catarina

I don’t know you or your mind, but from that, it sounds busy AF.
That’s not what a mindfulness practice is like at all. To be clear, I wasn’t referring to a dictionary definition of mindfulness, but to the Buddhist meditation kind. In mindfulness meditation you would be working to get to a completely different state, where you simply observe, instead of analyzing.
I could be projecting, and I apologize for that, but I see myself a little in what you described: I used to scan myself all the time, and think of things to fix and improve, dwell on what I did wrong and what I am going to do better tomorrow, think through many moral scenarios and arguments so I would act in a sound and correct way. That’s fine and very valuable.
It is also why mindfulness was hard for me to get into - because I couldn’t be inside my head like that all the time. It is almost the opposite of that. It’s hard to step aside from that torrent of thoughts, especially if you are an introvert and used to tapping into that rich inner world. Mindfulness meditation is training your mind to reach a sort of silent tranquility, a blank slate where you can draw your true intentions on and then maybe reach deeper insights. It helped a lot when I accepted that we are not entirely rational, even when we think we are acting purely on logical thoughts. We need to connect somehow to that latent emotional side, to recognize it more often. And this only clicked on my late twenties, until then I thought I could just think myself into any desired outcome (spoiler alert: it didn’t work).
I am sure there are many resources out there that explain this better than I can. My point is introspection != mindfulness.

That’s a common misconception about mindfulness that I fell - and sometimes still fall - for. It’s not about knowing a tool or framework, and using it when you think you need it. It is not debugging a one off. It is a practice. You do it as a routine, and it slowly shifts how you face the world and yourself. It’s not the answer we are looking for, especially in a crisis, it’s not a fix. It’s a change, it takes the rest of your life, and it’s not a linear system of inputs and outputs.

Cool article, I feel like I learned more about linked lists in a 5 minute read than over a few classes in college.

Plus, I love that it references Vera Molnar - hand executed algorithm art is not that widely known, and people always look at me as if I have two heads the first time I bring up the topic.

It would be beneficial for all here if you could learn to not take things so personally, and take in some fair criticism about this particular post. But please stick around, the topic of the article is definitely interesting, thanks for that!

I love the sentiment: “just don’t die because it’s awkward AF”. If “joie de vivre” doesn’t make you cling to life, there’s always social anxiety even after death 🤣

ew

I would love to ditch WhatsApp, but then I wouldn’t be in touch with my family half as much, and it would be a lot more difficult to get anything done.
I am in Spain where people simply assume you have WA, and the majority of small business use it extensively.