Author: nancyhua

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From Quora: Writing Classes at MIT with Junot Diaz before his Pulitzer

At MIT from 2003 to 2007, I took 3 classes with Junot Diaz. Although my lecture attendance is notoriously bad (sometimes I didn’t even show up for exams), Junot’s classes were different. That first class freshman year, I felt like I’d been rummaging for garbage scraps my whole life and finally someone cut me some steak.

Junot swears, in a friendly way. “This isn’t fucking church. If it doesn’t move you, it’s ok to walk out.” I don’t know if his classes attracted the awesome, or if the class made people awesome, but some of the most awesome people I know I met in this class. Every week we would look forward to the 3 hour meeting because we were so excited to see each other. Whenever we met in the Infinite, we’d pause to talk about the readings and our work. Through writing, you get to know people in ways you would never see otherwise, because people write about things they wouldn’t have occasion to talk about: parents lying to each other about bad investments, gods contemplating tree spirits, suicide letters, using malaria to lose weight, grandmas stealing back grandchildren, getting stopped by the Israeli border patrol, shrooms in your fraternity, walking off a broken foot.

Once we went up to Wellesley because Rosa invited him to give a talk. Junot did a reading, and then went into discussion like always.
“How do we make the reader ok with the fact our narrator Yunior is a jerk?”
Imran said, “Yunior will do something terrible, but then he makes me laugh, which takes me to the next line.”
“He tells the truth,” I said. “He’s honest about being a jerk so you trust him to tell you the rest of the story.”
“Is there a sexist theme?” someone asked. “Yunior doesn’t respect women.”
“If the narrator keeps saying women are stupid, but then in the story a woman comes and takes his money, and another woman beats him up, no matter how much the narrator insists women are dumb, does the story say that women are stupid?”
Afterwards the Wellesley students crowded around, “Why haven’t I taken a class with him?”
This all was before Junot had written Oscar Wao (or won his Pulitzer), but his talent was obvious- we kids saw the signs.

Our mailing lists were active:
“Ignore my last email- that one’s shit, this is a better draft.”
“Let’s all meet at my ILG for dinner.”
“If MIT has taught me anything, it’s that parties don’t throw themselves.”
“Essays due! Get to work, gang!”

“Students! My students!” Chalk loosely gripped, Junot would dramatically, slowly scratch the board behind him without looking, then haphazardly stab back at it as he talked. Afterwards the abstract lines looked like we’d been doing some crazy algebraic geometry- you’d never guess we were talking about life outside the story, or lacunae, or structure, or voice. On my writing, he’d put check marks near good parts, “No” near bad parts, and a rare “You kick ass Nancy!” near kick ass parts. After class during finals week, we crashed a lecture hall to watch “Fuckin’ Shaolin Soccer” on the projector, everyone getting drunk.

It’s one thing to read a dead man’s writing. You can even read the living Sherman Alexei and think, “Yeah, some folks have it really bad,” while simultaneously implicitly concluding that others never suffer a day in their lives, or even that most people never suffer. Having my writing teacher be someone who wrote the type of stuff I’d read, who experienced things, who encouraged us to write about what messed us up, to connect with my crazy genius classmates, to realize everyone has a billion secret selves, shifting between various identities, to draw aside the curtain to reveal our secret worlds, was personality-altering for me. In my math and CS classes, we talked about approximation algorithms, theory of mind, big O, BBN: the Problems of advancing science, problems we were solving- not the ugly worries of the lower realms, dead-end stuff with no reason, base stuff you can’t work on aside from letting it fade, subjective stuff that isn’t truth the way other parts of understanding reality are Truth. Elevate beyond animal emotion, abhor politics, the path to the heavens through technology goes the complete opposite direction!

