recipe for freedom
somewhere i am walking. somewhere i am free
some updates on my thinking and work around computing at the bottom. on your way down you can enjoy a reflection on freedom and my relationship to it. thank you for being here and a reminder to please share this with friends you think might enjoy :)
Do you feel free?
I’ve always felt trapped in a lot of ways. Growing up, I felt like I was moving through quicksand. Ankles trapped in shackles, stomach knotted into a bowtie, a pebble in my throat catching all my words. Looking back I was full of yearning. I wanted so much but could never bring myself to acquire it. Or maybe I never gave myself permission to get what I wanted.
I appeared to have freedom. I could move most of my limbs, wiggle my toes, put up a not-entirely miserable mile time. Given a proper stage and carefully constructed set, I could fabricate the illusion that I could do anything in the world. I was, am, an exceptional actor. I planned out every possible development. I planned out of necessity, frantically drawing out forks and alternative paths as if my life depended on the root system that emerged. But at a certain point my plans ran out. If you peeked behind the scenes, you would find the limits of my range of expression. I could never go beyond a limit I felt was imposed by external forces. There were things I simply did not think were possible for me, where my desires were concerned.
I felt beholden to a lot of obligations then. Obligations to how I felt like I needed to be to make friends (the kind of person who uses humor, or more specifically their own laugh, to cope with uncomfortable situations and bullying), the kind of life my parents wanted for me (successful, well-liked, academically high-achieving, well-adapted and polite), the sort of person I thought I had to be to become the “smartest” kid at school and “earn” a successful future, the type of partner who could solve everything on their own yet still provide all the attention and caring to their partner as needed, the sort of student I thought was prized (obedient: never speaking out of line, questioning the professor, or making excuses about their late homework or their absentee partner), the kind of flawless role model I idolized (a pretentious, self-obsessed dick).
One of my deepest personal projects has been working on becoming free. Possessing inherent freedom to actualize my wants, pursue my interests, love what I love and present myself how I want.
I guess I'm in a period where I need to journal. Or maybe I just have a lot of thoughts that want to escape. I find myself thinking more often these days. Thinking about thinking and thinking about doing and thinking about loving. I keep telling people I'm in a transitional period. Basically what I mean is that everything I say about what will happen, about what I will do, about what I'm thinking about doing is subject to immense change. That I have intentions. I have hopes and dreams. But they are fluffy, fickle. They don't pin me to the earth like gravity. Like the burdens of reality. One must imagine Sisyphus happy, but I find myself conflicted these days: at once yearning these days for something I can't describe or see and feeling immensely grateful for every beautiful moment in this life that isn't a given. I know treasures abound in the dark, yet I fear what they entail, anticipating a flinch the moment my fingers brush across their outer frame. I feel the need to scramble towards them, to sweep my hands around in the dark frantically, allow my fingers to be pricked, my hands to be sliced. Blood for enlightenment.
Lord, I confess I want the clarity of catastrophe but not the catastrophe
Like everyone else, I want a storm I can dance in.
I want an excuse to change my life.
— Franny Choi in Catastrophe is next to Godliness
I think I’m coming up on another cycle of rebirth. I’m finding that I reinvent myself every few years now. First when I started college, then when I graduated, and now a few years into my working adult life. As much as I think I dread these moments, I treasure them as unique inflection points to catapult along a carefully aligned path. Existential angst and suspense fuel momentum. And the point of release induces such a cathartic burst of clarity and energy, freedom fireworks exploding all around your soul.
I’m sitting with the building energy now. I can feel the nerves tingling across my body. The excess energy arcing from one hand up through my shoulders to the other every once in a while, forcing my body to twist with the path. I feel nervous but excited. Ready but terrified. I can feel the fog clearing every day. I’m biding my time, prepping the flares, til the day of celebration.
What does it mean to be free? Here’s my list:
you are true to yourself, act according to what feels right in each moment, and feel no inhibition around being that way
you're willing to fight for your instinct for rightness in the face of external conflict
being aware of what you're feeling and what your body is calling for
I think you want to surround yourself with people who think in different ways from you (notice different things, approach things in different ways), but they should ultimately be headed towards similar directions, drawn to similar sources of resonance (allies rather than just friends)?
What do I care about the people around me? How do I picture them being in a way that will empower me to be free?
a sense of curiosity for why things work the way they do, why things are the way they are
an indomitable joie de vivre
a playfulness and tendency for experimentation for understanding. an openness to being surprised and surprising
an intentionality surrounding their actions and words. A gravity to their life
a pursuit of freedom, a desire for authentic expression
a willingness to be present
in touch with their emotions and what they want and can communicate that effectively
a courage and defiance to their craft that speaks to some deeper comprehension of what they are trying to bring into the world and what they are "fighting" against
A recipe for freedom
Answer the questions above for yourself. What does it mean to be free to you? What kind of people will empower you to be free?
Collect a list of all the things (society, friends, parents, your mind, etc.) that make you feel obligated to act some type of way or do anything that feels unnatural in any way
Wash them thoroughly to scrub them clean of any lingering bits of self-consciousness
Inspect each expectation individually thoroughly before dicing finely
Get a pan oiled and hot and dump all the ingredients inside
Burn to a crisp and plate in a nice porcelain bowl
Walk over to an airy window and fling the contents out
Take a deep breath, taking in the smell of your constraints coming off. Remember the scent of freedom.
updates / extras
I saw this viral tweet about GPT-3 exposed as a formula in Google Sheets GPT-3. Two observations: 1) the demo video matters so much in these crazy magical experiences for showing the extent of the magic (replies show people who had done this before) and 2) this functionality seemed so obvious to me because it took less than an hour to hook this up in Coda using our Packs infrastructure, but I forget how much scaffolding is involved in understanding personal software with tables of data that can talk to arbitrary external services. If you want to try this in Coda with your own OpenAI API token DM me.
I gave my website a mini renovation as a consolation to my inconsolable urge to remake my website. In short, I made my avatar a bowling bowl, added some textures and dark mode, added my summer projects, and hooked up my personal API to a live marquee. https://spencerchang.me
I’ve been simmering on my dream vision for our relationship with computing and the internet—the different structures it requires, how it should feel and look like (the vibes and analogies that resonate), and what we should be able to do. More to come very soon :) and in the meantime I’m curious to hear answers to the below:
what’s your dream of what computing should be like or what computers should allow you to do?
what would you call handmade automation?
would you text your website?
i loved the recipe for freedom prompts!