12/7/2022
For the past few years I’ve used my birthday as a chance to reflect on insights from the previous year. My birthday was 3 weeks ago, and it seemed like I wasn’t called to the task this year. But lo! Inspiration seized me today.
Some of these learnings are general and others are more personal and intimate. So read at your own risk 🙂
Here’s what I plumbed…
❤️🔥 Partnership | Sxx ❤️🔥
1. Partnerships are inherently imperfect and chock-full of disappointment. Accepting the inevitable struggle and challenges of relationship actually helps unlock the beauty of commitment and sharing life
2. For most people (and certainly myself), the hottest sexual experiences they’ve had (and the fantasies they enjoy) are actually linked to very specific and personal feelings (eg feeling desired, or powerful, or stifled, or vengeful, or guilty, etc). Many of mine are interestingly related to feelings of fear, anxiety, overwhelm and the like
3. My oldest, and deepest sexual fantasies are unmistakably linked to the events that shaped my young self. And it could be said that “eroticism” is the marriage of one’s sexual arousal and that person’s early development. My own erotic themes are all linked to my core developmental threads — agency (or lack thereof), powerlessness (and power), and worth
4. After having identified as queer and nonbinary for a few years now, I feel some difficult-to-name exhaustion around being immersed in a binary-hetero-monogmous zeitgeist that I disagree with, but that most people assume as baseline normal and true
5. Honesty honesty honesty honesty. Hold nothing back from your partner. Even your fears and doubts about the relationship itself. Even the disgust you experience towards them. Honesty creates intimacy. And the truth of a relationship can never be found without a mutual commitment to rigorous truth-telling
6. When engaging in anything remotely intimate with a partner, the question “who is this for?” has limitless depth, utility, and legs
🌄 Spiritual | Metaphysical 🌄
7. The degree that I feel safe and at home in the world is strongly correlated to the degree that I trust in something more than myself
8. Everyone you look at has a ticking clock above their head of when they’ll die. The time-left is unknown, but attunement to those clocks creates inner depth
9. Nobody knows how reality works, why humans are here, or what the point of it all is. If someone believes they do (especially if they are trying to sell you something or get you to join their group), be careful
10. We can’t know how reality works, but we can look at it through different lenses. Each lens gives us access to some aspect of the truth. The more lenses we can jump between, the better we can triangulate on how things are. Some lenses are more effective than others at creating a fulfilling, flowing life
11. A lens that I’ve found highly useful is that I’m in a simulator and am the main character of some unfolding story.
The simulator is run by an encouraging operator who wants me to have a beautiful, appropriately challenging life. This operator actually communicates with me through the people they bring me, the songs that play on the radio, and every other possible information that is rendered in the simulation. Everyone and everything (including myself) are all made up of the same simulation pixels and programming.
While I don’t think this lens is “true” per se, it “works” very well. In that it engenders a life full of flow, magic, fun, and fulfillment
✍🏻 Self Mastery ✍🏻
12. It’s verrrrrry helpful to have a decision-making framework for big (or tricky) decisions. Especially a framework that includes reflections from a vast range of worldviews.
Three parts of my own decisionmaking framework that I’ve found useful are: assigning probabilities to projected outcome possibilities | viewing my life as a story and looking for the decision that’d make the story the most epic | and feeling into the anticipated regret of not choosing each option
13. Reading thought-leaders who you detest is as useful as reading ones who you love. The ones you hate help you sharpen your own views.
14. Writing an ebook of 111 pages was really hard and shockingly rewarding! I want to do a full book!
15. Cynicism is a valuable mindset that can enable free thinking, evading the dangers of others’ shadows, appropriate risk-taking, and conviction. But too much cynicism leads to disconnection and missing out on the magic of life
16. Ardent resistance to a certain path can be an expression of unexplored beliefs, shadow motivations, and self-protection strategies
💸 Career | Business 💸
17. A career strategy that worked in one phase of life may fail miserably in another phase of life if it no longer feels exciting, growthful, and aligned
18. When people purchase from brands, they are Luke looking for a brand to be their Yoda. They’re not looking to meet another Luke
19. A business is run by its strategy. Shifting strategy can change the entire architecture, feeling, and orientation of a business
🙆🏻 Wellness 🙆🏻
20. “Vacation” is not a black and white act. It’s a gray art-form. At any given time you are vacationing from some aspects of your life and engaged in others. There is a skill to constantly toggling where you are vacationing, and ensuring that you take big, intentional vacations from each life-area (location, media, work, social, etc)
21. Take a break before you think you need one. Take a week-long work-vacation before you think you need one
22. Say that X minutes of work requires Y minutes of recovery. When you are working past a personal boundary (eg working too late, or overworking past the need for a break) then every X minutes will require something like 2Y minutes of recovery
23. Trying to cram a wellness, self-care, or personal growth practice or course into an already full-schedule will not elicit the desired effect
24. I seem more sensitive to media than most people (as far as I can tell). In that I need to heavily process every video I watch or article I read, or else I become numb or overwhelmed very quickly. A struggle I’m still figuring out
👨🏼🤝👨🏾 Connection 👨🏼🤝👨🏾
25. Some connections are founded purely on balming mutual loneliness. Those connections can be as deep and impactful as any other
26. Loneliness seems to be something like hunger. A need for connection that can only ever be temporarily sated
27. The most deeply satisfying food for the hunger of loneliness is some combination of profound intimacy and years of shared experience
28. Relationships where honesty and authenticity are prized are fucking priceless. I feel grief and remorse for my connections where there isn’t mutual desire to touch the intimacy of sharing what is alive between us. And I know that there simply may not be space for this type of honesty in all connections
29. I just love eye-gazing
30. The best therapists and coaches are experts at connection
31. Making friends in a new place requires patience
32. Saying yes to things you’re not genuinely excited about will probably lead to feelings of obligation and resentment
I hope you gleaned something! 🙏🏻