I was a writing major (21W) in addition to a math major (18C), and Junot’s class was the first real writing class I ever had. I’ve always been a bookworm, but I don’t think I learned to read until Junot taught me to write. Writing reads differently when you read as a writer. Sometimes I mark time by how much a book or script has changed since the last time I read it (my overall conclusion is that the classics actually are good; the literary community and tradition is smarter than me). Learning to write teaches me how to read, which teaches me how to think, which teaches me what to ask, what to work on, what to value. How do we navigate this life, with the noble promises of our expanding human knowledge propelling us into the stars, only for the battering of our pathetic human hearts to tear us back down into the grime? These writing classes were the other half of the equation for me. Ten years ago, I was starved as a stray cat and didn’t suspect that at MIT of all places I’d find a home to take me in.

My answer to “What was it like to have Junot Diaz as your creative writing professor at MIT?”

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What to Work on When You Don’t Need to Work

The “need to work” has to do with responsibility. As a kid, my only responsibility was not getting too sticky from all the candy I ate, and my work habits reflected this. As an adult, I’m responsible for myself and my family, but I don’t have a bunch of bloodsucking kids yet and my work habits reflect this: I don’t do any work I don’t enjoy; if something pooped its pants in my presence, leaping into work mode is the last thing I’d consider.

If I view my responsibilities as only including myself and my family, then the amount of “work I need to do” is small, especially since almost everything I want money for is either relatively cheap or really expensive. The first time I realized this, it felt great! I felt like I had arrived. I could watch movies all the time and have my “work” be shopping and exercise so that upon my high school reunion everyone dies of jealousy when they see how my hotness has only increased with time.

Ages ago when I graduated from MIT and told Junot Diaz about my uncertainty for the future, he shook his head and smiled, “You have nothing to worry about.” Since he’s super into the apocalypse and the injustice of inequality, I interpreted this as an allusion to our living in an illusory first world ivory tower, but now I think he also referred to how big my safety net is, especially considering the marketability of my degree. Working a white collar job was the default mode for me, not like North Korean prisoners for whom bathing means waiting for weather warm enough to allow standing in the rain. Working on Wall Street is beyond their greatest dreams, whereas for me it’s a backup plan. A poor person in another country takes a risk by experimenting with fertilizers, and if it doesn’t work out his family starves to death. If I take a risk that doesn’t work out, I’ll just feel embarrassed and delete some old blog entires. There’s no comparison.

I’m not sure when I realized my relative lack of responsibility was an illusion. Maybe it was from hanging out with altruistic friends or reading HPMOR that got me feeling it was a mistake and a sin to only claim responsibility for my own comfort and curiosity. Maybe it was when I saw Wall-E wherein through technology the humans have achieved a state of, “Well, I could do this forever: eat, grow fat, watch tv.” We laugh at the obese humans who can’t even stand up, but we are actually at that state now in our wonderful, first world, welfare society, incapable of starving to death no matter how much we lie around. Are we going to live like those hapless humans or are we going to exhume the Earth?

How can I go shopping and movie hopping all day if I’m responsible for my species? When I mentally tested expanding the scope of responsibility beyond my personal welfare to include my fellow man, my first reaction was to groan, “Oh no.” Because the instant you have that thought experiment, the amount of work we need to accomplish balloons up monstrously. If I’m responsible for more than myself, then the “need to work” morphs into a dauntingly huge problem with a totally different scope. Being responsible for another individual could include cooking meals for them or paying their rent, but you can’t take care of a whole species through chores or even money. To scale, we need to do bigger things, invent stuff, use our imaginations. I never cook and I’m still figuring out how to take responsibility for my family. How do I take responsibility for my species? This is the question I’ve been thinking about. What do you work on when you need to work for your species?

