when I was 17, I repeated a year in junior college. all the repeat students were sent for "guidance counselling"- I think in alphabetical order

I believe I was the last student

I can't remember the specifics of how our conversation started, but I ended up counselling HER

she was sort of going through her checklist in a robotic way – I'm guessing she was tired etc etc

and I think I remarked something like "sounds like you're having a rough day / got a rough job"

and she broke down like "OH MY GOD you're the first person who understands"

so like more broadly for me it's always funny for me to read tweets about therapy and counselling because-

people often talk about "never be the smartest person in the room", but it's interesting – I don't think I've ever quite see the corresponding equivalent for "most well-integrated / emotionally healthy person in the room"

wait it's usually framed as "if you're the smartest person in the room you're in the wrong room"

well what if you're the most emotionally healthy person in the room– yea maybe you've surrounded yourself with needy, clingy people etc to feel needed

but what if you leave, and

every time you go to a new environment, new context, you eventually find that everybody else is more dysfunctional than you are? this has been a recurring motif for me throughout my life https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/981649182745227265

well we can troubleshoot that. maybe my methodology of finding new environments is itself somehow faulty or neediness-seeking. I think that's a reasonable hypothesis. I did spend 5+ years working for a boss who I would say was emotionally healthier than me. zen master vibes

I do think I optimize for seeking interestingness – at some point this led me to musicians and artists – and there's a lot of emotional truth in those spaces, and also simultaneously a lot of dysfunction.

and I've met actual monks and it's true that they can be quite boring lol

I mean one can always retire to asceticism later in life, I don't see the rush. have said several times my psychological retirement fantasy is to become a scuba diving instructor in thailand and eat pad thai and watch the sunset every day

but no rush

actually it might be nice to take a year off from life someday and do that, maybe like some arbitrary year like 2036 or something

[drifts off into a daydream] https://twitter.com/visakanv/status/1129058656719331328