Ratioed By Kindness

Happy Wednesday, or not! 

I mean, mine is just okay. Wednesday is such an ephemeral day. It’s literally trash day for me. Like, I put out the actual physical trash bins on Tuesday, but I have to bring them back in on Wednesday. Why am I explaining this?

Anyway, I’m excited to share a story I first drafted in 2021 while reflecting on life and childhood and trauma that I’ve updated significantly over the last few years. I spent the last week editing it even more.

My original intention was to call the story Flashpoints. But—as with all my projects—the scope expanded way too much and became an idea for an entire short story collection. It was intended to be about memory and these flashpoints that stick in your head. 

By the way, if you replied to one of these emails in the past, I promised I would reply. The problem is, I didn’t have the reply-to email properly set, so I have not gotten a single email. I know for a fact a few people reached out (and told me about it separately), so don’t hate me permanently. The reply-to email should be set now, and I will hopefully be getting replies from now on. I’m not sure how I was able to send this out without one.

Threads Behind the Scenes

LIKE comment SUBSCRibE. I reply to every single comment unless Threads decides to not show me your notification, and then I’m sad. But such is the way of async notifications.

Improve 1% every day or you’re a failure.

I’m glad more people seemed to get this than didn’t. All these self-help gurus out here are like “just improve 1% everyday”. Ignoring the fact that progress looks different for everyone. Ignoring that some days you just can’t do shit. And that’s completely fine. Progress isn’t linear, but it isn’t compound either. We aren’t fucking robots. We’re people. What is even the point of becoming 1% better each day? What kind of life requires this?

This is supposed to be helpful, but it isn’t. Here’s a good barometer: if you’re applying math to self-help, something most people hate and struggle with already, perhaps you should suggest a different approach.

This one-sized-fit-all thinking is ridiculous and actually serves to demotivate certain people. We all start at different places and we all have different learning styles too. And depending on the task, it just doesn’t make sense.

The number of people (mostly men) explaining the rule of 70 and compound interest like I don’t have an engineering degree or a 401k is incredible.

Ratioed by Kindness.

I looked around and thought: everybody is doing this Follow Friday posts. What if I just asked people instead?

I love making following posts, but they are kinda weird. They feel like popularity contests and ostracizing people without really meaning to. That’s why I mostly stopped doing them except when they involve “slept on” accounts that most people never heard of. I try to balance them too with lots of different types of accounts, like some game devs, writers, artists, scientists, comedians, etc. A mixed bag instead of just “here are the ten people who constantly repost each other”. Which I mean, I was doing for a long time.

I doubt people realize that these posts take a lot more time than people may imagine. I try to do accounts that meet all these parameters:

1. I actually follow or have seen many times

2. Have under a certain threshold of followers (i.e., 300 or 500 or 800 or whatever arbitrary thing I’ve decided)

3. I haven’t mentioned before

4. Actually post, like their last post wasn’t 17wks ago.

5. Aren’t a personal account (only posting/interacting with friends and mainly focused on consumption)

6. Writing up a delectable description to represent each individual

7. Actually making the post and trying to fit it in only 500 characters

8. Limit it to only 10 people…

It’s also very discouraging when you recommend someone and they don’t seem to care 😇 

But anyways, I loved this outpouring of love for people and I found a bunch of people I’d never interacted with before. It’s interesting to see which people are really looked to for different stuff. There are so many vibrant communities on Threads. It was nice to have a breather for one week and get a different type of engagement that was really convincing other people to show love for people instead of me floundering around.

I’ve been made redundant by Threads.

I used to do Threads Recaps every week. I was hoping by now Threads would have a fully public API or some better discovery features. I love the For You feed and I’m probably a bigger stan than most of the power users.

But… it makes it impossible to continue to make the Weekly recap at the level I wanted. It’s impossible to actually tap into a vibe. You are honed into a particular area. Rather than fighting that, I decided to wait. I was spending dozens of hours per week getting what I felt was a subpar recap. I know people liked it, and I still want to bring it back. It was easier when there were smaller sub-communities, but now we also have stuff like “trending”.

So… it will come back. But in what form, that’s yet to be seen. I am happy Threads is both showing off new features and teaching people how to use them plus has trending stuff, since that’s pretty much what the recaps were meant to do. I’m happy to be replaced in this regard, but I still want to do something.

Real Life

— my birthday is coming up in early March, so you might want to send me like $500k so I can focus on sending you more emails 

— I am taking a lot of time to reflect on exactly what my point-of-view is. What is my perspective? How do I maintain that voice through everything? I think this applies to stories, and writing, and branding, and products I chose to make.

How do you know something truly aligns with you and your perspective? This time of year, I get deeply introspective and try to ensure I’m still on a path that I don’t fucking hate. Excuse my language. 

Storytime 

My teacher droned on about math, probably. I blinked small tears from my eyes as I yawned. The class door creaked open, casting a shadow. A stranger came in and whispered something into my teacher’s ear. 

We’d only been there for a single class, yet I found myself standing outside in the hot sun by the playground waiting for my mom to pick me up. The other kids fanned out to find their parents as I dreamed of recess. I imagined myself barreling down the large green slide.

The empty park seemed extra inviting next to the overflowing parking lot. Usually kids were picked up at intervals, but today everyone seemed to be rushing to pick up their kids. What was going on?

Crossing the lot was going to be like navigating through a mosh pit of people in a public pool on a hot summer day. 

THERE! 

I spotted my mom’s car, started running for it, dodging and weaving and pushing a few kids out of the way.

HONK!!! An SUV’s horn blared. I squashed my fingers into my ear canals and squished my eyes shut. I had almost been run over. As I looked up, the silhouette of the driver seemed to shrug. I tried to look disappointed, but the windshield’s reflection betrayed a flustered child.

After surviving somehow, I arrived at the half-open passenger door. I stuck my head in the little hole my mom was holding open. Her eyes traced over me. They darted around the whole parking lot as if looking for an escape. “You got everything?”. 

Before I could answer, clammy hands stuck me in the car and clicked my seat belt. Maybe I had left something behind. 

The ride home blurred. I fell asleep. The crunch of tires on asphalt and the sudden stop of the car woke me. I roughly rubbed my eyes and found myself going through our front door.

Inside, a wooden TV set flickered with a war film. A particularly gruesome one. A building ablaze, people jumping out. I felt my face pale. I wanted to whimper, but I couldn’t. Someone rushed me from the room. Whispers behind me decided to turn off the TV.

It wasn’t a movie. It wasn’t fiction. I heard them continue to whisper. America was under attack. 

The memories grow narrower after that. Months later, I twisted my ankle on that green playground slide and missed my team’s last baseball game. Nothing was ever the same. I never felt safe again. 

Decompression

So yeah, that is this week’s story.

Buh-bye now, and come back now ya hear,

Lucas