Zap to Zero D-2 | The View from Halfway Down
Ignore the YT channel name even though it's kind of funny how unfitting it is for this scene from Bojack Horseman.
I always wondered how people can be multiple things at once. You know, the people who write stuff like this in their bios:
Hacker. Engineer. Writer.
How do they have time for all these things? I just didn't understand. I struggled (and still do) with consistently being one thing. It felt like they have more time than me.
What is their secret? Do they sleep less? Are they more efficient with their time? Are they just better at multitasking?1 Is it all three things combined?
But I think I am starting to understand now. They don't have the time for all these things. They take the time. And I don't see all the things they say no to and wouldn't put in their bio anyway2. And maybe all these things are connected in some way so they are just being authentic and going from one thing to the other is more like a flow. Just like our mood swings but we're still the same person, we can be a programmer and a writer.3
That's just who they are. And they figured it out.
But what really makes a writer a writer? Is it really just writing? That sounds too simple. I can write daily for 28 days and then stop. This might mean I was a writer for 28 days and then no more. But would you consider yourself to be a writer just because you wrote ... one post? If you agree with me that no, you wouldn't, then I wasn't a writer at day 1. And thus probably also not at day 2. So the real question is ... when do you become a writer? When does it feel like you earned it?
It feels like all I am doing here is to write about memories, experiences or just whatever my brain came up with in the weirdest moments in the last 24 hours and stuck for long enough to remember or write down. But today, I noticed one thing: It feels like I am experiencing the world in a different way now. It feels like I am viewing the world like a writer would. At least that's how I—a writer or not a writer—imagine how a writer sees the world. Quick detour:
As part of my bachelor's degree, I took some undergraduate physics classes. We had to gain some credit points from subjects that are not part of the regular computer science curriculum.4 And during the first lecture, the professor held a speech that I still remember. It was a speech directed at the freshman but I wasn't a freshman anymore. Fortunately, I still listened:
The field you pick will shape your view on the world forever.
I am not sure if I realized in that moment that I would remember forever what I just heard. I still think about it very often, maybe even daily. I studied computer science and work as a software engineer and I can definitely tell how my view on the world was shaped by that. When I use programs, I immediately wonder how they work under the hood.
Which tech stack are they using? Is it proprietary code or FOSS code? In which language is it written? Can I write a better program?
But the best part is that even though I only took three physics classes—classical mechanics as experimental and theoretical physics and electrodynamics only as experimental physics5—I can still see how it affects my view on the world. For example, if I'll ever watch the show The Big Bang Theory, I could enjoy it more. The fight between theoretical and experimental physicist is real. But I also see and feel entropy everywhere since iirc, it's because of entropy that time only can move forward.
But back to writing. How did writing all these posts shape my view on the world?
I mentioned in a previous post that writing is thinking:
When I started this series, the words streamed out of my fingers. They still do but significantly less. I noticed that it's very related to my experience during the day. When I do a lot of different things (and have less sleep to have more time awake), I experience a lot more things that I want to write about (duh). I think this is related to this "open loop" that Henrik Karlsson is talking writing about. My brain had to process so much during my sleep that I woke up with a lot of ideas what I could write about and how — since I basically already was thinking about tomorrow's post the whole day prior and went to sleep with these thoughts; too tired to do anything else.This also has a very nice feeling of symbiosis. To have something to write, I need to experience things I can write about. And to experience things in a more profound way, I need to write about them. Writing is Thinking.
— me, #390374
But thinking also feels like writing now. I think differently. I think as if I would write. I write as I think. I would even say I move like I would write. Every move I make feels more calculated as if I am writing the script for the story of my life. I don't do this all the time but I have a strong feeling that this is just the beginning. It's only been 26 days and I've only recently shifted my focus to writing, as opposed to the various other things that weren't as fun.
However, I also feel more aware of my surroundings. I want to know what's going on. I want to know what the origin stories of other people are. I also want to improve my body language reading skills.
I don't have the urge to look at my phone as much anymore. People in the here and now are more interesting. I am also not talking about a mass of people but individual people. I try to do this with discretion but here and there, people look back and our eyes meet. I don't look away immediately anymore. I also don't stare at them. I think these people don't mind. I think they actually like that I acknowledge them in such a way before we continue with our separate lives and forget about each other almost immediately.
When something interesting happens or I have an interesting thought, I try to immediately write it down. I think taking notes is the bread and butter of a writer. I also noticed how my note-taking has improved a lot. I remember how even writing notes was hard for me. I never knew how little I can write down to still remember what I meant later. Now I can just write down keywords in the moments to not get stuck with note writing. I don't want to write later about how I wrote notes.
But still, one thing comes to my mind which is antithetical to me being a writer: it still feels forced. I want to be a writer. I want to write about something interesting. So I do all these things like observing people and taking notes. But since my thinking has adapted to my writing, I am not sure if I am still being authentic in some moments. Am I still living or am I just thinking to write, so I can write to think?
When I had this thought, I wrote down this:
Am I authentic?Taking notes throughout the dayRemembering what I thought and liked feels like a different way to live or mindset or gameAs @Natalia mentioned: the art is to know when to stopTo be writer and reader at onceI feel incompleteI don't want to be a friendlier Popescu, I want to be something you have not seen beforeSomething so unrelatable but you still like for some reason.
Writing a description for this thing for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to.
— Satoshi Nakamoto, 2010, RE: Slashdot Submission for 1.0
Song of the Day
Should've stayed, were there signs I ignored? Can I help you not to hurt anymore? We saw brilliance when the world was asleep There are things that we can have, but can't keepIf they say Who cares if one more light goes out? In the sky of a million stars It flickers, flickers Who cares when someone's time runs out? If a moment is all we are Or quicker, quicker Who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do
Footnotes
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There is a paragraph about researchers studying multitasking in this lecture about Solitude and Leadership. ↩
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I got originally intrigued by this idea of saying no to focus from Almost everyone I’ve met would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on by Henrik Karlsson. But here is another, more focused link: The Focus to Say No ↩
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Isn't programming just one specific form of writing anyway? Aren't we also writing stories with our code in some way? Readable and thus good code is code with a coherent story that is easy to follow. ↩
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Not going to lie, these classes were the hardest classes I took during my whole time at university. I even cried after one exam because I never failed so hard in my life (I still barely passed though since everyone else failed hard, too). And keep in mind that I took them while I was already 2-3 years into my computer science degree. And these classes were for the physics freshman. You could say I took my cowboy hat off today to pay these students some well-earned respect just like @Bitman here. ↩
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Learning about Maxwell's equation made me feel like I ascended. Like I joined a secret society of people more aware what's going on around them than everyone else. ↩
sounds like a writer.