Swimming

Right now I feel a little bit like I am treading water, and just barely managing to not drown. Work is very involved (lots of meetings, deadlines, etc.). When I focus on work, I don't allocate time outside of work and sleep to do… anything else. I don't want to blame the commute, but that might be a factor. What this means is that there is a lot of personal shit I am ignoring. Most problematic is maintaining my close relationships: talking to my parents, my siblings, my close friends. The long distance relationships are especially hard because you don't bump into each other anywhere. The spans of time between talking will grow indefinitely if left unchecked.

I have a sense that I am biting off more than I can chew. I make an implicit or explicit promise to everyone I meet: message me any time you have a question, a curiosity, an idea – let’s stay in touch. Previously, I justified this practice to myself by comparing it to gym memberships: lots of people belong to the gym, but only a small percentage go every month. If I talk to 500 people, maybe 5-10 people will message me a week. But it seems that lately either my capacity has gone down or the number of people has gone up: my average response time is going up. Every time I don’t respond to someone in time, it kills me on the inside.

It really shouldn’t. I am a busy person and have a lot of priorities – I shouldn’t “owe” anyone my time. But I’m sure it’s frustrating to be on the receiving end of being ignored for a week, and that’s why it kills me.

I really enjoy talking to and knowing a large number of people, especially ones that inspire me. You can sample any given conversation I have and I can guarantee that I’m talking about “this friend” or “that friend” all the damn time. I love being the #1 biggest fan. There is no better feeling than compersion for my friends. I love spending 1 on 1 time with them and looking at the world like one big, interesting, complicated problem – but fundamentally solvable. I guess people call that dreaming. Whatever.

I’ve never applied a critical eye to this attitude, but I think I should. Reading the above paragraph could suggest a few unhealthy behaviors: do I like living vicariously through my friends because I think my life is boring? Is it because the grass always greener on the other side of the fence? Do I do it because I feel like my close relationships are unfulfilling?

None of those feel quite right – thinking about it more I think the reason I do it is to form a wide base of people with mutual respect for each other. I feel like such a foundation is important to do… anything. You can’t do anything on your own. Previously I articulated this as “I want people to like me”, but that suggests that I am not comfortable with myself and that I don’t like myself. Instead, I think that “people liking me” is just good practice.

Analyzing it even further, me being #1 fan might also just be a good strategy that I picked up implicitly. VC firms love to “invest in good people”. I think I like to invest in good friends for the same reason. You become good friends, then you do some dope shit, then they do some dope shit, and then you can share in those successes together.

Anyways, at this point I feel like I am way too far up my own ass. I still don’t know what to do about my predicament: I think the answer is that I just need to get better at responding to and triaging messages, and living with the constant feeling of treading water. That's the only way to become a better swimmer, right?