august 24 vie

I'm trying to write earlier in the day so that I'm not stuck writing last thing, by which I mean "so that I don't stay up late." That said, "stuck" is a bad way to put it because it suggests a lack of agency. I have agency. I just plan poorly. And so do you. "No, Dave, you plan poorly, I plan well," someone will think after reading this. If that someone is right (most of them won't be), they will only be right for a while, because I would submit that there are only certain things you can plan or plan for and the rest of whatever your life is comes down to forces like luck, chance, and resilience. And you can really only develop one of those things. Pretty much everyone I know whose lives were going according to plan five, ten, or twenty years ago have, since then, experienced the terrible truth that life cannot be reasoned with or brought to heel. Most of these folks fell back to earth and hit the ground with a thud, but a handful of them problem-solved in real time, adapted to…