Radically Rethinking Resettlement: A Syria Solution?

The Status Quo

So, we've all been talking about the Syrian refugee situation for a while now. Four million people have fled Syria, escaping a war zone of mayhem, chaos, and death, and now as America, land of immigrants and second chances, we are faced with the question: what are we going to do about it?

One side says it is our moral imperative to render aid and provide shelter. The other says that due to security concerns, we should stand back and do nothing. So, we've settled into our trenches: “Help, because that's the right thing to do,” vs. “Don't help, because that's the safe thing to do.” It gives us clear teams in which to band together and rage at the other side.

I don’t have a huge amount of patience left for this debate. The people who’ve entrenched their position in fearmongering, xenophobia, and a false choice between compassion and security aren’t really interested in hearing the opposition (to be fair, I’m also not really going to sit down and read exactly why each of those 31 US state governors claim they won’t accept refugees, since it mostly boils down to being terrified of ISIS and/or pandering to their terrified-of-ISIS base).

As you can probably tell, philosophically I'm on the side of taking in more refugees. But even on this side, I don't feel like I see anyone talking about how specifically we can help. I mean, there's the usual micro/individual level of donating money or writing your elected representatives to urge action. But what about the macro level, the governmental policy side of it? Well, Obama's administration has committed to increasing our intake of Syrian refugees to 10,000 over the next year, which is great as far as it goes, but again, this is a 4,000,000-strong problem, so that’s only addressing it by a quarter of one percent.

Imagination

So, let's do a thought experiment. For just a moment, I want you to put aside the questions of resources, political will, controversy, and start simply from one overarching question: what would it take to make a massive, real impact on this crisis that the world is facing?

Let's start the bidding with a nice round number–what if America took in one MILLION refugees? And in what ways might that be not a massive burden or hardship for America, but rather an opportunity? Think about it. Every massive wave of immigration in US history has been ultimately beneficial. Taking in immigrants is what we were made to do as a country, and the crazy thing is that give it a generation or two, and suddenly these others, these foreigners, these immigrants just become… Americans.

(For a very recent pop culture lens on this, you can watch the Netflix show Master of None by Aziz Ansari, which in addition to being interesting and funny, depicts several first-generation Americans’ stories and those of their immigrant parents.)

Policy Model

The dominant policy model of refugee resettlement in America is that which was employed following the evacuation of Vietnam. It is a paradigm of assimilation, distributing the incoming refugees as broadly as possible across major metropolitan centers in order to minimize as much as possible their impact upon arrival, and by pretty much all accounts it was very successful:

In 1975, in the closing days of the Vietnam War, about 130,000 Vietnamese who were generally high-skilled and well-educated, and who feared reprisals for their close ties to Americans, were airlifted by the United States government to bases in the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam. They were later transferred to refugee centers in California, Arkansas, Florida, and Pennsylvania for up to six months of education and cultural training to facilitate their assimilation into their new society. Although initially not welcomed by Americans (only 36 percent in a national poll favored Vietnamese immigration), President Gerald Ford signed the Indochina Migration and Refugee Act of 1975, which granted the refugees special status to enter the country and established a domestic resettlement program.  

“From Refugees To Americans: Thirty Years Of Vietnamese Immigration To The United States” by Alicia Campi of the Immigration Policy Center 

This seems to be the approach currently being discussed for the 10,000 Syrians we’ve committed to accepting, and it makes sense for the most part, as there are strong parallels in the situations. I’m not sure how many Americans know it, but–much like those 130,000 Vietnamese–the Syrian refugees are generally well-educated and skilled workers. Many of the adults have professional degrees, and the young hold aspirations of attending universities–they’re more like us than they’re not.

For instance, I’ve heard idiotic newscasters point to the fact that some refugees have smartphones as somehow “evidence” that they aren’t really so badly off, but it just goes to show how like us they are. If a bloody civil war broke out in your backyard and you had to run for your life, would any one of you leave your smartphone at home? No, you’d take it and use every social media and tech tool available to help survive (Syrian refugees use GPS to navigate unfamiliar countries, Facebook groups to coordinate and share tips, and generally behave as, you know, people in the 21st century would in their situation).

So, problem solved, right? Draft a new 1975-style Migration and Refugee Act and all’s good? Well, maybe, but remember, we’re aiming at one million, not one hundred thousand. I don’t know how well the “spread them out as far as possible” strategy would work with ten times as many. It’s certainly worth considering! But let’s let our creativity roam a little more first.

