Parent page - My Eras (index)
Why I went to Asia
I went through a big breakup (like, we owned a house & had a dog together, my sweet chicken boy Moose the greyhound), and ~3 months later I was let go from my job (a biotech startup funded in large part by FTX, which went kaboom and our poor startup followed suit pretty soon after. RIP, incredible incredible experience, really life-changing).
My biotech wage was ~4x my previous wage, and I got a hefty severance package too, so after spending a bit of time thinking about what to do next, I started on a project with a friend who was also a life coach (Simmo). I had a strong sense that I wanted to learn more about the “post-rationalist” space of like; authentic relating, nonviolent communication, emotional intelligence, better forms of therapy, meditation, etc.
(At this point in my life I had done ~2 years of Humanistic talk therapy that accomplished essentially nothing), and was very socially anxious, terrible self esteem etc
So, hell yeah! A project with a life coach, someone who knows these spaces and various techniques and communities and stuff, let’s gooooo
What we worked on
We worked on two projects:
- A proposal for an intentional community, built around helping people flourish (“Vinelight”)
- (Somewhat ironic considering I was not flourishing, but also that gave me the motivation to want to figure this out)
- (We actually ended up getting offered ~$48k in initial funding to pursue this project but turned it down as we weren’t working together by that point)
- A youtube channel about social anxiety & social skills etc
- Another relative failure in retrospect, but we both learned a bunch from it and used the knowledge gained going forwards
To cut a long story (~1 year, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand) short; I ended up leaving the project to pursue more conventional employment; turns out that it’s really difficult to find a vision in a 2-person team that feels truly aligned and alive for both people. (A weird thing about “healing” or working on reducing self-coercion is that it becomes harder to work on most things)
1. Manila, The Philippines
2. Taipei, Taiwan
3. Bangkok, Thailand
4. Back to Taipei, realised I didn’t want to be in Asia anymore, dipped
What I gained
But I gained a huge amount from this era and my cofounder, like:
Silent meditation retreat
- I did a 10 day silent meditation retreat in the jungle in Thailand inspired by him, which was an incredible experience and having that long away from screens gave me the time needed to realise that I needed a creative outlet, which led to me starting to tweet, which led to a whole bunch of stuff
Exposure to post-rationalist thinking
- He introduced me to some amazing people who I still do a fortnightly microsolidarity crew call with, and I did a 10 day silent vipassana meditation retreat
- Got into tpot!!
- Started my substack with “paper journaling is better, actually” (thoughts from my meditation retreat) and then consensus-ism part 1 which is a banger
Learned about working with a cofounder
- I learned the importance of conflict resolution, check-ins, cofounder fit, the trickiness of embarking on an ambitious project when you’re still very much figuring your shit out (I think as a rule, people in this space are probably far flakier than average (talking about myself here))
- I made 1 amazing friend
- 1 is kinda tragic but also nah this person rules so much
- (Social anxiety kept me inside for a lot of the project, plus my Enneagram 3 tendencies and also I can’t handle hot weather, such humidity omg)
Seeing Asia for the first time
- I’m an Enneagram 3 + was super socially anxious + introverted + I can’t handle hot weather, so I didn’t have anything near a conventional backpacker’s adventure in Asia, but still, it was really awesome to see totally different cultures and cities. Manila’s slums were like nothing I’d ever seen, Taipei is incredibly charming, Bangkok was my worst nightmare. Really cool stuff