A while ago, I realized it’s mathematically irrational for people who can afford to take big risks to not take them, and who’s better positioned to take risks than us? Furthermore, if you claim responsibility for your whole species, it’s not just irrational to not take a risk- it’s irresponsible and morally wrong. Unambitious ambitions are false to my identity and potential: our ambitions have to match our abilities, and most people are not reaching high enough- because of fear, laziness, lack of imagination, etc, which is wrong. It’s like the Dalai Llama or someone wise was saying: if we have greater will and intelligence than flies, but we live the same as a fly lives, then the fly is more true and honest than we are. I have a duty to myself to monotonically increase in awesomeness, and I have a duty to mankind to do good in the world. From this perspective, there’s no end to the work I need to do. Which is sort of annoying and scary, but also fun and exciting! Just as we have a duty to pursue personal excellence, we have a responsibility to live up to our potential as a species. We humans could live off the land like flies, but we build structures and satellites because otherwise intelligent dolphins and alien civilizations would laugh at us.

So here’s the question that Elon Musk caused me to ask: What do you think are the biggest challenges and opportunities facing mankind? This question has led to many awesome discussions, so think about it. The only catch is that after you think about it, the follow up question is, “What are you doing to contribute to a solution?” If the answer is, “Nothing,” then we have to ask, “Why are we choosing to work on something we don’t consider important?” So watch out: a question can change everything.

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2012 Films

I’ve probably watched 50-100 of the movies that came out this year (hey, I’m on vacation), and these are the ones that I liked enough to watch multiple times (hey, I’m on vacation). Spoilers. (Re: the apparently conspicuous absence of The Dark Knight Rises, I simply don’t have any desire to see this movie again and prefer the earlier Dark Knights.)

The Bourne Legacy
Why did I like this so much? Maybe partially because I love Rachel Weisz and female scientists. Weisz won me over years ago as the sexy, dorky egyptologist in The Mummy. Her approval makes both Renner and Daniel Craig more attractive in my eyes, which is the ultimate compliment coming from me, a sign of a true girl crush. Despite some plot holes such as the lack of killing people with office supplies, this film still has a motorcycle chase scene and even ups the ante with gratuitous wolf wrestling. Apparently contrary to many viewers, I was also extremely sympathetic towards his mission and unconfused regarding the plot. Who wouldn’t fear losing one’s own mind and identity, effectively dying? Furthermore, unlike the other Bourne movies where Bourne battles random minions or incompetent bureaucrats evilly fixated on local concerns, this movie found a suitable antagonist in Ed Norton, an intelligent, lucid, moral person who makes smart, difficult decisions while understanding the higher level risks and costs.

Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina is unbelievably complex, beautiful, and insightful in book form (is there a modern writer anywhere near this level? Is Tolstoy evidence of the decline of literature?), and now in movie form (movies are still on the up since they’re tied to technological innovation and budget resources). I can’t believe this movie hit so many themes and included so many side stories with such a low budget and in such a concise running time. This could only have been accomplished by imaginative, talented people who really understand the themes of Russian literature. They even threw in Tolstoy’s meditations idealizing simple agrarian peasant life- how ambitious!

Stoppard is an amazing screenwriter. But my favorite parts come from, I assume, the director. The theater setup is brilliant and daring, showing the gap between “the real people,” i.e. the Russian elites, and the commoners who rummage about backstage in the dirty darkness, lacking the knowledge or resources to watch the show. In this aristocratic world, the players are also the audience, everyone obsessively watching themselves and each other, everything an exhibition. The only times they’re not on a stage are when the guys are out on the farm; even the closing scene zooms out to reveal a theater blooming with wildflowers.

Such incredible imagery- whose idea were the mirrors, still the director? I also loved the magical, artistic transition shots such as the toy train becoming a real train, the torn letter fragments fluttering into snow, also the tense horse racing visuals where Anna’s fit parallels the horse’s broken back. The musical diegetic switches could probably become metaphors for the whole film, everything was so thoroughly considered and deliberate, but I’ll spare you any meandering essays.

