will want

a critical mindfuck seems to occur here:

"I just realized that I don't know if I will ever want it."

adding some sketching to get at the specific point of it:

"I organized my life with respect to the expectation that I will eventually want ████, and something just clicked, and I suddenly know for sure that I don't know for sure if I will ever want it."

this seems like the (or a) moment in which one realizes that time is less plane and more player

the shape of this recurs (is the white picket fence actually a memetically invasive species?), and I wonder if... hm.

the setup for this kind of shock seems to be catching sight of someone else's scaffolding and imitating it, creating a construction loop alongside the loop of one's own native self-development. the shock itself seems to occur when the self-loop starts making predictions with a shape that doesn't even diverge from the scaffolding but is straight up unrelated to the scaffolding.

but if you've been trying to see them as one structure, overlaid, I think there's still resource there. if the self-loop has returned enough times to start suggesting future-shape, the next step might be a "start removing everything that isn't an angel" kind of thing. your scaffolding was an imitation of something else, yeah, but it was your imitation and your construction. the elementary parts of the scaffolding all have you-shaped handles. you are absolutely not starting from scratch.

you know those 3D sculptures that only look coherent from a certain angle, and from any other angle it just seems like a collection of objects? I think I might be constructing an argument for that process in reverse - recognizing that the scaffolding you built only looks like something from a certain angle, recognizing that what you've actually assembled is more a collection of nutrients than a structure to live in.

the system remains productively incomplete throughout, but realizing that the incompleteness was in a different direction than you were building for... the recalibration grief can be stunning. I think that's half the reason I (Isaac) write about this stuff. discovering my homosexuality, discovering my autism, discovering my leadership...

💧🏗️⛩️