresponds to injury or overwear. the correspondent bad mental pain is likely that which debhilitates or pushes one far past their capabilities to the point of breaking. i would like to believe that the difference is that one can heal from almost any bad mental pain while the same is not true for physical. ok but what does good mental pain look and feel like? pushing yourself to exertion with your current capabilities and then feeling some slight soreness afterwards. what mental exercise gives one that feeling? pushing the mind into places it would not go? doing something new can often result in some faint pain. i need to understand this better. the mental muscles are not as straight forward as physical ones. everyone has the same physical muscles but the mental muscles can look widely different. these can be composed of strategies that work against certain bad thought patterns. those strategies need to be solidified in order to tackle larger and larger negative thought chains. there are no numeric improvements but one can notice things that would have affected them begin to affect them less and less. i need to iterate on this parallel more and more since i currently dont understand it or even know if it works
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the curse of relative experience
the curse of knowledge is a concept where one with knowledge is cursed with not knowing what one without knowledge feels like. this curse is closely associated with the lack of empathy. empathy best being described as being able to imagine oneself in another's shoes. this gets us to the narrower scope of the curse of knowledge, the curse of relative experience. every person has gone through difficult times in their lives. the beauty and differentiator is what and when they went through. i almost envision the challenges of life as bacterium and the human mind as having an immune system. you will go through things that seem elementary to other people and vice versa. the tragedy is that there is almost certainly no way of transferring the antibiotics gained from suffering. one can guide another through it, they may help them through the sickness, but they cannot heal them. what is interesting is that quotes meant to address a certain ailment only really make sense once you've been through that ailment. the complexity here is that because one who has been through the disease feels the value of those words, they think everyone will. they try giving it to the sick like medicine not realizing it achieves nothing. this can result in frustration on the part of the giver. "why is this person not being receptive?". the same medicine does not work for everyone. some diseases have stronger holds on a person. the worse aspect is fully forgetting what it felt like to go through something and being confused of another's pain. being wary of that makes the curse less potent.
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on the human desire for purity
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