Even without having read the book, I think you get the idea on how complex life and relationships can be when you don’t exist in a vacuum. The double standard enforced by society causes Anna to both resent and rely on Vronsky despite him not having made the rules and generally being on her side. When “wrong” is defined as making a fuss by being in the way of what others want, offending what others view as acceptable, it’s enough to make a woman crazy!

The acting was rich and amazing, even for a relatively a minor/flat character like Vronsky. If you’ve only ever watched Kick Ass out of Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s oeuvre, you never would’ve cast the dorky Dave as the master seducer Vronsky who creepily breaks every rule in the book but is somehow so hot you throw away your whole life to be with him. But if you’ve watched anything else he’s done in addition to Kick Ass, you would cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson as anything. The way he uses his voice and face to morph between screechy, awkward, insecure teen and confident stud who fucks Blake Lively/ Keira Knightley, punches/shoots people, and starts a band is best described as enlightening- an instructive how-to on traveling between low status and high status.

This movie was highly anticipated by Yinmeng and me, mentioning it repeatedly in our Thanksgiving “planning.” On the costuming, dancing, photography, all the visual beauty: years from now I may identify this movie as the sole origin of my extensive and expensive tastes in heavy, exquisite jewelry, furs, crepe, velvet, lace, and casual wearing of veils. The music was also beautiful. I think everything about this movie is perfect: enchanting and creative. I’ll probably watch it a bunch more times in theaters.

Silver Linings Playbook
The script is great. I was amazed by how much information could be transferred through/despite inarticulate, verbally uninteresting dialogue. For example, very few of the lines are quotable or clever or surprising, and yet it was moving and believable and complex. This was not simply due to acting- it was the script, which somehow made inane, low information echolalia expressive and interesting.
Despite Winter’s Bone, I’d never gotten what everyone was saying about how good an actress Lawrence is, but now I see it and think she’s really cool. Bradley Cooper- I only knew him as a lovable jerk in various guy comedies, but he was surprisingly good in this movie (Limitless had a good concept but a bad plot). I thought it was going to be about football watching (what? How boring) and mental illness (bummer) but it’s actually about dancing (wow, awesome!) and was hilarious (DeNiro and Lawrence have a funny fight about the relationship between the Eagles and her relationship with Cooper) and romantic (Lawrence and Cooper, who would’ve thought?).

Les Miserables
I was waiting for Les Mis to come out for this post because that was the last movie I was planning on seeing this year and I rightly suspected that I’d love it. It was the first Les Mis movie wherein I actually understood what was happening or remembered any of the characters names. When you have genius performers and crew working off the compositions of genius composers and lyricists who were working off a genius writer’s 2000 pages of plotting and characters, you get 200 proof ultra-genius that just knocks you out.

Without having read the Hugo, I’d always found the characters painfully retarded. Why is Jean Valjean suicidally moral, appearing to deny his sense of self preservation despite his actually incredible powers of self preservation? His behavior not only offends my survival instinct, it offends my sense of duty towards living up to one’s potential, which is arguably more sinful than any lie or theft. Why is Eponine enabling her crush’s crush on someone else? Why does she have a crush on such a loser anyway? And then she kill herself for his sake? Not only does she stupidly die, she offends my doctrine of self esteem and my philosophy of women being the more sane ones (who falls in love with their male best friend? That’s supposed to be the dumb man’s job), thereby sinning and making me cringe. I coldly consoled myself with the thought that such a woman perhaps doesn’t deserve to reproduce or find love anyway.

While Jean Valjean and the Thenardiers are on opposite poles of the self preservation vs morality spectrum, Javert is off in another dimension living solely off his axiom that the law’s the law. Guided by this root belief, Javert is very principled and robotically amoral, a character type I’ve never encountered in life; maybe real people sense the futility of rules-based philosophies in the face of Godel’s incompleteness theorem. And then there are the young lovers who fall in love at first sight. Who does that?? Only French idiots who should be rightfully dead if it weren’t for Jean Valjean, that’s who!

