Ask HN: How to turn off my desire to be seen?
I find myself not wanting to do things if there isn't an audience for it.
I don't feel like blogging since no one visits my blog. When I consider traveling, my first thought is that I'll take pics and share it with friends to show them that I'm having a good time. If I go running, I feel like converting my interest in running into a meetup group consisting of fellow runners.
How do I do things for my personal pleasure, not for an audience?
Did a fallen tree make any sound?
22 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 60.8 ms ] threadYet, there is this sense that things not seen by others is not worth doing.
Its also better to understand that you don't run for fame or other people. You run for health... or find your own motivator.
Problem is we get ppl claiming to become famous/rich/successful over night with their awesome idea/plan... however this is Marketing, Ego-driven and often short lived (fad).
Ive realised building a long lasting brand/product is hard... and SLOW...but it can happen. Start something and keep adding to it. Same goesnfor weights, dieting or whatever. Start and keep on plodding.
Dont do anything firnthr benefit of others and dont compare yourself to others. Just try to make sure YOU are progressing vs your previous self. If you're bored then its not what you really bwant to do. When you find something you enjoy, you will persist.
Also depression and anxiety cause us to lose interest so go outside and walk every day... meditate. Take care of #1. The rest will come and fall into place
So just start doing stuff...
#iknownothing
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Did the tree hear itself fall?
One of the first successful AI experiments was a computer in a booth at a fair. The computer had a genetic algorithm which would draw two pictures. The viewer was to decide which picture was better and select their answer using a set of buttons. The mutation of the algorithm which drew the "better" picture then "survived" till the next round. Despite the fact that the algorithm started by drawing random noise, it ended up creating symmetrical, abstract shapes with some aesthetic quality. The AI could not paint, but was it intelligent? It was able to create things, but it was reliant on the judgment of others to tell if they were good.
A person with no taste of their own, who is unable to judge whether they like something or not, and who is at the mercy of the input of others to decide their direction is quite similar to this genetic algorithm.
We need to learn to be able to experience things, and decide for ourselves whether we enjoy them or not in order to be able to create anything at all.
Do you have a sense for this?
I do.
Do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself? Do you SEE the product of your labors and enjoy them, or at least have an opinion on them? Or do you need others to see and hear for you?
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Impetus: Do you actually want to do the things you do? Or have you not found anything that you're truly passionate about yet?
I can see and hear, but I still lack impetus without the input of others. Indeed, I find that I can become so empty when I imagine that I am truly alone, that I can just lie on the floor and not move.
However, there are many people who successfully live alone in nature. True hermits. I believe that the difference is that you can "hear the music" you can "see the artwork" but if you don't enjoy it, then what's the point? In this post-industrial world, our cities and the buildings in which we live are so devoid of beauty that the passion is sucked from us.
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To whom does the voice in your head speak?
I often suffer from the problem that the voice in my head is always planning a conversation, or a speech, I struggle to think to myself. To talk to myself. I have been practicing this though, by using a program which records my voice and plays it back to me. I intentionally say embarrassing things that I would not want to publish. I ensure that I'm alone so that I can practice speaking to myself. I find that it does help, though it has not cured me.
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Distributed attention
Attention is like wealth, in that the distribution of it is unfair. Some people get lots of attention while others get none. When someone has a lot of attention, they are said to be famous. We've come to equate "getting attention" with "being famous" but it need not be this way. We can receive the love and attention of one or two close friends and that is quite as good as being famous. Indeed, it might be better. We're all for decentralization and distribution here, but HN is really horrible when it comes to the centralization of attention. 99% of posts fall flat on their faces, and only a few get attention. We need to learn to redistribute attention so that everyone gets their fair share.
At the risk of sounding really shallow, I think your AI example and this snippet describes me to a T.
>A person with no taste of their own, who is unable to judge whether they like something or not, and who is at the mercy of the input of others to decide their direction is quite similar to this genetic algorithm.
>Do you hear yourself? Do you see yourself? Do you SEE the product of your labors and enjoy them, or at least have an opinion on them? Or do you need others to see and hear for you?
I don't remember the last time I made something because I enjoyed making it...and I've made a lot of stuff recently - from frameworks to sites to home automation sensors. I did not getting pleasure from making them - once they were made, I asked myself "what next?" or "how to monetize?" The entire making process lost its charm the minute that thought came up.
>Impetus: Do you actually want to do the things you do? Or have you not found anything that you're truly passionate about yet?
I know I enjoy coding for its own sake. I sometimes enjoying running when I'm in the zone. I'm not "passionate" about them but I feel if someone were to question their usefulness in front of me, I'd fight them on the subject. Does that make me passionate for coding and running?
