Self-Portrait, 1941, by Gordon Parks. Check out more about it on the NGA website.

Too Many Goals, Too Much Thinking

I pushed myself too hard again recently. Not in the sense that I overwhelmed myself, or that I burned out, but in a way that is unique to me. Or at least I don’t have an easy to reach word for.

In high school, when I was in robotics, I would pull these insane hours. I loved it, I mean I was doing, you know, like 35 hours of school and 30 hours of robotics. Some weeks I peaked at 80+ hours. I did not sleep well. But I loved it.

And it was such a highs/lows program. I remember after my first robotics competition my freshman year, I collapsed. I was more drained and sad then I had ever imagined possible. It was like all the serotonin/dopamine in my system had been used up and it could produce no more. I wished I could be in the competition forever.

But was I happy? I remember myself as being happy. But no - I don’t think I was, honestly. That same year was the only year I had suicidal ideation.

And yet, when I started heavily organizing again this year, I pushed myself just like I used to in robotics. I built my self-concept around being good at time management, juggling things, and doing the ‘hard thing no one else wants to do’. So, I made all of these ambitious plans in the local DSA chapter and I have been pitching the plans around.

I still do think they are good plans, but my mindset around this work has needed a reset for a long time. I recently rewatched some of the early videos I was watching during my radicalization, and I am too embarrassed to even share what they are. They aren’t, like, problematic, but just so fucking stupid.

I have consistently been haunted by the fact that I have not been doing this work for the right reasons or the right way. This became clear to me a few years ago. I came from a fairly individualistic, self-centered, and maybe internet-driven anarchist tradition.

This was due to two propagandizing forces - one the remaining vestiges of American propaganda in my beliefs (which I am still working through), and the second that the anarchist traditions were more sympathetic to my family’s struggles in Iran. Part of me does worry, now, if the sympathy to Iran’s treatment of its own people was for those people another manifestation of American propaganda, and not fully reasoned through. I mean, how could it be fully reasoned through? It has taken me my whole life to even kind of reconcile my own background. The expectation that Americans do it as well is one of the many things I had to drop as I matured.

So I have had to relearn all of my organizing from first principles. This has been a supremely positive experience. And now I have, in my head, a set of practices and beliefs that make me feel much more grounded. I have reconciled the parts of my mind that had trouble engaging with the poorer working class by reading accounts of how other successful organizers did it. And, through the process, I have learned to trust and love those people in ways that I always wished I could.

And yet I slipped into this new mindset, because of my personal history of failure, where I thought I had to be the one to introduce these methods now and move fast now to put them in practice. And the other organizers have been receptive, luckily. But I grew resentful - “why is this taking so long”, “why do I have to talk to so many people to get this through”, and so on.

What broke me out of it is I checked a 1:1 list I was working on with a few other organizers to see someone else quietly just doing the work, so much more of it than I have done. Despite me seeing myself as the person who ‘did the hard thing’, I had put off this list and the results were staring me in the face. ‘Why is this taking so long?’ Because people are doing the goddamn work, past me.

And, to my credit, I saw that and immediately got my entire ego quietly checked and rearranged. I was falling into old habits, probably from robotics, where I learned that I could do everything myself.

Well, you can not do everything yourself in organizing. And you do not have to. I have never been in a functional organization with people dedicated to doing the work, so I guess I have trust issues. But, wow, the resentment just flew out of me. And, maybe, in a universe where no one was actually doing the work, the resentment was justified, it is not such a dark thing. I just didn’t know. But I do feel kind of fucking stupid now. LMAO.

Which suddenly shocked me out of my weird solo-hero whatever bullshit. And I was like. Oh. Also. I am. Sad. Which was probably contributing to the resentment. Then I was talking to my mom over the phone recently and I said:

You know, I don’t feel like I have a reason to live anymore, not in the sense that I want to die, but in the sense that day-to-day, I need something more.

And I have come upon a second discovery, just today. I love exploration. But I do it in the most mentally taxing way possible. When I gain an exploratory interest in something, my urge is to make it a ‘project.’ I have centered my life around projects since I was in middle school - so this makes sense for me.

But then I get bored, I want to move on, and then I am sad because it is another project on the shelf. And I already have too many projects as it is! I need less commitments, not more.

Which means I need to have a more nuanced relationship with exploration. I need what I would call structured exploratory play, I think. Structured, because I need it time boxed and oriented around a specific subject, exploratory because of what I outlined above, and play because the point is not productivity but for the sake of the pleasure itself.

Funnily enough - this habit of exploratory play, which I have done my whole life, albeit with fits and starts due to the project framing, has been the driver of some of my most creative solutions to work and personal problems. So, might as well give it a shot.

And - to be clear - this is not ’the thing’ that will fill in my reason to live. It is one of many steps for me to reclaim pleasure and fun in my life.

Here’s hoping,

- Jazz Age Hater