why me

lately ive gotten a few comments from close friends on my behavior that made me feel a rapturous warmth. im gonna reflect on it for a hot sec.

im not sure how to explain it to someone who hasn’t seen it, but im going to assume we’ve all felt the coup de foudre when ur sitting at the airport and she shows up. maybe not the most conventionally attractive, or the type you thought you likes, but she carries herself in a way that is physically impossible to look away from. you’re just caught in their malestrom, bounded to stare until you cant anymore.

theres just something about her. hard to describe. aura. iykyk tho. im talking about a cute dog idk waht ur mind went to, you dog.

theyre just so in it, innit? their prescence shifted the chemistry of the room’s oxygen supply. you’re smiling or drooling or smth in between. its a state of mind that can occur occasionally, and without warning.

thats not the compliment i was given. not even close actually. but its adjacent. lets look at another example, hopefully more commonly experienced in your life: the flow state.

one attains the flow state when they’re completely present in action. this can be in a sport, jazz ensemble, movie, or the caress of a sunbeam along your sideburns. a moment in time where there is no longer time and just you and your senses. its easy to identify if you’ve felt it - another iykyk. but its also clear to see in others if you observe them ‘in their element’.

still not the comment i was given but its a part of the compliment. one last example then ill get to the point.

serendipity is a word u learn when ur 14, along with melencholy and sonder that makes u feel insert german word . i bring it up here not because i plan to mansplain it to you, but because i believe it magicly coincides with the other points into a delightful synthesis. tldr, theres a spruce of magic, and trust in the universe required to jovialy actualize your expectation.

ok so finnally all of this coalesces to agency. something i’ve been supposedly admired for.

im writing a blog on agency and a lot of it is inspired by you

when i heard this i thought, ‘hwhy’? what is it that i do that is inspiring enough to write a blog about? tho i guess here i am blogging about being blogged about, so the bar can be pretty low lol.

this was roughly a week after another comment:

you have a remarkable propensity - probably more than anyone i know – for a ‘you can just do things mindset’

and then a few days after the blog comment a third unprompted person gave me a

you are unbound by the shackles that chain the rest of us

what are these shackles? why am i unbounded? lets explore.

golden handcuffs

i feel as though a lot of people believe that there is a certain way to do things. understandably so. much of physical infrastructure has affordances that signify the function of things: a door handle to pull, a flat metal sheet to push. there are sidewalks for humans and rail tracks for cars. it is intuitable why one should adhere to such ways to operate in the world.

i just ignore them.

i mean, like, im not explicitly choosing to walk against oncoming traffic at the NJ turnpike. that’d be stupid.

rather, im choosing to do marginally out of distribution methods of actualizing expectations. its fine to walk in the street at 2am on a sleepy road with good visibility. its fine to shop in the opposite gender’s selection. why is everyone so butthurt to adhere to the rules? there is just so much more glee in using my feet to push a bowling ball thru the midlane. let me cut up my food in the shape of a face.

there are less rules than you think
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Gq2Zck8WQAAXrMk?format=jpg&name=small

taste

but you can’t just do a random walk off the derech. its not about the blips and qUiRcKY subversion of expectations – tho thats a part of it. theres more to the choices one makes beyond random temperature sampling.

its about doing something with intetionality and presence of mind. when you’re in the flow state, you could just flebbp a random note on the piano, or you can feel like you’re approaching a good moment to do so and lean into the motif with flair. but you have to first be so in touch with the understanding of the moment that you can begin to sense the desire to subvert it.

when you see it in another person or action, thats that same clasp airport girl has on you. theyre in the same oxygen as you and doing more with it. its a moment of awe when the vocalist adds a semi-note in the riff that requires 10% more brainpower than you had allocated capacity for, tho within the frame rate of observability wherein u registered it. delightful.

in a comment by my friend about my friday dinners

sometimes im sitting there just watching u watching others and filling up their water glasses when they’re engrossed in conversation. thanklessly, thoughtfully and at just the right moment where they’d never notice and come away at the end of the night ignorantly satisfied.

its the small things like this that make me grateful to have such great friends. and its the small things like refilling the waterbottle, or checking in on toilet paper that make a night go from 9/10 to 10/10.

