casually-sean

[casually-sean]

baby I’m back

I didn’t want to hide this away nor be public. I think like 3 people know of this blog and I don’t even talk to one or two of them anymore. Almost private, I like it.

I’m watching My Mister and one thing that strikes me is how much I want to have little kids, similar in age. They’ll give each other hell when they’re young and then understand as they get older that no one else could ever understand them in that way.

Dong-hoon, Sang-hoon, and Gi-hoon just have each other’s fucking backs, it’s beautiful to watch.

[casually-sean]

I have like 3 tumblrs now. I had shared this one with a few people, most people know the other one, but I think this is a good mix. Anyway, notes to myself aujourd’hui

1. Surprise yourself

2. It’s more uncomfortable now than it will ever be, write the guidelines down and deliver

[casually-sean]

“When I was 29, I began to realize I was living this lifestyle that didn’t really bring me happiness. I spent money going out all the time because I could technically afford it and hung out with people I didn’t have much in common with. I was in a constant state of self pity about the things I wish I had done and things I thought I should be doing for someone my age. I started drinking at bars a lot more because it felt better than being at home doing nothing.

Then one day, after some time in therapy and discovering  meditation, I realized: ‘you know, your life doesn’t have to be this way -- you can do whatever the hell you want’. I stopped engaging in self pity and started looking forward to creating little things...

 I have a very strong suspicion too that by doing the things I want to do and bringing my unique perspective into it, I can create really cool things - things I’m really fucking proud of. What else is there, anyway?”

[casually-sean]

Since I’ve told a lot of people about semi, I’ll post this here.

I remember telling my therapist about how terrible I’ll feel about myself at times. Meditation and mindfulness helps take the bite out of my thoughts but the mental pain and anguish will still persist: “you’re not good enough, you’re late, what makes you think you can do this after so much time, look at you wasting your time right now!”

And then she hit me with a question that sorta flipped the tables: “Sean, it seems to me that you have all of these things that you want to do, but what do you hope to get out of them? It just seems like a list of things that you want. At the end of the day, you have to ask yourself what do you value -- because when your actions are driven by your values, that gives them purpose”

It was a revelation for me because I had really thought of these things previously as things I wanted very badly but coming to a head with all these other things I wanted badly. I want to relax and chill with the homies, but I also want to work my ass off on things. I want to build cool ass things, but I also want to have a loving relationship and a family. But when I think about what I truly value in life instead of thinking in terms like, “I want this in 3 years, do everything I can to get it in 3 yours or I’m a failure” now it’s like “this is important to me, how do I give it the attention it needs given how important it is to me”.

Having these time limited goals serves as a motivation for sure but the timeline, especially in these early stages, only serves the ego. If these things are important to me, but so is family, and friends, and lovers, then where does it all fit? And so I’ve been debating that lately a bit.

A previous revelation I had during therapy is about relationships. I had always felt that I could develop my ego strong enough to feel that I was good enough for someone or for a group and these past few years have taught me that no, that is not the case; there is no amount of ego development that I can ever do that’ll make me feel “good enough” (better about myself, sure, but when is anyone ever up to the standards they have in their head?). All of these feelings have manifested in pushing people away, even when I feel they’re kinda into me, playing how the night and first date and relationship will likely go once they got to know me. But then my therapist hit me with the biggest revelation from one of our sessions: “Sean, you say that a relationship is important to you and you’ve felt unfulfilled without experiencing them, oftentimes due to your own propensity to self-sabotage. If that is the case, you have to ask yourself: what are you willing to feel? These things are scary and you’re really letting your guard down, but are you willing to do these things in order to feel something greater?”

So despite the fact that I don’t feel like my best, most handome, most on-the-ball, I’ve actually been on both Tinder and Bumble. In previous years, I’ve shunned these apps thinking again that I could fortify my ego and one day I’d come onto the app and find the person I’m ready for. Now? I’m going out into the public, completely open about who I am and how I feel. If I find something cool now, I’ll roll with it. If I don’t, I still feel confident I’m worthy. The fact that I’m out here is worth something to me now.

I have more to say but I know if I start editing that I’m going to start going into the minutiae and this isn’t a super public blog so fuck it.

[casually-sean]

a little more open than I’m willing to be on the other blog

I’m sitting on the couch in San Diego. My flight back east leaves in 9 hours. I’m thinking about things I’ve realized just in this past month, with therapy, meditation, and family. Fuck it I’ll put this in bullet points.

1. There is no more important thing than family I’ve spent an absurd amount of money and effort sort of wandering New York in search of random conversations with strangers, potential soul mates, potential lovers. And yet, I haven’t been nearly as happy doing any of that compared to my very simple time sitting here on this couch, watching Anthony Bourdain with my Dad, watching my baby nephew discover the world, and talking with people who have known me my entire life about how fast life is moving in this room where time seems to stop.

I know my family loves me no matter what. And to make sure my relationship not only falls off but actually gets stronger in subsequent times is at the top of my list.

I moved out east to grow and grow I shall. But in the end, I understand that the money I save and the skills I acquire are largely for the benefit of being able to spend more time with these people I love so fucking much.

