diy project
I have spent roughly a quarter of my life terminally-unsatisfied with who I am. Mirrors always revealed to me an unsolvable maze of issues; my eyes jotted down endless shortlists of things to fix. Being ever the pragmatist, I couldn't let this sit with me. All problems have solutions, and if I'm comprised of an incalculable mountain of them, I surely can devise answers to a few.
Fortunately, there was a conveniently-marketed, well-decorated manual for this sort of thing: self-help. It didn't matter what form it took. I went through the standard selection of books like How to Win Friends and Influence People, Atomic Habits, or any number of Cal Newports. I glued myself to Ted Talks that lectured me to Start with Why, to clench my jaw and bite down Grit, to imbue me with how I could speak so people would stare at me, enraptured. I had career podcasts in my ears to discover my calling, I was at the gym browsing fitness forums for the optimal routine, and through this purgatory, I believed I was gradually transforming into an ostensible improvement, Jaron two-point-oh.
And yeah, I suppose to an extent I did accrue a decent number of vaguely-helpful platitudes that gave me more confidence. I memorized enough rehashed fables to exonerate me out of my body at the time which bore more resemblance to a spaghetti noodle than a person, and I don't wear mismatched clothing out to nice restaurants anymore. But am I actually, objectively, better? Happier?
Blatant self-help has its uses. I ran through the gauntlet. I got what I wanted out of it. Which isn't to say you can't learn these lessons from other places. Frankly, I think you'd have much better 'personal growth' just getting out there doing things than reading or listening about third-party experiences. But part of my fixation on this genre of content was that I entered a state that I've seen somewhere dubbed epiphany addiction.
I loved the satisfaction of consuming content that made me feel like I was doing something about my problems. That I was getting somewhere, all on my own. Reading actionable steps is like jabbing an IV-drip of cocaine into my veins, administered by turtleshelled-glasses men with immaculate desk setups and six-hundred dollar keyboards whispering sweet nothings about their 5 AM routine into my precious headspace. Ripping through pages, drowning in podcasts, gives you a sensation analogous to motion, that you started somewhere, and now after your brain has absorbed a few lines of words and you've had the image of someone gesticulating wildly on stage to a Powerpoint scorched into your retinas, it feels like your life has changed. You now know something, some latent primordial power hidden from the average sheeple who amble, mindless, to their jobs and pointless endeavors, while you know, you just know the secret that makes you better than them. You don't give a fuck anymore (you read the book), you understand the power of being an introvert (read that one, too), and you have damn well started with your core Why and you're changing your life through a dangerously-aggressive outpouring of infinite productive energy. Now. Today.
It took me longer than I would care to admit to understand that I was stuck in this ouroboros loop of consume content —> feel reborn —> do nothing that changed my reality —> feel stuck —> consume more content. Eventually, I stopped mindlessly gorging upon the self-help once it began to feel same-y. After a torrential downpour of consumption I started to grasp that there are almost always two opposing, equally valid sides to advice (e.g. to stand out professionally you should commit to one passion and become the best at it vs. you should be a generalist pretty good at multiple things so you can be the unique convergence of fields). I also started to realize I couldn't be prescriptive with applying the advice either, and what worked for someone else, doesn't necessarily work for me. Especially if I don't act on it lol.
What once was a shining roadmap to guide every stage of my life, evolved into a sensation more akin to being bound by ropes at each of my extremities, strapping me down in place, frozen amongst optima.
But the story doesn't end here — I think my addiction to blogs and intellectualized, vaguely-philosophical tweets and websites is an evolution of this. I'm still drawn to consume or be a part of things that make me feel like I'm moving closer to the answers I seek in life. While I might not be searching for the same solutions as before to mutate myself into a normal, functioning, appealing human being, now I find myself drawn to narratives and content that give me the sense I'm pressing upon an invisible fabric. I'm enamored with the feeling that I'm getting closer to ultimate contentment and satisfaction with who I am and what I'm doing — that I get the point of relentlessly trying so hard each day. Rather than concerning myself with becoming more outgoing, or more confident, I now have new brainworms of culture and meaning and purpose and love. Probably more difficult questions to solve than if I should run a 6-day push-pull-legs split or if I should become a PM.
This tendency to solve, to answer, to correct may all be exacerbated by my immersion in rationalist-adjacent tech culture: everything is a problem which can be fixed if you apply the right tools and techniques and frameworks. I am broken, and I too, can be fixed. I want to win. I can win.
In some ways, I have won: I got everything I wanted four years ago, the checkpoints I set out to reach when I entered college. I broke, and repaired, and broke, and repaired, repeatedly until I arrived at this Frankensteined patchwork mess of a person that in a side-by-side comparison to teenage Jaron seems more complete. But there's always more. I became so immersed in the fixing and the mending that I didn't consider what happens if/when I conclude each of these things; what if the scattered accolades and colored badges and numbers were all irrelevant strivings?
I keep returning to Didion’s On Self-Respect:
we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.
This introspective divination to become more of myself, the person I've laid brick by brick, the dwelling I'm painting and profusely adorning with decorations — an individual constructed on such principles of small disciplines, hard work, delayed gratification can at face-value be beautiful, an impressive display — but how useful is misguided effort?