Being Irritable
Dear friends,
I hope you are staying beautiful.
Tomorrow’s events:
The Dangerous Space w/ Arielle Friedman. June 20th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
Metagame Mastermind w/ Daniel Kazandjian.Every Saturday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
Flowing With Unknowingness w/ Tyson Wagner. Every Saturday @ 8:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 60 mins.
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June 19, 2020
Most days I wake up exactly knowing what I want to write. Other days I do not have a strong idea of what to write but there is a felt-sense of a theme that I can tease out. On rarer days I sit with nothing to write. Today is one of those days.
On these days I noticed there is pressure to keep things interesting for you, and this is associated with self-consciousness. Thoughts flitter through my mind …
Do not write about your desire for adventure and romance again. You have done that too much already.
Are these journals just a form of covert narcissism? Are you just trying to signal how awesome you are and couching it in some kind of performative authenticity?
Stop writing about how horny you are. You do not want to come across as creepy and risk getting #MeToo’ed.
Whatever you do, please please please refrain from writing the word “daemon” today.
These judgemental thoughts do not inspire words to come but I do want to continue my spiritual striptease in front of you. I want to reveal more of myself with each entry and I want to do so as truthfully as I can. I do have a fear that my words will be taken out of context and weaponized in the liminal war.
When Brent Cooper came to The Stoa he read some lines from these journals out of context and they sounded ridiculous. I found it was good fun with Brent, but hearing him read it out loud gave me pause. If my public profile gets larger, is it really a good thing that there are quotes of me being a “walking erection” going around?
Another essence of the spiritual striptease is to get you to like me, which is maybe based on some misguided neediness. I am thinking this is a losing strategy now. If you know more about me, and all of my ugliness, will I still be likable? I am learning more about myself these last few months and I cannot tell if I am liking myself right now.
In talking to Tyson I realize I am pretty irritable in comparison to him. I thought this impression of my irritability was just a byproduct of me being bold enough to express my annoyances with other people, but there is probably a reality behind the impression, because I do get annoyed often.
Camille says she likes my irritability, and I guess it can be cute and stuff, but being easily annoyed is not coming from a place of love. I do not want to shame myself here, and I can create some Stoic distance from it, but at the moment I am annoyed at my getting annoyed.
When I get annoyed at myself this usually means I want to escape myself. I have a desire to shed something and I do not know what it is. I feel a strong pull to experience something new. Camille and I are moving next week and will be living at a new place for the summer, so that should be good.
I want to hang out with old and new friends, in person. I want to jump in a car, and drive across Canada, to see Christoph. I want to start reading more again, and start listening to podcasts again, and expose myself to new ideas again. I want to start a pop-up coffee shop in Toronto, and call it The Stoa. Having one foot in the market economy and one foot in the gift economy sounds hot.
I also have a strong desire to invite a lot of new faces to The Stoa. People who will bring new perspectives to our sensemaking web. I sense it is time for us to start having idea sex in delicious ways.
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