This movie didn’t really change any of my above views, but it somehow made me not enraged or annoyed by any of their dumb decisions. It was nice. Borat is awesome, and Helena Bonham Carter is one of my favorite actresses. I also kept looking for more shots of Eponine because her waist and torso were freakishly narrow relative to her arm and head circumferences. Instead of annoyance and rage, I felt loving, tender compassion for our pathetic characters. Love for a random stranger or love for one’s oblivious best friend seemed sweet despite its irrationality- after all, irrationality is at the core of romance. And the fact that all these people give up their lives for love (both romantic and not) and other ideals, no matter how misplaced or wrong, is sweet and beautiful. Without changing the characters’ frustrating personalities or tragic circumstances, this was a feat accomplished only through great direction, cinematography, music, and pure onscreen charisma.

This movie also gave me the impression we’re never going to have a French Revolution because the standard of living is so much higher now than it used to be. Poor people would’ve died during childbirth or become orphans starving in the street instead of alive enough to grow up to to college and then become jobless. Despite how bad life was for people back then, especially compared to the cell phone carrying American 99%, they barely revolted. I don’t know much history though. Mainly I feel much more bad for the miserables of the past than for the miserables of today.

Runner up movies I wouldn’t terribly object to seeing again but haven’t/wouldn’t go out of my way to do:

Wreck-It Ralph
There were several hero archetypes bought up in this movie and an interesting undercurrent of accepting one’s identity and destined role in the social order. The eponymous Ralph is a reluctant hero who wants to have a simple life where he’s appreciated, finding nobility in executing the task for which he was designed. A hero in a more literal sense, the GI Jane character shoots aliens and repeatedly systematically saves the world. In addition maybe Vanellope is a heroine in that she doggedly and somewhat selfishly just wants to fulfill what she senses to be her destiny- Ayn Rand would probably approve. To me, the villain was the most interesting character who shows by far the most impressive vision, creativity, daring, ambition, and verve. With a will to power that surpasses most supermen, the villain hacks and controls a whole universe that isn’t even his native universe to achieve his dreams and transcend his programming. This upstart attitude goes against the grain of the rest of the story, wherein Ralph’s bad guy group recites a litany describing how they should accept their badness. Because Vanellope, the true heroine as designated by the game designer gods, finally returns to her throne, the story seems to disapprove of game characters straying from their programming and encourages everyone to find happiness and pride in their true natures. Although Vanellope has to realize her true nature is different from what she’s been told, the premise of video games prescribes an objectively true nature for everyone, which Nietzsche and the villain would disagree with, and which Ralph’s rise as a hero who defeats the villain also proves wrong. Surprisingly deep for a kid’s story, right? The animated movements were also cool.

21 Jump Street
Did Jonah Hill write this? If so, he is awesome. This was so funny and original despite following the tried and true movie script formula.

Prometheus
I haven’t watched any of the Alien movies and normally do not seek out spookiness. However alternative histories fascinate me, especially if they involve aliens, plus this movie had a really well designed and imaginative vision of futuristic and alien technologies. Despite generally disliking the disgusting, I was entertained by the surgery scene and all the exploding squids.

Magic Mike
None of the characters are very deep but the choreography and concept is a win. We should have more movies like this- it’s probably impossible to stop objectifying women so it’s only fair that we also objectify men, a clear case of two wrongs making a right. I’d always thought male objectification would be difficult because men are on average not very attractive or good at dancing relative to women, but this movie proves hot guys are out there, mainly in the South, and that they can dance.