2. I don’t really actually care about really expensive experiences Eating bread and pesto from Costco, shotgunning shitty low ABV shitty bears with friends, using $5 Gansetts to fuel my dancing nights, I’m cool with this.

I do love the taste of negronis and Manhattans, fancy drinks. 12 fancy cocktails at New York Prices is about $200. How many trips to Jupiter Disco is that (about 6 or 7 and a lot more fun). That’s 3 lunches I could pay for with family. That’s 1/2 of a trip back out west, 1/2 of a trip to Paris.

Dollars add up, homie. Spend it on shit you truly want.

3. I’m going to look back on these past 2 years and laugh at what I was doing But I also know, like Siddhartha, these are experiences I’ve needed to grow real strong - like Popeye on a hit of Spinach

I’m ready for you again Brooklyn. But first, Kentucky...

[casually-sean]

torn in directions

I want to be open and sociable, but I also want to stay in and work on my projects and myself

I want to hang out, but don’t want to spend the time to do it, especially if...

I can find balance.

[casually-sean]

ahh you’re beautiful

[casually-sean]

For reasons that are only semi relevant to this post, I’ve really been fluctuating on my goals for the year, and 2019 hasn’t been the easy, clean sweep that I thought it would be going in.

Part of me feels bad about that. You go in, kick ass, take names, and then sit back (when you allow yourself to relax) feeling good that you had a vision and executed it to perfection.

Wow I’m actually getting sleepy. If there’s anything that I want to take away from these humbling 2 months, it’s that I’ve always known that being completely withdrawn from social life is not a sustainable way to live my life and I was just hoping to withdraw for long enough to get confident in what I’m doing so that when I did pull back on the reins a bit, I would have had the confidence to be more open.

That’s not how this works though. You have to be open. That’s how real, meaningful relationships are built and that’s what gives life meaning.

If there’s anything you can take away from these past 2 months, it’s that you can’t use the 2017 playbook (as effective as it was then) on a 2019 problem. Be open and loving and caring in addition to focused and then those crushing doubts about life balance will really begin to dissipate, those crushing doubts which you worry about constantly.

[casually-sean]

sean, seanzie, sean-o, seanananana, good buddy ol’ pal

you are worthy of love, just as you are.

you can love yourself as you’re on your way to where you need to go too, you know.

[casually-sean]

you can be the exact same person you are today, flaws and all, with ambitions of getting better, staying in to be antisocial sometimes, and be a happy person still.

I could’ve lived these past 2 months for every single minute and been jovial instead of whatever I am.

The happiness and contentment comes from knowing at your core that you’re doing okay, that you don’t have to hide and withdraw. That you’re totally fine with the way it’s all going.

[casually-sean]

happiness is not on the other side of success

[casually-sean]

I want to stay in and be productive -> I feel lonely because I’m staying in

I’m fine with communicating with friends electronically but: I want to post but I’m embarrassed to talk about the stuff I’m doing especially when I don’t have this all figured out -> this contributes to my loneliness

A way to fix this is: -Not be embarrassed about what I’m working on and doing and owning it

[casually-sean]

thoughts about learning how to play piano and a parallel to learning programming:

In learning an instrument, I realize you really have to fight for every note. Every transition you do cleanly, every single note, riff, lick, solo, has been fought for. It’s never really an accident. While there are secrets to doing and learning things more efficiently, there’s never just a clean sweep “hey, do this course on accelerated learning and all of a sudden you know exactly how to solo on this Eb ii V i. Eventually, you see a lot of the same things again and they aren’t as big of a fight as the first few times you saw them. But those first few times took the same amount of focused energy for the master before you as it’s taking you right now.

It’s like what Tony Robbins talks about giving speeches... he took a course on public speaking and his peers were booking themselves once a week. He booked himself three times a day. He was able to get a year’s worth of their speeches in 3 weeks.

Every song in this “Easy” book is going to be a battle and I’ll get better one bar at a time. But just as the old running adage goes, “you don’t feel better you just get faster” it’s the same here; the next note isn’t easier, you just have the better technique to tackle it with.

I gotta eat but anyway... it’s the same with programming. Following tutorials online is great. They really help structure learning. But as I’ve come to know over my years as a professional programmer, the tutorials aren’t what teach you; it’s running into the errors and solving those errors that make you a better programmer and give you a better feel for what’s happening.

Mastering that next bar gets you closer to being a better musician; solving that next bug or figuring out that next implementation makes you a better programmer.

If you develop the mindset that experiencing these things are not a character flaw but that they’re puzzles that make you better, fuck, the whole world opens up. And these tasks then become not insurmountable ambitions but merely games to get better at.

How empowering?

[casually-sean]

planning is the molding; action is the kiln

[casually-sean]

Piano Lessons

I bought a book called “Easy Jazz Piano Solos” on Amazon. When I received it, I thought “dang maybe this is too easy I don’t see many complicated rhythms and chords. I showed it to my piano teacher and the song I wanted to play, one of her favorites of all time “All the Things You Are” by Rodgers & Hammerstein, she was like, “this is pretty tough, you can start with another one”. Headstrong I figured, I got this, I’m good -- I’m a super disciplined person and I’ll have something to show you next lesson.

