I am the target I've been trying to reach

Life has always been empty without the chase. Ever since I was little I found great joy in optimization: climbing ranks in games, making a website so I can offer coaching, getting really good at soldering so I can fix stuff.

Wholeheartedly believing that the only thing between me and eternal happiness is getting this pirated copy of gta v to work.

But I realized pretty early in life that the thing I actually like here is the chase. The target always disappoints, the joy lies in anticipation and process.

The parts of my life left to hillclimb are increasingly shrinking: living in the bay, getting better at research, (what else ???). And the path is either basically out of my hands1, or pretty straightforward2.

But research being the main thing left to hillclimb is inching me towards monomania. I no longer have to optimize for other things, so I just try to spend every waking moment doing research.

And in so doing I’ve become like the rest of them. I work all day, by evening I am swamped and completely mentally absent, and tomorrow I will do it all again, with no breaks on weekends. I am losing my soul. I wander through London, I visit what is undoubtedly the greatest museum I’ve seen in my life, I am looking at the FUCKING ROSETTA STONE and my main thought is that this is not productive.

I recently watched marty supreme and felt the sort of sucker punch to the gut one feels when shown the worst parts of themselves that they are slowly becoming.

Marty Supreme is a movie about monomania. He sacrifices literally everything for fucking ping pong.

Much like whiplash, this movie will not hold your hand and tell you that Marty is a bad guy, or a role model. It lets him inhabit the uncomfortable, beautiful grey. Manic, an obvious dickhead at times, ambitious, thoroughly flawed, yet, undeniably, impressive.

I want to tell you something and it’s not intended to be mean. I have a purpose. You don’t. And if you think that’s some kind of blessing it’s not. It puts me at a huge life disadvantage. It means I have an obligation to see a very specific thing through... and with that obligation comes sacrifice. My life is the product of the choices I’ve been forced to make to see this specific thing through. Yours is the result of, what?, just making it up as you go along? That’s how you are. It’s not how I am.

Marty is obviously being an ass here. But I am lying if I say I don’t feel this way sometimes. Truth is, there is a little Marty Mouser in me

Believing that the only thing in the way of getting what you want is having the correct policy, and that you can land on the best policy if you work hard to try to do things right, that there is nothing that makes you irreducibly unable to do/achieve things is scary. I think usually, it’s probably pretty deranged. But increasingly, this feels like the best mental model to have. 3

In a lot of ways I have become the target I’ve been trying to reach, I genuinely adore myself. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been and have never been more bullish about my future.4 I just need to not lose myself seeing things through.