Perks of Being a Wallflower
I read this book ages ago because Chomsky is from USC, which is really close to my high school. This movie is so affectionate towards Pittsburgh that I almost miss it. Despite my childhood being completely different from anything portrayed in this movie, it makes me nostalgic and loyal to my old stomping grounds.
Emma Watson does not do a good job at having a non-English Pittsburgh accent. That plus the short hair has left me disenchanted with the actress who was so cute as Hermione, one of my favorite characters, and so hot in Burberry, one of my favorite brands. But Logan Lerman saved the day! I was uncertain about Lerman’s ability to portray a psychologically unstable, insecure, friendless, unpopular genius because Lerman is abnormally cute and likable. But he’s actually talented and does a good job, so I feel slightly guilty for judging him based on his appearance. Maybe I’m also feeling guilty because I think he’s hot despite his character not even being 18 years old and a big theme of the movie being child molestation. Luckily I’m a woman and that’s one instance of a slightly beneficial double standard. I think it makes sense for women to be attracted to younger men (and for anyone to be attracted to younger women). Maybe one day I’ll be a 45 year old woman dating a 20 year old man- would that be so terrible? Except right now I’m 27 and he’s like 2 years old so it’d be weird if we met anytime in the next 15 years or so, which sadly was not avoidable for Lerman’s character in this movie. Although people used to anticipate sex with the underage all the time back when they were betrothed as infants, and it’s happening to Jacob in Breaking Dawn, which surprisingly no one seems that freaked out about, maybe because our “WTF” neurons are so desensitized and exhausted by everything else happening in those books.

Lawless
I would not normally watch this genre of movie but skimmed it on a plane. Probably due to my having skipped some sections, parts of the plot were confusing and I don’t really understand who was killing who or why. Nevertheless, the amazing acting makes me think I should watch it again without skipping some day. Honestly I never respected Shia Labeouf’s acting because, despite having had sex with Megan Fox, he’s in several very bad movies (admittedly I’ve seen almost every movie he’s in), and I always think of him as that annoying, supposedly funny kid from the Disney channel. He was really good in this movie though, as was that red haired woman, Mia, and Bane.

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The and My Future

“Why are you taking the 101? Can’t you see your iPhone 5 is lying to you? Its map was wrong in Santa Clara and it’s wrong here.”
“The 101 is the 280’s uglier sister. Clearly Steve jobs wanted us to take this route. Anyway now we can have a nice talk where you advise me on my finances.”
It’s funny how I’m the financial expert amongst my non-trading friends even though my opinions are almost certainly things no financial advisor would recommend to anyone.

When I first joined GETCO, I introduced myself to a new employee saying, “GETCO is my first job after MIT,” and the closest person I had to a boss interjected, “And your last.” At the time I sincerely believed and hoped that this would be true. In 2007, the company had 30 traders across 4 offices. Each trader did whatever they decided was optimal in a market that bloomed with opportunity: it was like the wild wild west- so much fertile terrain waiting to be conquered by a few explorers, populated only by some occasionally annoying but generally innocuous natives. I loved it. I never had someone telling me what to do, or really even anyone questioning what I was working on. I didn’t think about the future after GETCO because who would ever want to leave? The business was exploding, we were at the forefront of technology, and if you hesitated to size up your coworkers would make increasingly loud chicken sounds.

4.5 years later, after Singapore I went straight to my NYC desk to clean it out, then to Chicago to resign. I and everyone assumed I was going to stay in HFT because I’m a “world class expert in HFT,” plus headhunters were busy setting up lunches with billionaires with ambitions regarding their nonexistent/proto/growing/declining HFT operations. I was advised not to sign anything till the noncompete was up so I participated in some fantastic handshakes and told everyone I’d see them after my noncompete was over.

