{"id":15422,"date":"2023-12-09T04:42:38","date_gmt":"2023-12-08T20:42:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=15422"},"modified":"2025-04-04T22:39:51","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T14:39:51","slug":"comfortable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/comfortable\/","title":{"rendered":"make yourself comfortable"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>&#8220;When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural\u2014 no antagonism required, no debt incurred.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1483003139376947204\">deleted source<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Christopher Alexander: &quot;places which are comfortable&#8230; have no inner contradictions, because there is no little restlessness disturbing them. [&#8230;] do it carefully, with much attention&quot;<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FxyXdgUR5S\">https:\/\/t.co\/FxyXdgUR5S<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Visakan Veerasamy (@visakanv) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1483005154886819843?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 17, 2022<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>you can make yourself a little more comfortable, as a treat. you can take lil actions to make your environment a little nicer for yourself. that feels good. it&#8217;s nice to feel good. it&#8217;s nice to feel like you&#8217;re someone who cares about you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(2025jan13) i&#8217;ve been going to many people&#8217;s houses lately while looking for one to buy, and it&#8217;s striking how some houses put me at ease, and some houses make me anxious and stress me out. this is one of those &#8220;well, duh&#8221; observations that nonetheless got me doing a Big Think<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>tbc<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2014 did you forget that you live here? \u2014<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>2021-march-5: <em>the title of this section is directly lifted from <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/itsmeardenleigh\/status\/918283786718023681\">a tweet by @itsmeArdenLeigh<\/a> that changed my life<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/visakanv\/status\/1342911019937456131\">one of my bigger regrets<\/a> is not doing more to reshape my environment to suit me. i think i have some feelings left over from when I was a kid and I felt like I didn&#8217;t have any sovereignty over myself<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I used to jokingly describe my current home as a halfway house, which&#8230; is still how it feels. wife and I bought it when we were broke 22yo&#8217;s who couldn&#8217;t afford a fridge or washing machine, let alone a proper renovation. we&#8217;re 30 now. feel like I let inertia keep me in the past<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>lots of strange little things add up for this. like, I&#8217;m a very tall guy in a short country so nothing fits me, and I&#8217;m just *used* to things being that way, and it never occurs to me otherwise<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>intend to make as big as possible of a dent in this in 2021. i&#8217;m done living like I&#8217;m a slightly-unwanted guest in my own life<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>part of doing this will mean spending more $ than I&#8217;ve been comfortable spending\u2013 and part of *that* will mean making more $ than I&#8217;ve been comfortable making, which will mean&#8230; being more intentional about things, taking on more responsibility&#8230; [cracks knuckles] let&#8217;s do it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>this goes deeper than it looks. at this point on twitter some people think of me as &#8220;a big(ger) account&#8221; or whatever, and\/but a big part of how I got to where I am (which I don&#8217;t necessarily recommend) is by being good at making myself secondary to others<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>it might seem strange and bizzaro\/inverted for someone who&#8217;s a loud, prolific, highly-visible person to describe themselves as &#8220;secondary&#8221;, but I think I&#8217;m being honest here. It&#8217;s complicated, there are many angles to it<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>people pleasing as a skill is a great servant but a terrible master at some point you gotta learn to respect yourself funnily, when you do that, you lose mainly the worst &#8220;friends&#8221;, and good people love you even more for it: for your sovereignty, self-respect and non-neediness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>[contented sigh] man I was so angry at my stuff just a couple of hours ago. part of it is the terrible user experience of computer things, but really, the reason I got so mad is that I was upset with myself for how I felt like I was disrespecting me (current mood: i&#8217;m tired of how there&#8217;s just so much everything everywhere)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>i have truly had to raise myself, and i goddam did it. some funny legacy issues here and there, but eh. I didn&#8217;t think i&#8217;d get this far. props and gratitude to the artists and teachers, the books and the bloggers, the kind internet strangers, ya&#8217;ll are the real MVPs<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>make yourself comfortable<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural\u2014 no antagonism required, no debt incurred.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>^ this sentence just got me to clean my desk from a place of love (and not frustration\/annoyance). i am allowed to be comfortable at my desk where I work<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christopher Alexander: &#8220;places which are comfortable\u2026 have no inner contradictions, because there is no little restlessness disturbing them. [\u2026] do it carefully, with much attention&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>this in turn just made me realize that the tweets I\u2019ve printed out and stuck to my wall to motivate me have a bit of an anxious, uncomfortable energy to them. thanking them for their service and lovingly taking them down<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>24nov2024: thinking about how this has some parallels with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/soften-the-ground\/\">soften the ground<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>How to produce living structure in the world<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Notes from a talk by Christopher Alexander I believe? Yeah: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=98LdFA-_zfA&amp;t=0s\">patterns in architecture<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patternlanguage.com\/archive\/ieee.html\">transcript here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Streets, gardens<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Places which are themselves living, alive<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>sad assumption: for the most part since ~WW2, no ability to produce living structure in the world<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>living structure needed to sustain and nurture us<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Existed in early urban settlements&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Debatable, some people say it\u2019s fine. architect of this room would say that<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It isn\u2019t fine, it\u2019s a hell of a problem, serious, affects every man woman child on earth&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We are so ignorant about how we do this, lamentable, serious<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Population is growing, most habitable environment built in the last 50 years, it\u2019s not nurturing. Drastic matter.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>what makes an environment nurturing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>how to scale?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Developers, hotel chains, railroad companies\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>how could one possibly get a hold of the massive amount of construction happening on earth, have it generated in a good\/living fashion<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>good environments: every part is extremely adapted to its particularities<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>traditional societies, people built their own dwellings, streets, etc adaptation was natural &#8211; generate living structure<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>always being things back to the human person<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Parking lot<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do I feel myself to be more whole&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Living structures can only be produced by unfolding wholeness<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Maintaining the whole at each step by gradually introducing differentiations&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2731 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ryan Singer interpreting Christopher Alexander: \u201cA pattern language is what we create for a project to specify this project at the right level of abstraction. It gives us a stepwise path through the problem-solving process, so that we can, step-by-step, adapt each center to the neighboring centers, and weave them into a field of centers which are all working together. It allows us to avoid overspecifying all the details that we don&#8217;t understand in the beginning.&#8221; (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Zy2zR_ex1I4\">substack note link<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural\u2014 no antagonism required, no debt incurred.&#8221; (deleted source) you can make yourself a little more comfortable, as a treat. you can take lil actions to make your environment a little nicer for yourself. that feels good. it&#8217;s nice to feel good. it&#8217;s nice to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1367],"class_list":["post-15422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unsorted","tag-desire-paths"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>make yourself comfortable - @visakanv&#039;s blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/comfortable\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"make yourself comfortable - @visakanv&#039;s blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"&#8220;When we truly feel comfortable, the desire to improve is natural\u2014 no antagonism required, no debt incurred.&#8221; 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