AN ALTERNATIVE 

So for the sake of argument, let’s think about what the opposite of the 1975 plan would be. Instead of trying to limit the burden by spreading out the incoming refugees among our existing infrastructure, what if we built new infrastructure to accommodate them? I’m not talking about makeshift tent cities, but actual new cities, from scratch?

This is one of the biggest ways in which we have an actual opportunity in admitting refugees. I've read many essays lamenting the difficulty of working to improve old, established cities, and how much better things could be if able to start from a clean slate (re: the mind-boggling complexity of getting train arrival countdown clocks in the New York subway).

This type of project at the scale of an entire new city, however, inevitably runs into the issue of how to create and populate something so interdependent and connected all at once, since our model of urban development in America has so long been one of more or less organic growth over time. Our cities almost always started because there was a port, river, trade route, adjacent natural resource, or defensible geographic formation which we populated with a small number of settlers, gradually building out and expanding as generations multiplied and newcomers were drawn in.

Thus, the danger in building innovative new city models is that no one will move to them. No one wants to live in a city built for 10,000 when there’s only 50 people there, so no one moves in, and it can never reach the necessary tipping point of a self-sustaining population level. This, in fact, was the end result of many of China’s planned “eco-cities”.

But in this hypothetical US project (which we might as well name… let’s call it The Clean Slate Project), we have entire cities of refugees fleeing at once, and we could theoretically populate an entire city in a matter of weeks or months. Suddenly, innovators working on how to dramatically improve humanity’s future cities could be given a chance to explore a wide range of possibilities. Each refugee would be–in tech parlance–a beta tester of sorts for visionary new living structures.

We could gather the biggest experts in cities from across America and the world–architects, engineers, urban planners, city comptrollers, real estate developers, academics, etc. and (just throwing out numbers here) come up with 50-100 concepts for cities ranging from 10,000-50,000 people. I would be shocked if we couldn’t immediately get at least 30 radically different and innovative concepts, ones that have already been developed and fine-tuned for years, just waiting for a chance to be implemented. Exemplary PhD theses in urban design; planned communities by ambitious architects; “Best innovative city” contests. (I just googled “innovative city design contest” and found the "Future of Cities" issue of Wired which I can’t believe I hadn’t read yet and will have to peruse later.)

They would be opportunities to study and develop new public transit networks, alternative energy sources, construction materials, “smart city” technology, driverless cars, urban ecology, population dynamics, and much more.

But why, you may ask, should we help these Syrians when so many American citizens are living in their own dire circumstances: the rural poor, the urban homeless, citizens struggling to feed their families or get out from underwater on their mortgage? Well, there’s no reason the opportunities inherent in such a project have to be (or even should be) limited to refugees from Syria.

Citizens of all walks of life could apply to the Clean Slate Project–from those living on the edge of life and death each time the temperature drops below freezing, to those frustrated NYC millennials tired of paying 70% of their income on rent in a city with an insane housing shortage (ahem), to people generally doing fine but who maybe feel a restlessness with where they are and want a chance to change their life. These people could give us their qualifications, experience, and a sense of what work they’d ideally want to do, and we’ll see what we can do with those building blocks in terms of making cities that work.

It’s not just NYC, by the way, facing an urban housing cost crunch. And as for the homeless populations? Yes, a significant element of the problem is the prevalence of untreated mental health disorders, but there’s a lot of people who could get back on their feet given a chance at permanent housing, as seen in the seminal Family Options Study results released recently by HUD.

And more broadly, what effects could this have on the nation? Well, consider that America just hit a significant tipping point, as decades of wage stagnation and ever-greater polarization of the country’s wealth concentration mean that the majority of Americans are no longer middle class. Let’s not forget that the modern American ascendant middle class was driven in no small part by the subsidized mass housing projects following WWII, and (minus the rampant discrimination and redlining that badly muddies the legacy of the Levittown era) a new iteration of such projects could have significant, long-lasting benefits for our economy going forward.