The voice in my head speaks to an audience and sometimes to the present me exhorting me to "show 'em!"
I'm going to come back to your answer in future to see if I can read more into it than what I gleaned at first glance.
So you don't want to SOUND really shallow. Do you dislike having no likes or dislikes or do you simply think that "the public at large" judges people with no likes or dislikes?
Is it actually logically possible for you yourself to dislike having no dislikes? Surely if you dislike being shallow then you aren't shallow if being shallow is when you have no dislikes.
By shallow I meant someone who needs external prodding to grow in a certain direction. Having likes or dislikes makes the process of growth easier.
You need sox and python3 for it to run http://sox.sourceforge.net/.
You launch it with
./101things --delay=30
When it beeps, you start talking. After you have said 101 things to yourself, in between each track it will play back one of the things you said. I found it really boring to have a conversation with myself in the moment, so I try to say things that would be of interest to my future self, like 2 hours from now. It is a very strange experience.
I'll try your experiment with my phone's memo app.
Stop caring so much about who visits your blog - turn it into something that you can use to keep track of all the cool stuff you try - make it a tool you can reference, keep snippets there, little tutorials for yourself, etc. If nobody else ever reads it, at least it's useful for you.
I started a website called Confessions of the Professions ( http://www.confessionsoftheprofessions.com) a few years ago.. and my only visitors were my mom and my girlfriend. I didn't care.. I remember loading up WordPress Jetpack and my visitor count was around 10 a day... then it increased to 35. I just kept at it.. kept writing blogs, kept soliciting for people to write for me, posting sometimes up to 3 or 4 times a day.
Eventually, I would lose interest... and about the time I did that, people started emailing me asking me if they could contribute.. and I happily agreed. Every time I start to lose interest.. I get dozens of emails with praise and asking if they can contribute an article.
My visitor count ranges anywhere from 500 - 1000 visitors a day. I get universities and well known companies asking if they can contribute. I work with a lot of marketing agencies and consultants who have clients and are looking for a niche website to publish on.
Honestly, it keeps me going even when I'm ready to give it up. It motivates me and revitalizes me back into my own passions and desires for keeping the website going... we all have to go to work... and I am curious about what everyone is doing and the struggles of everyday.
But it all started with no audience and an assumption that people might read it, could read, and would be interested in reading it. If I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now.. I totally would do it again... the website has helped so many.
So just keep going! No matter what! You never know whose reading! :)
I think that can come about if I write a deeply felt blogpost whose very existence touches something fundamental in me.
My most successful blog started as a means to keep track of information for myself. I abandoned it for a time, but it was getting organic traffic. I resumed developing it.
Blog is short for Web Log. Blogs began as personal journals or diaries that were publicly shared. If you want to track certain kinds of information for yourself, like a food journal in support of pursuing healthier eating, that can have intrinsic value without an audience. If it attracts an audience, cool. But it does not require one to be valuable to you.
The aha moment for me was when I started diving into philosophy and in particular, Buddhist philosophy, in search of learning more about life and about myself. I've been practicing Nichiren Buddhism, where the belief is that our lives represent a tarnished mirror and it is only through life experiences where we polish ourselves to reveal who we truly are.
Perhaps this is the beginning of your very own journey towards discovering yourself that would lead to doing things that you do find personally pleasurable.
One thought exercise on creativity showed me for a brief second what intrinsic reward looks like. I'll try to find that post and share it with you. To summarize,
1. Imagine a red apple. It's your own red apple.
2. It floats in space in front of you not tied to the ground or the sky.
3. Add yellow streaks of ripeness to the apple.
4. Now change its color to a color never before seen in an apple
5. Give the apple a texture.
6. Give it a finish.
7. Buff it or scuff it, it's your apple.
I did this exercise yesterday and when I woke up this morning, my apple was still with me. Though no one knew it existed, to me, it felt very real, very mine. I felt proud of that apple.
As of this moment, I enjoy my little blog with zero daily visitors and monochromatic layout just as much as I love my imagined purple apple. So what if no one knows that my apple (or I, by extension) exists? I'm just glad I made it and it's there for me to remember.
This may dissipate in the next hour but until then, I created something for its own sake, not because I got kudos for it.
E1: dropped a double word
I also do this through art history, too. This has am interesting angle to it. I habitually look for unconventional interpretations of art history but any will do. I often find little pieces of art history that I relate to a lot, or have personal theories of. Maybe others would think similarly but I don't know that and it doesn't matter. These relations are between me and a bunch of dead people and the lineage of the human mind.