I’m not good at vacation so I viewed this year as a rumspringa world tour- I just got back from New Zealand and am writing this while jetlagged, thinking about how my paid vacation will be up in 2.5 weeks. This year I zoomed my head out of focus to see what everyone else is looking at. Let me tell you: Other People are looking at some pretty crazy stuff. I met Verner Vinge and Ray Kurzweil at the Singularity Summit. Compared to these impassioned singularity people, I feel like an ape for mentally shrugging when they bring up existential risk and AI. Nevertheless, my main impression is it’s cool these people are contemplating and perhaps helping decide a vision of mankind as a species. Most people never think about that kind of thing, as individuals or as a species. What is the destiny of mankind? Who even asks this question? Shouldn’t we wander blindly towards our fates like all other species? Aren’t we just dominant, blessed by god to be gods among animals? Anyway, the Singularity Summit led me to go to Rationality camp. This post was originally about Rationality Camp but I guess I’ll write about that some other time (sorry to leave you as irrational as ever, although I can tell you that I made $280+ from poker, won a prize despite not being the most rational (Dilip had the most points in the whole camp but somehow lost his prize to me. Yes! Plus I beat him at some kind of augmented reality game, which victories are documented photographically)).

This year has been upside down: I’ve been paid to not work, spent more time in CA than NYC, and I realized I’m old- I think I’ve aged relative to my non-finance peers. I’m 27 and I’ve started finding younger people annoying. Those fools have no idea how lucky they are. At my age, people are suddenly so hard to impress. If I were starting a company at age 17 people would say, “Awesome.” Now everyone’s like, “Whatever.” Too old to be effortlessly impressive, too young to shove offending kids off my subway seat, I’m at an age when I don’t really notice anyone else’s age unless they bring it up, whereas for years I was conscious of even a year’s difference. Looking back at my childhood, the hours reading in the grass, the biking with friends, my main impression is that an idyllic childhood is a colossal waste of time. Yes, even the priceless hours bonding with family had diminishing returns, and no one really needs to read the collected works of anybody- very few writers have anything to say after their first real book.

Sometimes I see flashes of myself 10 years in the future, so clear it’s almost a memory. This year I started seeing what future Nancy would be if I kept going down the trading path, and I didn’t feel excited. In fact I felt bored. Because it’s basically the same as always, except I’d need increasingly larger sums to get the same level of stimulation. For someone who lives so much in the future, I hadn’t really thought about what I’d think about the future after (if) it already happened. When I’m 40 will I see my 20’s and 30’s the way I currently see my childhood- objectively successful by most measures but privately viewed by myself as largely a waste of time?

I feel ennui regarding the kind of stuff people are supposed to do in their late 20’s, early 30s: the house and marriage stuff. My mom was in constant turmoil over the fact that she was too sick to see me “settled” in my NYC apartment. Prior to NYC, she had “settled” me into all apartments I’d ever lived in. Perhaps out of a desire to do what I thought she’d want me to do, I went out and bought my first furniture since she forced me to buy my mattress 5 years ago when I first moved to Chicago and needed a non dorm issued mattress. I ended up buying a $5000 coffee table made from a single solid cross section of a gigantic tree. Maybe I thought my mom would rest assured in my competence if I showed her this coffee table and other furnitures, that I was a grown up and finally handling this kind of stuff. I think I even bought a house plant of some kind, which never would have occurred to me to do in my youth. Mom just wanted me to be happy, which might not be what I want for myself. Now that I know what it’s like to have the perfect set of plates, I never want to own plates again. That stuff is all at my dad’s house now, completely out of place with his ornate, plasticky furniture.

I think I might’ve reassessed my trajectory sooner if it weren’t for the parents’ cancers. Cancer put me in a mental state of martial law where I was single-mindedly attacking obstacles without considering the problems of philosophy- who cares about higher ambitions when it’s life or death?

Now I feel like there’s more pressure. Maybe this is true for us as a species too- just as we’re most successful, there’s the most danger. Humans have accomplished a lot relative to other animals so the universe is ours to lose, plus we have to decide the extent of our future ambition. Similarly, as a kid the difference between working a little and a lot was the difference between an A- and an A+, whereas now there’s so much at stake- it’s now the difference between losing money and making money.

I’m acutely aware of being the writer of not only my writing but also of my own life. It’s exciting and scary and writer’s block-inducing to decide the next act. But from my life there’s just one thing I ask: don’t tell me how it ends.