Interpersonal Load
Tomorrow’s events:
Bioenergetic Workout w/ Devaraj Sandberg. October 3rd @ 10:00 AM ET. RSVP here.
Embodied Book Club: Collective Presencing w/ Ria Baeck. Saturdays from October 3rd to November 7th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP here. 90 mins. Review the information sheet here.
The Glass Bead Game w/ Laurence Currie-Clark. Every Saturday @ 6:00 PM ET. RSVP here.
An event to get excited about:
Deconstructing Yourself w/ Michael Taft. October 6th @ 12:00 PM ET. RSVP by clicking the image below.
Michael Taft from the Deconstructing Yourself podcast drops by The Stoa to drop some of his wisdom.
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October 2, 2020
I am tired. My body is somewhat exhausted. I am getting easily irritated with people, especially annoying people, and this is usually a sign that I need more sleep, or more self-care. I have been working “hard” since the end of August, so maybe it is catching up to me, or maybe it is something else.
I am somewhat OCD with my email. I have to get “inbox zero,” and when I do not, I get this grating annoyance. I have been getting more emails lately, and I need a different strategy in dealing with them. I respond to every email I get, and I try to be pleasant in my responses. So maybe I have to be curter in my responses, and risk not sounding pleasant, or maybe I should create the expectation that I am one of those guys who does not respond to every email he gets.
I am also getting more people recommending people to come on The Stoa, or people who are recommending themselves to come on, and it is somewhat scrambling my daemon code. Some people want to talk about stuff that does not gel with the eclectic “something is happening here” vibe that has been cultivated. I am finding out the balance of being nice about saying no, with clearly saying no.
There are other issues that my tired annoyance radar is picking up, and I want to write about them, and I actually did write about them, but I deleted them. I deleted them because many people will be reading this, and they might think: is he talking about me? I do hear from many people that they get this sense that I am talking to them directly when they read these journals.
A part of what makes this place what it is, is me being intimate and accessible. I am also considerate, friendly, and all that Dale Carnegie stuff. When I get tired though, being this way starts to feel like interpersonal labour. I do not turn into a complete asshole, but the “fuck off” energy does come online.
I sense this has something to do with why I am feeling exhausted. Being intimate and accessible is a quality that invites others to reach out, and sometimes it invites really amazing people, and other times it invites people who are narcissistic energy vampires.
But ultimately, I’d rather hang out with my wife for an hour, than jump on another Zoom call with a stranger, regardless if they are awesome or not. I like the term “cognitive load,” this is about how much information you can process. Maybe there is already a concept for this, but I think there is something like “interpersonal load” as well.
Relationships are demanding, especially if you want to get them right. I do not want a series of superficial and bullshit relationships, I want the good stuff. This project is slowly growing, more and more people are discovering it each day, and I am going to need to develop new heuristics in how I personally relate—to protect my time, my energy, and my access to the daemon.
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