On drawing the wrong conclusions (or, healing emotional scars)

I've found that as I've gotten older, I've generally had fewer feelings. Overall, I just don't feel as emotional. Part of this is natural, but part of this I've found is due to what I might refer to as "drawing the wrong conclusions" or "emotional scar tissue".

I've realized that, when faced with discomfort or uncertainty, I have the tendency to want to draw some conclusion from my situation that will help me prevent this discomfort in the future or try to resolve the uncertainty.

If I was hurt somehow, I would do my best to shut down the hurt to prevent the pain. If I felt guilty, I would resolve to never again do the thing that caused me guilt. If I was anxious, I'd avoid the situation that made me anxious.

But I've realized recently that discomfort, or emotional hurt, or guilt, or pain, does not mean that I have necessarily done something "wrong", or that I could have done something better. Pain is just a part of life.

Lately I've been venturing out more - being more social, taking more risks. This inevitably leads to situations where I feel I could have done something better, and this hurts. But where before I might have decided "no, I did something wrong, I must fix this" or tried to shut down the feeling of hurt, I instead just let this tenderness be, and allow myself to be as I am.

It's painful - sometimes it feels like I'm like growing a new heart in my chest.

But it's worth it to undo the emotional scar tissue I've built up over the years, and to face a more rich emotional life.

And it's worth it to have new possibilities for life that I didn't even know existed before because I was too afraid to face them.

You don't have to answer the question

It never occurred to me until last year that I don't have to answer every question that comes to mind.

Sometimes now when I wonder something like "What if I die tomorrow?" or "What's my purpose?" I'll think, "Wow, that's a really great question" and just move on with my day.

Coding without LLMs

I recently went to write some Zig code for a blog post and decided to do it without LLMs. I opened up vim and stared at the blank file.

No suggestions popped up. I haven't written Zig in months and felt rusty on the syntax, but there was no one to ask questions.

I started typing, not knowing whether what I was typing would compile or not. And I noticed that I felt a sense of calm and peace.

For context, after being a lifelong vim user, refusing even basic autocomplete for much of the time because I found it distracting, I've been using Cursor + LLMs to write at least 80% of my code professionally for the past few months. It has without a doubt made me more productive - especially working in new domains, in languages I'm less familiar with.

But opening up vim for the first time, with nothing but me and the editor, I just felt good. I felt content. I typed out some stuff - it didn't compile. I actually had to go search docs by hand to see what I was doing wrong. And what's more - I had to actually focus and engage with what I was typing.

I realized that so much of the time using LLMs I barely have to think or focus - the next step is often obvious and if it isn't it's easier to get the LLM to figure out what needs to be done and verify it than to do it myself.

When I started learning to code, I felt this beautiful feeling of creating something from nothing. I've always enjoyed being creative - creative writing, writing songs and playing music - and my dad never understood how I ended up being a computer science major. I would explain that coding was like building an entire machine just by typing. Writing code felt not that different from writing a poem.

I didn't noticing it happening, but with LLMs, that feeling is gone. Sure, it's amazing to see sometimes what you can build quickly with an LLM, and I do feel a kind of awe at that happening. But it's like commissioning someone else to write a poem for me - where's the joy in that? The entire fun of writing a poem comes in the process. Express yourself; rephrase; get stuck; wait for the solution to come.

I think people who cared mostly about coding as a means to an end to solve a problem won't be dismayed by this loss. I can certainly solve some problems more quickly now. But I don't get that feeling of rolling up my sleeves and getting my hands dirty - the feeling of molding clay, and in the process, being molded myself. I float above the surface, conducting, a manager without the satisfaction of seeing my reports learn and grow.

In the most dystopian moments, I feel like I'm a go-between between my LLM and my coworker's LLM.

I'm romanticizing a bit - there have been periods where I've had fun working with LLMs to get things done quickly. Sometimes it blows my mind. And it enables me to do things I wouldn't have even attempted before and keeps me from having to do things that I would have found incredibly tedious. I mostly enjoy work and really overall have no complaints. I can come up with counterpoints to everything I've written.

But still... it felt damned nice to code the old fashioned way, and I'm allowed to be sad about it.

On managing cravings

I've quit a lot of things in my life - drinking caffeine (three months ago), drinking alcohol (slowly over years, still have sips now and then), eating most added sugar (was prediabetic, now I'm not, still have small amounts at times).

All of the things I quit, I actually love - I love artisanal coffee; I love the taste of a good cocktail and good beer; and for most of my life I said I had a second stomach for dessert.

And yet now it feels pretty much normal that I don't consume these things.

Over the years I feel like I've learned a lot about managing cravings without going crazy that I feel could be helpful for others, so I'd like to share a few thoughts.

There's no need to shut down the craving

My natural impulse when I'm trying to restrict something, e.g. eating added sugar, is when the craving for that thing arises, to really shove it down and try to ignore it. Over the years I've found this just makes me feel bad. Now, I just let myself feel the craving fully, and still just decide not to engage in it.

There's no such thing as falling off the wagon

For most of my life, I would try to form a new habit, and when I inevitably broke the habit, would feel like I had failed entirely or fallen off the wagon, and was back at 0. This kind of thinking is totally mistaken. If I decide not to eat added sugar, but then eat a cookie one day, all I've done is eat a cookie once. I haven't reset to 0. I'm always at 0, making each decision independently from every other one. Getting rid of all or nothing thinking makes it a lot easier to occasionally indulge without feeling bad about it, and to continue with my desired behavior afterward.

Some things do require cold turkey

That said, for some things, like eating sugar, it's much easier to break the habit by going cold turkey because there's actually a biological mechanism that reinforces the craving when you continue to indulge in it. For the first few weeks or month of going without sugar, it felt like having sugar would reset the craving (even without an all or nothing mindset - I'd just start wanting it more). So it's easier to go with 0 added sugar for a month and then after that you just crave it way less. Now if I take a bite of something really sweet I'll often feel like it's too sweet, when in the past I'd have devoured it. But I can still occasionally enjoy a dessert.

"Only if I really want to"

I decided to dial back my alcohol consumption years ago after a friend stayed with me for a few weeks doing "no alcohol August" and I joined him, and I realized I was way more clear-headed without it. I didn't drink that much, but even a beer with dinner would affect how I felt the next day. I decided I'd let myself still drink, but only if I "really really wanted to". This led me to check in before drinking and assess whether it was really something I wanted or if I was doing it just to do it. Over time I found I "really really wanted to" less and less. This felt like a really healthy and natural way to change a behavior. Now I can have just a few sips for the taste without drinking any more. Every few months I might have a full drink. (Granted, for some, alcohol may fall more in the cold turkey camp, it just happened not to be the case with me.)

So... am I happy? Honestly, I wish I could drink as much cold brew as I wanted, have cocktails whenever I wanted, and eat as much dessert as I wanted. That would be pretty damned pleasurable. And maybe someday I'll relax a bit more and won't mind some of the negative side effects of cold brew or cocktails. But for now it pretty much just feels normal, and even though it may sound like I'm a Puritan, I don't feel internally like I'm being incredibly restrictive or harsh with myself. These changes happened slowly over time and since I allow myself to feel whatever I'm feeling instead of fighting or negotiating with the craving, I don't feel repressed because of it. And I no longer have prediabetes, which is cool. And I still sometimes get to eat McFlurry's. 😇