Brady Helps

I walked into the radiology center with my mom. A medical assistant named Kia walks up to us. Greets my mom. While looking at my mom, Kia says: "And who do we have with you?"

I decided I would make myself known by saying, "you can just ask me directly, I'm right here."

Kia took us to room 3280. My mom prepared for her tests. A nurse, red-head lady — I forgot her name, walked in and looked at my mom. Nurse introduced herself. Didn't look at me. Didn't acknowledge me.

Hello! I'm sitting in the room. It's okay for you to acknowledge me and say "hi!"

Doctor walks in. Introduces herself to my mom. Looks at my mom and says, "who do you have with you?"

I parked on the 5th floor of the parking structure. I walked to the elevator lobby attached to the parking structure and a sign read:

"Entrace to Main Hospital Floor 1. Ground Floor Exit Only."

I pressed the button for Floor 1.

I walked out of the elevator on Floor 1 and did not notice a main hospital entrance anywhere. I saw stairs that took me up to other elevator lobbies, and I found a door that went outside. I also saw a sign outside the elevator I just walked out of that read:

"Take These Elevators to Level 2 for Emergency and Main Hospital."

I took the elevator to Level 2.

On Level 2 I noticed an entrance to the hospital. I walked to the entrance. I saw a sign that read:

"Entrance for associates only. Go to Floor 1 for the main entrance and registration."

Happily, I pushed the button for entrance to Floor 2 entrance, lied to security claiming I was an associate, and calmy found registration --- on Floor 1.

I have the tendancy to become over obsessed and positive towards music or food I love at first experience. I recently discovered Bandcamp and quickly became all about it. I went so far as to claim it's the best platform for getting in touch and supporting independent artists.

I am a musician, but I am not an artist. I don't make original music that I then sell. I don't work with a ton of artists who do. I know quite a bit about marketing and advertising; but I don't know it well in the Indie music sense. What right have I to claim that Bandcamp is the best platform?

I argue none. My marketing knowledge, my experience as a musician, and my experience of the platform gave me a false sense of confidence before my claim. Someone with more indie music marketing experience might claim differently. Perhaps, on net, Apple Music or Spotify are better?

If someone were to call me out on my overclaim, I think I would acknowledge my lack of competence and commit to doing things differently. I would:

1. Acknowledge the initial reaction: "Oh my gosh, BandCamp is the BEST platform for independent musicians, I love it here." This is a reaction that feels aligned with my experience, I'm acknowledging my perception.
2. Baseline myself. I have no prior experience in music platforms for independent musicains to market themselves, but Bandcamp seems like a top-tier candidate.
3. Give some alternatives. Spotify or Apple Music might be stronger contenders. Also, Patreon or Substack-style membership could be better alternatives.
4. Define my probability based on a range tied to a definition. Let's say I define as "best for musicians to monetize their music directly to audiences", under that definition, perhaps Bandcamp has a 30-50% chance of being the best.
5. Specify what would make me change my mind. Maybe anecdotes from other musicians I respect, perhaps a report I read in a trade magazine, something else.
6. Decide how to act. Let's say I learn that most musicians think Bandcamp is "meh" and data shows its "meh", maybe I'l ldecide that I'll update my views to "Bandcamp is meh".

Reader, it's possible that you read this and say "David is just over excitable, got it." It's also possible that you stop and think about all the different ways you become excited/reactionary throughout the day. You won't have to think far to think of some examples. Perhaps, stopping and slowing down your process for deciding how things are might payoff in contentment and personal peace. You could always give it a try and update your beliefs once you learn more.

I heard an idea that the opposite of love is not hate; it's indifference. And that makes sense to me.

To love is to have an intense feeling of deep affection, and hate is an intense dislike — both love and hate are intense feelings for a thing. They are not opposite, they are like gemini twins.

Both love and hate require something to be significant to me to be felt. For me to have an intense dislike for a person or an idea, that person or idea must be significant enough to me for me to have intense dislike. Love would be no different. In the same way that someone becomes blinded with love, another can become sick with hate.

To be indifferent, or apathetic, towards someone or an idea is to have low-to-zero regard for their existence. For that person or idea to be so disconnected for you that expending any energy towards it would feel like a waste. Where the maount of care for another is so low that cutting the person from your life is as easy as flicking some speck of dirt off your clothes.

Apathy scares me. I don't believe I've personally met anyone or an idea truly apathetic of another. I could say that my mom was quite aggressive towards me, but out of a lack of regard for my humanity? Hardly, it was because she cared for me so much that she showed herself the way she did. Also, I'm not naive enough to know that I might be being naive to claim that I've never personally met a human or an idea that I truly believe is apathetic. I hope that I never develop apathy for another or an idea. I hope, even if it's only nominal, I can always care about what or who I experience.

Love and hate, I wonder if they're misunderstood in a sense. I wonder if caring enough to have hate is a form of love. For example: I might hate the behavior of the drunk Marquette University kids that showed up to my gig; but I perhaps I deeply care about them so much that I expect more from them — perhaps it's not hate, it's disappointment... or because I'm in my mid-40s and have so little tolerance for foolishness, I do hate their behavior... and prefer them get off my lawn, too.

How much truth gets traded away for socially-lubricative norm'y politeness?

