2023 Year In Review
reflecting and embracing the cyclical nature of personal growth
New Year’s Eve Day is one of my favorite days. It’s a liminal moment, a threshold where you get to rest, relax, and reflect on what has happened and what you hope will happen.
To the extent that I have a personal development philosophy, it’s a simple cycle of doing things and reflecting on how those things went. I hope for small hits of enlightenment to come out of that reflection, shifting me into better alignment with the world and my values, but regardless the cycle continues. The ‘fuck around and find out’ model of spiritual growth, if you will.
However, like last year, I’m a tad embarrassed sharing some of my personal reflections on the year, given how bland and obvious they will sound. It turns out the Tao that can be named is not the true Tao, mainly because people will roll their eyes at how cliche your name for the Tao is.
Tragically I think this is just the way of the world; it all sounds obvious until you come to the right situation and the right context the words make sense and you hear the heavenly chorus that comes with ‘getting it’.
So without further throat clearing here are a few of the lessons and insights from 2023 that I hope to take with me into 2024:
No Heists. I’m a huge sucker for a heist - a project where someone has a genius plan for a quick and easy win, in and out before the cops come and they make you responsible for maintenance and customer support. But, time and time again, I’ve had to relearn that almost all of these ideas are bait. Every project is going to take a lot more work than you expect, and most of the impact will be in the long run effects you get from the returns of the project over years. Better to select for replicable and scalable projects and approaches that you can commit to in the long run.
Use moisturizer and wear sunblock. As Patrick Collison said, 2030 is sooner than you think, and a basic skincare routine is an instantiation of this. There are other things to think about in prep for 2030, but skin quality is obviously top of list.
Being known involves surrendering control of the astral projection version of myself. We all have reputations that are tied to our actions, and it has been hard for me to accept that a ‘brand’ is something that I will only have very limited control over. There’s the me that people I interact with regularly will know - and I’m comfortable with that - and then there’s the projected version of me that will exist in the bigger, broader world that I ultimately have very limited control over. For instance when reporters write stories about areas I care about or are working in, I won’t be able to fully control others opinion. Ultimately, accepting that is an important step that I’ve just started to take, and hope to be able to fully take in 2024.
Happiness is marrying the free flow of attention to seamless action. If I’m able to let myself notice things in the world and in my own experience, and then take actions in response to those observations, I’m probably going to be happy. Or at least, I’m not suffering. Maybe I’m angry, or sad, or some other way that doesn’t track to pure bliss, but most of the experiences I really want to avoid are the times where there’s an internal block preventing myself from ‘looking’ at something, or doing something, and the self-deception and internal misalignment that results from that.
I posit this is also the secret to having clean interactions with others. Being able to clearly let my attention focus on what I actually want in an exchange avoids the all too common scenario where I’m trying to accomplish a secret objective - get someone to like me, minimize conflict, etc.
Lighting is very important. I added a bunch of fairy lights to my home and it instantly became a cozier, warm environment. The czar of lighting at our office has experimented with various illuminators and bright lights, and the shifts in mood and energy when different ones are used can be felt tangibly.
Be mindful of how even seemingly fundamental preferences are socially constructed. For the past six months I’ve been vegan-ish, as I eat lunch and dinner with my coworkers at FAR Labs where we default to vegan meals. I've never made being vegan or vegetarian a priority, but I do believe that industrialized husbandry as commonly practiced is *extremely* bad, and causes a tremendous amount of suffering. I’ve been surprised at how straightforward, when I don’t have other options, it has been to eat way less meat, without major costs in my culinary experience (there have been some). A corollary of this is I hope to be more aware of attempts for others to set my environment without my true consent.
Cleverness is cowardice. Trying to be clever is a root sin of mine. I think of it as a way of substituting intellectualism ideas for ideas that emerge from contact with reality. “Oh I’ll make this clever feature and that will solve our user acquisition problem in one go, no iteration needed”, “Oh I’ll cleverly arrange a giant shindig to emphasize how incredible I am and that will convince the girl I/m crazy about that I’m the one”. Sorry Gatsby, no amount of party planning can save us from the pain of revealing our true selves. The phenomenological feeling of it is, at least for me, of attention skidding away from the intense part of a problem, where the actual fear and excitement lie. I also imagine a street hustler doing three card monte, substituting a clever plan for a good plan. It’s not that a good plan can’t be clever, it’s whether the cleverness is in service of actually hitting the target. Better to renounce being clever and embrace the stupid yet honest.
In-person interactions are a huge source of joy: We’ve been working on the FAR Labs community and physical space in Berkeley for the past six months, and it has been great interacting with people with similar intellectual interests in a shared context. Spending more time in person, with friends old and new, is something I value basically in and of itself. At the beginning of 2023 I talked about the value of creating digital gardens. I still think is true, though I didn’t do it (maybe in the new year!), but for now at least I want to focus on embodied physical experiences in the winter-spring season of 2024.
I must admit many of these insights are ones I’ve had in previous years, in at least some form. Am I just repeating myself, running the race of self-development on something that looks more like a HS track rather than an actual road that leads somewhere? I can point to signals of progress that seem like internalization of these ideas - I am wearing sunscreen more, I’m working to see people in person - but it’s hard to know if I’m truly integrating them.
While I’d like a more definitive answer, ultimately I’m comfortable with making a leap of faith into… self-trust. I expect to re-encounter these ideas again and again, but I expect that some level I’m understanding the insights deeper, and the cycle is in fact trending upwards into the new year.
#good-content
Music of the year: Noah Kahan’s Stick Season. Noah Kahan’s songs occupied the first three positions on my Spotify Wrapped, and when it comes to sadboi folk you can sing loudly in the shower, there’s nothing better.
Book of the year: Thousand Li series. The wuxia cultivation fic is very fun to read and has had a surprisingly big impact on how I think about self-development (that whole cycle of doing things and reflecting on things for enlightenment is a theme). I also like books I can flip through and read casually before bed, and mystical martial arts fiction fits the bill. I’ll get to Infinite Jest next year.
Movie of the year: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The art style and music alone are top tier, and the humor and story were fresh for and compelling for what had seemed well trod territory. Looking forward to the conclusion of the trilogy next year.
TV of the year: Dimension 20 Fantasy High. An unexpected pick, this YouTube series where comedians play Dungeons and Dragons is extremely fun and funny. Masterful storytelling by the DM and improv by the whole cast made it a memorable watch.
Dear Reader, I hope you have a tremendous New Year’s Eve, that you let go of all regrets1 from 2023 and walk into 2024 ready to embrace of whatever is to come.
Here’s to a great New Year!
Ben
The tradition of lighting a piñata on fire as scapegoat for all my 2023 regrets will be happening in mere hours. I am proud that for seven years now I have held firm to the belief that fire can and will solve all my personal problems.