Author Archives: Chris Csont

Becoming a better writer. Becoming a better Homo sapien.

Sometimes it’s better to let things burn

Nothing drives me nuts more than when somebody says, “Oh man, I have so many fires to put out. I got all these fires, everything’s urgent…”

[….]

To which I will say “So you’re being strategic about how you’re approaching everything right now?” and they’re like, “Well, yeah, but there’s so many fires.”

Do you know that firefighters legitimately will let things burn?

[….]

They go, you know what? Sometimes it’s better to let this burn so you can save this thing, as opposed to trying to attack the thing that’s burning and ignoring what could be next in line. Or the correlation and causation of what’s going on with the fire.

Mike Vardy, PM Talks S1E8: Urgency

I’ve used a lot of time in therapy lately to talk about issues with prioritization and trying to pare down my inflated list of Things I Wanna Do. Sara has an analogy about thinking of it as juggling, but some balls are glass and some balls are plastic.

Keep the glass ones moving, and let the plastic ones fall if you need to. You can pick them up later if necessary.

But this chunk of the PM Talks podcast series quoted above got at something else for me: Letting things go.

It’s not easy to look at something and either hit delete, or ship what’s there without those last perfectionism-influenced steps. It’s not easy because it feels like giving up.

But the savings in bandwidth, and the increased focus on the things that matter more? That would be a benefit. It’s not giving up, it’s giving space.

It also ties in to something from Cal Newport’s Slow Productivity:

There exists a myth that it’s hard to say no, whether to someone else or to your own ambition. The reality is that saying no isn’t so bad if you have hard evidence that it’s the only reasonable answer.

This frames it a little differently, but also creates something that might be an easier ask than the question of “What’s most important out of all this?”

“What must I say no to?”

Passive sadness, active anger?

I’ve had a link sitting in my drafts folder for a bit that I wanted to point to:

A friend’s social media post, in which she discusses another person’s comment of “I really think a sizable proportion of the population has become addicted to being angry” with the sage response of “I think a lot of them are doing it because it’s more enjoyable to be angry than to be depressed.”

– bethanyg, “Choosing Happy”

And it wasn’t until catching up with Agatha All Along that I realized what I’d been waiting for:

ALICE
When mom died, I stopped believing everything she ever taught me. I was so angry. Part of me hoped that the road wasn’t real so that I could stay angry.

LILIA
Now you know that it was all for you. And that makes you sad. Sad is better than angry.

Looking at these two, and thinking about a lot of what I’ve been seeing and feeling this year, it clicks for me.

Feeling angry? You can always blame it on the source of your anger for causing your reaction (even though it’s not true).

Feeling sad? Sure there may be events that trigger it, but it’s easier to understand in the moment that sadness is your reaction, and not something being forced on you.

Anger is a weapon looking for a target. Sadness is a wound that needs time and care.

This is JD Vance’s Villain Origin Story

Vance’s wife Usha had also volunteered during a recent “Fox & Friends” interview that her husband had a “dorky” streak — including an interest in Magic: The Gathering, the fantasy card game popularized in the 1990s. It was, Vance said when asked, a phase.

“The big problem with transitioning from being a 13-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering to being a 15-year-old who likes Magic: The Gathering is that 15-year-old girls do not like Magic: The Gathering,” he said. “So I dropped it like a bad habit.”

That said, he did reveal his “embarrassing” favorite deck from his playing days.

“Yawgmoth’s Bargain,” he said.

– Shelby Talcott, “JD Vance talks Tim Walz, Ukraine, and Ohio State football with Semafor”

  • He says he gave up something he liked to make himself more palatable to others
  • That thing meant something to him, evidenced by the easy recall of his favorite deck years after quitting
  • He believed all girls shared a monolithic negative opinion about M:TG
  • He likely still believes this, based on the way he states his opinion from the past as a persistent fact, and not “when I was 15 I believed…”
    • So this 40-year-old man likely still believes there are no girls who like Magic: The Gathering
  • In an attempt to change the narrative from the reappraisal of his previous statements, the choice was made to talk about the rejection of his “embarrassing” and “dorky” activities
  • You can’t play M:TG alone. Were there friends he also dropped “like a bad habit” who kept playing without him?

I’m only a year older than this guy. We’ve had very different lives. But we were experiencing some of these things at the same time. I know that urge to hide the nerdiest parts of yourself. That worry that you’re too much. To wear the mask and follow the crowd and hope it works out the way you want.

I’m not trying to make this into more than it is, but something about this tugged at my brain. Because it makes me wonder if that insecure 15-year-old boy would’ve made different choices if he was told he was already enough. If he believed he was already enough.

And I wonder what he tells himself now, in his head, when he’s alone. Is he still chasing the desire to change into someone else in the hope others will like him more?