And, maybe that question isn't even the right question. Perhaps the right question is:

How much fidelity do I lose as I increase normy politeness?

Suppose a person applying for a job reaches out to a recruiter friend. The friend receives the resume and says "thanks for sending the resume over. I can forward your resume to a friend at a different team."

The person applying, as I see it, might see the world this way: "great, so are you passing on my resume and that's why you're passing it to a friend?" That person may want to transmit that message with no loss in fidelity. How far would that get the person?

The person replies back "thank you for taking the time to review my resume. I would welcome an opportunity to be introduced to your friend. Thanks for your time." A well-worded and pleasant response. But I see it differently.

Being polite reduced the fidelity of that person's belief — we still don't know how the recruiter dispositioned the resume they received from the person, whiuch is the real outcome of interest!

Going further, I'll say the recruiter's attempt at being polite reduced their own fidelity — they didn't communicate how they dispositioned the resume.

Politeness created a black hole of potentially uncomfortable yet honest information that neither party wants to address. Is it worth it?

I advocate against politeness and I advocate for kindness. And being truthful and honest, even when it's uncomfortable, is being kind, and kindness is loving.

Imagine a world where the recruiter says: "Person, thanks for sending me the resume, I don't have a job that I can interview for at the moment, I wish I could help you there, but I can't. However, I have a friend in another division who might have a need, I'll forward your resume and see if they're open to an introduction. If they are, I'll introduce you. That's the best I can do." The person can then reply "Got it. Thanks so much for the kindness."

Kindness requires a bit more effort than politeness. The payoff for the recruiter is that the person on the other end feels perceived, gets relief, and thinks well of the recruiter and their company. I work in marketing, and that's great marketing!

I realize that advocating this position makes me difficult to communicate with for the median person. At the same time, it oddly makes me a breath of fresh air for some. For myself, the jury is still out.

As much as we want to block the things that don't serve us from our lives; I speculate life doesn't work that way. In fact, perhaps irrationally, I almost believe that unconditionally loving the things that don't serve us frees us from their grip on our lives.

Unconditional love, as I understand it, is simply a heartfelt desire to hope that [insert object of unconditional love] achieves its maximum fulfillment, whatever it might be. And unconditional love does not require unconditional acceptance.

I unconditionally love my mom, and I do not accept the torture you put me through having to wear penny loafers as a child.

I unconditionally love my team, and I do not accept their taste in K-pop boy bands — BTS.

I unconditionally love the things I blocked from my life, and I do not accept engagement with them in my life at this point.

We need to replace the "block" button with a "You Do You, I'm Good Here" button.

When the mind wakes up at 4:30am it has ideas, aims, and dreams. The body follows.

Now, two hours later, I still can't think of what to say.

Smidge : Another form of "smidgen" which means a small amount of something.

Smidgen, in the United States, dates back to the mid-19th century. And that word is likely related to the Scottish word "smitch" or "smutch" meaning a small amount or a slight stain/smear. Essentially, small or barely noticeable quantity.

Erica, a dear friend, asked me if I could move a coffee date a smidge later. I've now learned that a barely noticeable quantity of time is approximately 1 hour.

Brian, a friend, told me his desire is to have a butterfly effect on people's lives through his work. If he's doing his job well, perhaps his clients could achieve better work-life balances, treat people better who then treat others better, and the ripples extend and extend.

I never heard of the butterfly effect. I didn't look up the word, I liked how I heard it from Brian.

We need more humans that think like Brian thinks.

Yesterday, my mom and I spoke about resilience — and what it means to have it. She was commenting that a mutual acquaintence didn't exert much resilience during a difficult life experience as evidenced by their poor behavior. I said perhaps we don't have as much resilience as we think we have. I thought about it more, and I think we were both wrong.

Resilience : The capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

The history of resilience:

1. Etymologically, resilience is derived from Latin, resilire, meaning to "leap back" or "recoil."
2. In the 17th-19th, engineers used the word to describe a material's capacity to absorb energy when deformed and release it upon unloading, like a sponge that recoils when you stop squeezing it.
3. In the 20th century, resilience found a new home in psychology, referring to a person's capacity to adapt to stress ,trauma, or adversity without long-term dysfunction.

My issue with these definitions is not the definitions themselves; it's how I see people interpret the definitions. And the interpretation that I frequently observe is: "someone is resilient if they show steady stoic-like responses to hardships." Well, withstanding or recovering don't have to imply "stoic-like" response to tragedy.

Here's how I think of it:

• Capacity is like a container — there's a limit to how much can be in the container before it overflows. Capacity requires self-awareness.
• Withstand or recover quickly — can mean "stoic-like" response but it can also mean to return to a pre-hardship state, or persist in a weakened state before total collapse, or something similar.

Therefore, I prefer this interpretation of resilience: being so self-aware of one's capacity to endure hardship before they totally collapse that they're not at all surprised by their reaction to difficulties. Said more simply: not being surprised by how one reacts when shit gets real.

Under my interpretation, there's no expectation that you be "stiff upper lip" when life gets tough. My interpretation requires you to develop self-awareness for your capacity to endure hardship and to be mindful enough that your reaction doesn't surprise you.

It's easy to act like nothing's wrong when the world is on fire. It's much harder to be self-aware that the world is on fire, you're on fire, and you're not surprised that you're in shock.