expectation editing

your story emerges according to your passive expectations: you get what you're looking for, more or less

your passive expectations form a surface indefinitely under construction, in the way that a live tetris board is under construction

realization and epiphany are the pieces falling, and they modify the expectation-surface as they land, building up and cancelling out, depending on what's already on the board

unlike tetris, you earn pieces, and you don't always know what pieces you're earning. pattern recognition has its own schedule, but it requires focused data collection to feed the process

observational data in, realization and epiphany out

if you're new to this, focus on how changing your focus changes the data you're collecting, how zooming in and out changes the way you experience story

look up from the screen: you're already here, wherever here is. pause for a moment, and adjust the focal depth of your observation. find a defined edge (conceptual, physical, social, political, financial, whatever) whose data fits the pattern you're trying to complete. think ahead to the way the understanding of that pattern is going to impact your expectation-surface

you get what you passively expect, and your passive expectations form a surface indefinitely under construction

you can't adjust your expectations directly, but you can be intentional about how you indirectly approach them

your expectation-surface is like tetris in 3D, where the playing field runs as far and as wide as your ability to notice complex experience and transform it into story

you are editing your own story-forming device through your experience of story. your only tool is the focal depth of your observation, and the only thing you can carry is what you understand so far