to do this u have to be truly present; vigilant; heedful; caring. it can be exhausting for some or envigorating for others. this isnt about people pleasing, or submissive tradwife shit. hope it doesnt come across that way. its all about knowing the expectations and doing actions to actualize them.

sometimes these actions arent the traditional solution. in these cases, the ends justify the means. the goal of a date is to spark romance and feel the flame ignite in your heart of hearts. this is observable in the sparkle of a dilated eye. buy flowers or chocolate just because. dance horribly in the safe vulnerability of another’s trust.

im getting carried away (in ur arms? o_o)

action

wrt to ‘exceptional agentic behavior’, this implies that reality changed as a result of your action. to get to ‘exceptional’ you have to do something exceptional. and exceptions are typically not the path most traveled. makes sense huh?

when i told my friend i was considering applying to a job:

no you’re not gonna just apply to jobs, you’re gonna do it the ‘vincent way’ which is to find exactly who’s in charge … and show up at his house

i mean, i wont because thats tresspassing and dangerous … but i woulddd

“The niche that I had wedged myself into was not allowing me to have my own voice and perspective,” she said. “I wound up going down a path where I was more the vessel for other people’s creations, and I wondered what it would be like to be a little bit more in charge of my voice than I was in Hollywood.” So Mendler channeled her inner nerd. She began to bring textbooks on game theory to the set of movies and TV shows. She took a few college courses. When a topic intrigued her, she would email an author or professor or reach out to them on Twitter.

bridget mendler gets it | Source Arstechnica

a key aspect in this, which ill just reitarate again, is knowing what to look for. in this case it’d be finding who’s in charge, which requires some sagacious google-fu and the occasional gray-zone favor. but in another scenario it could be adding a little je ne sais pas quoi to the fudge brownie. sauf que tu dois savior quoi est pour quelle but.

this is the classic rehashing of ‘luck is when preparation meets opportunity’. nothing special, just different use case framing. there are no new ideas under the sun.

Vincent Luck

in college, my friends coined a term: “Vincent Luck”. its employed when something that shouldnt have occured, occurs, as a result of being tangentially related to my involvement.

for example, id wake up 30 minutes past my flight’s departure time to a text message saying that its been delayed. or an instance where

u just walked up to a slot machine, said that in 4 spins you would hit the jackpot, and then u did. idk how u did it but i just felt like u were right and so i matched ur bet. idk how u do it man

a couple years later i felt the number 27 red in my arm hairs and we won big on roullette, first and only game. theres hundreds of moments like these: from walking into a room as my name is called to celebrities leaving behind the hat that my friend wanted.

the truth is, some of it is a bit voodoo, but some of it is also that serendipitous faith we were talking about earlier. there is some aspect of directed intentionality and flow-like presence of mind that coalesce into a fortuitous resolution.

oh man Vincent luck, i know it’s not luck but it feels like it all comes together at the last minute somehow

recently i went to a concert where it was collectively agreed that “we’ll use the tickets and vincent will find another way to get in”. sure enough i did … by just walking thru the backdoor at the right moment.

do this often enough and people stop calling it luck.

reflection

at my birthdays i pull my friends and ask them to give me constructive feedback or a comment they’ve been unable to articulate without the safe space. its quite productive for self growth but also trust building. anyways, a couple years ago i overheard a:

(crying) because I need structure and order, I’m in admiration of how you can put Vincent into any situation and he seems completely thriving, capable and it’s … totally unsurprising and so inspiring

it wasn’t the comment they gave me but rather something they said to our close mutual friend on the patio swing late at night. ideally i wouldve loved to hear this face-to-face but it somehow feels sliiightly more authentic if they were oblivious to the fact i could hear em. anyways, the point to this is to say that u need to be poised and inventive.

the best part of inventiveness is that it can be fun. what a blessing! revel in the opportunity to delight. gratification need not come from suffering. it can all be so much more magnificent.

so go dance in the rain. sock glide on the vinyl wood. there are less rules than you think. u can just do things.

PS

“there is insane amount of power in a founder who follows through” - jeff lawson