october 2023

walks, talks and spocks

Nov 17, 2023

🎃

personal statement

I finished my law school application! The most valuable part was completing the personal statement. It serves as a pretty good explanation for why I’m doing this in the first place. You can read it here: kahvipatel.com/personal-statement.

Now to wait and see if the law school gods will let me throw thousands of dollars at them.

walks

Ever since the pandemic, I've been going on more walks. I'm addicted to going on walks.

Not walking to get somewhere. Having a destination or a deadline in mind changes things. I’m talking about walking around aimlessly; for leisure.

I’ve found that my walks exist on a scale. On one end is pure internal reflection and the other is constant vigilance.

When I’m in a new environment or a busy street, I’m thinking about what’s around me. Trying to deal with my surroundings, weaving between people, avoiding dead ends. Things outside myself.

When I’m in a familiar environment, there’s less I need to pay attention to. I can sink into my thoughts. I usually like this better.

I walk and think about stuff. Often I’ll be feeling anxious or sad without knowing why. Walking is a good way to figure it out. I tend to sort through five buckets:

work
friends
passions/hobbies
health
family/relationships

I’ll walk and talk to myself about each bucket and pick out things that are happening.

If you see me outside talking to myself, don’t be alarmed! Who knows, I could be on a phone call.

daylight savings

Ah, daylight savings I hate you.

Look at this graph of the amount of daylight in a year. The Y-axis is 24 clock and the X-axis is months in the year:

As expected, around the middle of the summer is where we get the most daylight. In the depths of winter we get the least.

But it’s not a uniform curve—it’s jagged at two points in the year. That’s daylight savings.

The ugliness of those sharp edges is how I feel every year. Things are moving smoothly in one direction then WHAM! your day has shifted an hour. It’s terribly depressing and makes me not want to do anything.

Clearly, I'm biased because my job does not require me to do labor outside in the morning.

But I would much rather have daylight in the afternoon than the morning! I like having energy after work!

Sunset at 4:30?!?!?!

Time to start taking vitamin D supplements.

tech billionaires

Recently, I finished two books about tech billionaires. I read the Elon Musk book and Going Infinite about Sam Bankman-Fried.

I’d recommend both books if you want to be entertained/terrified.

By reading them in quick succession, I’ve noticed identified some common traits both individuals share:

socially awkward
little empathy
technically gifted

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense why these traits can lead to their success.

For whatever reason, they have a lower capacity for empathy. This means they don’t really care what other people think. By extension, they do things that they think make sense, without much regard for the opinions of others.

Running a business is a good context for this. They don’t feel bad firing people. They aren’t as influenced by the status quo. They can create value where others would think it’s too risky.

On the other hand, a serious relationship is not a great context for this. Understanding and empathizing with your partner is important. And things play out as you might expect.

It’s almost as if what makes them good at capitalism makes them worse at human connection. At least that’s what I tell myself.

end

Apologies for the late newsletter. See you in less than a month (hopefully)!