There is a lot of space for describing things in different ways. And people are always doing it, expecting it to actually trick one another. “You say your glass is half empty, but.. actually it is half full!” Somehow I was vaguely aware of this activity for ages without supposing that it actually might work really well.
It works really well. At least on me, at least sometimes. Even when I would be perfectly capable of making up an opposite description myself, my feelings are caught by the one I have.
In particular, consider my life. It has a lot of details, and could be described in many ways. Sometimes I describe it to emphasize how well it showcases my abundant shortcomings. And I feel terrible! Not just for a moment. My arms and legs hurt, I want to give up on everything and curl up in a ball. Sometimes I emphasize how I have had the most absurdly good fortune time after time, and how I wouldn’t trade my life with anyone in the world. And I feel great and want to go out and do things. Sometimes I describe it in both ways in quick succession, and I feel terrible and then great. Which is to say, it is not just that I chastise myself when I’m already inclined to feel bad.
So, my day, optimistic framing edition:
I woke up just after I would have had to leave if I was going to go to a thing this morning, neatly eliminating the need to decide, and the risk of going.
I jumped out of bed and began my morning routine, a thing I have only really succeeded at having in the past year or so.
I have a classy new work tie, to signify being ‘at work’ when I work from home, so that work doesn’t get all mixed up with the not-being-at-work I also do from home. I successfully knotted my tie in the tricky ‘Trinity’ style, before setting to work.
(I chose a complicated knot to use up tie-length, in case I wanted to work in bed. Wearing a tie in bed seems moderately dangerous, what with its nooselikeness and tendency to tangle with things like bedding and limbs. Which is to say, I have achieved such work success that I have problems like avoiding my work attire strangling me in bed.)
I worked for hours, in spite of it being overwhelmingly aversive and apparently objectively hard, since nobody else is doing it. I even marginally improved the published content on AI Impacts, rather than merely editing unpublished content endlessly. And in breaks I learned about American culture and ancient history via Gilmore Girls and Civ IV respectively.
I tried getting dinner from Whole foods two blocks away, and discovered it to be a healthy-seeming and delicious. And when I saw a Wholefoods employee brushing dropped bits of food from the bench surrounding the food back in, I calmly took some food and didn’t run away and decide never to come back. Just like a normal person with normal levels of compulsive concern about hygiene and contamination.
S came home from work, and cuddled me, and told me about history and current events. Including some Middle Eastern conflicts, alliances, and geography, the nature of different Islamic groups, sexual misconduct among famous people, and OpenPhil’s funding of MIRI. S is way more interesting and cuddly than any work on these topics I have come across.
I cleaned the bathroom a bit, and ran the dishwasher, and dealt with more emails than appeared today, among other things.
S came to say goodnight and tell me about the history of Russia. For at least a second time, because my memory is terrible. We discussed the Russian leaders since Tsar Nicholas II, and how the USSR came to be, and Crimea. And that Mikhail Gorbachev was in this TV commercial for Pizza hut, which was inexplicably pleasing to me.