0 to 100 real quick

I’ve been living at my mum’s for around 4 months now (insane how quickly time has flown by, I can’t believe it’s June). And I lived at the Effective Altruism hotel in Blackpool for around a month before that, and before that, 3 months at my mum’s, and before that I was in Toronto for around half a year.

I’ve been in kinda “prison mode” for 4+ months, basically. Because even at the EA hotel, I was in super heads-down, “ahh don’t talk to me I’m trying to figure out what to do next” energy, for like 90% of it.

And now I’m going to a massive conference. Eeee!

I actually feel super excited. I scrolled through the entire attendee list today and saw 3 friends from the EA hotel era who each made me legit yell out loud when I saw they’d be attending (Elisa, Attila, Norman, hell yeah). And a few old work colleagues, some people from Longview where I just did a work trial where it ended up being between me and 1 other person, some people on the most distant ring of my Dunbar chart who I know to be lovely people through the recommendations of close personal friends, etc.

So yeah, yesterday I wrote my substack post about imposter syndrome and EA, and my mostly unconscious fear of “oh man no EAs are all scary and uber-professional” and etc, and this immediately feels like it has melted in a substantial way because it’s already clear that there’s going to be a great group of lovely people there. And that’s just based on the tiny 0.01% of people who I already know! Imagine how many great people I might meet…

Scrolling through the attendee list, I had a really strong sense of gratitude for Effective Altruism. How deeply lovely that this community exists. And how incredible to live in the age of the internet where groups like this can coordinate. One of the main things that has stayed with me/shifted since writing my “shame blog post” on Substack is that, holy shit, my parents literally didn’t have the internet. The world is so profoundly different now, and it’s mad to think that they should have been as informed as I am now. I am the benefactor of an incredible movement in the EA community - I got my first 10/10 job through it, which led to me meeting people who taught me about the post-rat space, which led to profound personal transformation and “healing”, and now here I am. We’re so deeply in debt to the environment we are enmeshed in, it’s truly mind-boggling.

This was a big reason for signing up for EAG at such short notice – it has been very salient to me recently just how many incredibly “lucky” breaks I’ve gotten, through putting myself in the right place at the right time.

  • Made a website called “teaching you how to learn” and offered learning coaching on the EA forum –> led to being recruited to work at Alvea
  • Went to the EA “Prague Fall Season” coworking space for a few weeks and met people who put me onto tpot and post-rationalism, which led to things like:
    • Discovering the power of IFS and memory reconsolidation-based therapies over traditional talk therapies. From “I tried talk therapy twice for a few years and it didn’t really do anything” to “holy shit there are techniques that truly genuinely work”
    • Doing a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat which led to me starting tweeting way more (a very funny outcome for a meditation retreat, lol), which stopped me being an anonymous lurker and made me into a micro-“somebody” in the tpot space, making lovely friends
    • Doing a Jhourney meditation retreat, experiencing the second jhana (a gratitude positive feedback loop) which made me weep with joy to have lived my life
    • Reaching deep okayness/stream entry !!!
    • Meeting so many lovely people. Expanding way beyond “my friends are people from my school” to “I have friends who care about me all over the world”. so so lovely

Anyway I could go on and on but I’ll stop there.

But yes anyway, clearly “serendipity-maxxing” is a very important thing to do.

Intentions for the conference

I’m going to spend tomorrow morning looking over the attendee list again and messaging people for 1:1s etc, but currently my main vibe is mostly:

I mainly just want to go there to break through my “EAs are scary and I don’t qualify” story. To meet lovely people and soak up the wholesome vibes. I’m not currently super super motivated to talk to x type of person to get y career advice and start z project – I kinda just want to bring good energy and grounded presence and see what happens.

Also I’m so excited to see my friends! I’m going for breakfast with my lovely friend Attila on Friday morning, and then we’ll go to the conference together. How to use the l word again but seriously how lovely is that !!!!

Other lil things

  • I had my fortnightly microsolidarity crew call today and it’s so wholesome and nice
  • I’ve got a break from all my beeminders now that it’s conference time. Feelsgoodman
  • I’m excited to keep meditating daily. It feels important to try and intentionally be mindful and use the Alexander Technique whilst at the conference. I think journaling about it each night will also be a great way to have meta-awareness re: how I show up
  • I’m so grateful for 1-week-ago Alex for making this website!! I feel like what I’ve been up to is way more legible now, even if this is realistically still far more information than anyone would actually want, lol

Ok that’s it. I love you Arch Linux laptop, I love you github pages website, I love you Effective Altruism, lets get Global (lol, terrible)

xoxo