When I sat down to play it I was overwhelmed. I thought I had played more difficult pieces from my Alfred book but fact was I was using videos I found on YouTube as a crutch to understand how the sheet music should sound. In addition, this book is full of piano solos, so the songs sound very incomplete if you’re just playing the left hand part or right hand part, so I’d sit at my piano and just be super frustrated that I’m not really playing anything at all.

I felt really bad about myself. Here I’ve been taking expensive piano lessons and I sound like shit. I’m diligent at doing exercises but doing exercises isn’t playing piano.

So I went into my next lesson feeling a little defeated. I usually have my lessons every 2 weeks but before my lesson last week my teacher told me she was sick so I actually had 3 weeks. Even with an extra week I felt like shit.

Then I sat down with my teacher, I showed her what I’ve been working on, and she’s like “that’s great! You chose to do ‘All the Things You Are’, too? I told you it was hard”. I showed her the few parts I got, the little exercises I was doing with my fingers and she was genuinely impressed. She was like, “listen, you are NOT going to get this entire song. Just focus on this section here (first 8 bars), and we’ll really break it down next lesson, ok?”

I wrote that, now, in 2019, as a 29 year old man, I would stop comparing myself with where I should be. Obviously it’s hard to completely disengage with something that you constantly think about and unconsciously believe. But going into the lesson, realizing how hard I’m being on myself really hit home how for me how feeling bad about where I am isn’t just un-motivating but altogether completely antithetical to any kind of rapid progress I hope to make.

Sitting there and feeling bad and anxious about not being able to play ‘All the Things You Are’ makes me not want to play and thus takes away from practice time.

Feeling good about getting that next little piece right IS empowering and is ultimately the most important part of this productivity (”I’m going to work this next hour on the first 8 bars, left hand... ok! Good job I’m proud of you. I still don’t got it yet but I’ll work the next hour on the right hand... ok! Good job! I’m proud of you let’s pick up tomorrow”) 

I dunno, I’ve known this before, but maybe right now (I just got back from the gym, practiced the left hand for 35 minutes) I’m going through a bit of a paradigm shift...

Being efficient and thorough is important to productivity, sure, I know that... but maybe equally important to it, or at least a complement to it, is being in a joyful and contented state when pursuing productivity

This is the essence of what I’ve been writing about in my physical journals... I want to be productive but I feel guilt that I’m not doing basic shit, kind of off the radar with friends and family...

I should be joyful as I pursue these things and that’ll actually help me as counterintuitive as it seems at the time.

[casually-sean]

Notes to myself

Been very productive, but also, very tired this whole week. I was sitting at a coffee shop thinking, “fuck, man, is this going to be my life? Just going through it all exhausted and shit, not talking to people, lonely?”

But I know that this isn’t the case, that a lot of what I’ve decided to do is because I’ve tried otherwise and my soul just isn’t at peace. And this is an adjustment period, that point in time where it’s just really difficult because it’s new and you doubt yourself because you haven’t seen the fruits of your labor yet.

1. I know this is the way to go for myself because I have no obligations in the world. Music fascinates me, I want to build cool stuff programming, and since I’ve got some loans to pay off that I don’t want to be paying off my entire life - especially if I try to be my own boss sometime in the future - what better to do than address all of these things at once: stay in, work on the shit that fascinates you, and save the money you need to save.

2. You never know when things click. If I was to write what I knew about music last year at this exact time it wouldn’t be shit. Now I sit down and I like... get it. Getting it in your fingers is another thing entirely and is a lifelong pursuit, but I get so much now.

3. Dancing, moving, it feels real nice. And every time I go on my shuffle IG and watch videos I’m motivated to just get up and fucking move.

[casually-sean]

I think there are two things I feel like I feel would take me really over the top when it comes to skills building and confidence:

1. Learning, without any guidance, how to do something, and just figure it out 2. Learn how to truly love a seemingly insurmountable challenge

The flipside to number 1 is that I’ve been incredibly resourceful in my regular life. I’ve found amazing tutorials that have taught me to do so much of what I want to do and that has saved me a ton of frustration.

At the same time though, there are plenty of self-taught programmers and musicians who did things all trial and error. Programmers in the early days wrote janky ass code and used whatever source code they could find and absorb them completely. The same thing with musicians: people would hear songs they liked and then just fiddle about on their instrument for hours figuring shit out.

Now, writing janky code and sitting at a piano picking a song out trial and error key by key aren’t the most optimal way of learning anything. But if the budding programmer/musician came across things that were truly beautiful and elegant, they could figure out why they were beautiful and elegant because they had worked through rough beginnings. A programmer learns how to code by dealing with one error at a time until the language just works; the musician hits all the wrong notes but when they get the right one it feels real good, and they learn instinctively what feels good and what feels bad.

Polished tutorials get you to a destination quickly. Figuring shit out on your own gets you there much slower but with a rich understanding of the landscape.

I want to throw myself into some really hard projects at some point in time.