These are the most significant net positives that I can see–saving potentially millions of lives, all while providing people with incredible opportunities to build a better future. I can also imagine many, many other comparatively less dramatic results, such as the opportunity for a massive language exchange/immersion program to increase our Arabic-fluent population (an obvious asset in an age where many security concerns revolve around Middle Eastern relations), a potential development of “in-sourcing”, putting jobs we might otherwise send overseas back in America, where the pay stays in our economy and taxes go to our government (and Americans running call centers, for instance, don’t have to deal with the headaches of managing a workforce in a time zone 13 hours ahead). Those types of benefits feel almost petty relative to the more grandiose ones, but they’re worth weighing as well.

A still large, but less immediate upside is also a concern close to my heart–space colonization. No, seriously, if a far better strategy for deploying large, complex cities from scratch can be developed, it has important implications for humanity’s spread to the stars. The logistics of interplanetary travel followed by terraforming or building bubble cities will likely cause the “lone pioneer” colonization model–employed in European New World expansion or American West settlement–to be impractical, since a single family or small community has far less capacity to break out of Earth’s gravity than to pile into a sailing ship or covered wagon and set out.

THIS ALL SOUNDS GREAT IN THEORY, BUT WHAT ABOUT…

Ok, fine. we'll start letting real world concerns start impinging on our thought experiment.

FUNDING SOURCES

Well, there's the money problem of course, and I get the feeling that waving a hand and saying "the government has the capacity for truly astonishing deficit spending if necessary" isn't going to win many people over (even if it is generally true). So: funding.

Governmental Re-allocation:

First, and most obviously whenever government spending cuts are discussed–defense spending. We spend more on our military than the next 20 countries combined, 19 of whom are our allies. But I would contend that humanitarian support for these refugees IS defense spending. In a changing world, the source of our national security becomes less and less about how many aircraft carriers or fighter jets we can field, and more and more about soft power. Rather than being able to crush conventional opposition, we have to find a path towards preventing terrorist threats before they even develop. No, not by defining every Muslim man of “fighting age” as an enemy combatant and dispatching them via drone. But rather by eliminating the conditions in which anger, fear, and desperation breed radicalism by turning our resources towards humanitarian aid instead.

What a statement we could present to the world. We’d take the money we use to create weapons of death that will rain fire upon your homes and families (which by the way we literally call “Hellfire” missiles. Is it any wonder we're not exactly winning hearts and minds?), and instead we'll use those dollars to shelter you, spirit you away from the chaos, and give you a chance to start over afresh. I wonder which of those two approaches to Middle East diplomacy is more likely to foment resentment, anger, hatred, and violence towards the Western world (hint: it's the fire and death thing. You know, the thing that created the conditions for ISIS to be born in the first place?)

So there's a completely realpolitik, soft power-oriented, cynical, self-serving reason to take in the refugees. But it's also the right thing. How great, that the right thing and the smart thing and the effective thing might all be the same in this case? The thing it is perhaps not is the obvious thing or the easy thing. But then again, what was it that crazy, wild-eyed optimist once said about going to the moon? "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard." A modern moon-shot spirited grandiose initiative comes not from a childish naiveté, but rather a careful consideration of what is most admirable about our country’s history and trying to live up to and even improve it.

Private Funds

On the civilian side, of course we can open the floodgates for anyone to donate to this project who believes in it. We could set up a Kickstarter campaign, even, for each of the hundred new city proposals, and perhaps we should. But individual charitable giving and crowdfunding can only go so far.

Instead, what if we find ways to leverage some of our big financial guns? America is hungry for innovation. It always has been, and the appetite for disruption and optimization seems especially rabid in my generation–but a huge amount of that creativity and drive has been channeled into just the digital world of software, for the obvious reason that it is among the easiest fields to iterate quickly, replacing whole architectures in months or years, building brand new systems from scratch. On the other hand, things like apartment complexes, road design, urban planning, energy production, many of the fundamental and essential elements of our society have been developed so slowly, almost organically, over many years that one of the biggest impediments to overhaul is the presence of existing, already functional, "good enough" structures.

There exists today technology and knowledge at an advanced enough level to build many new systems from scratch easier, cheaper, and more effectively than do the patchwork upgrade procedures employed currently. This is true of MANY industries. Prototypes have been developed that could be major improvements, but they require large purchase commitments to make scaling them make sense, and the large scale customers who could make an order sufficiently large (cities, major corporations, etc) want something that's already been proven to work at scale.

So you wind up with a bunch of gunshy financial actors, each waiting for someone else to upgrade first. Everyone wants to be the third or fourth adopter, but never the first. (See the development of Google Fiber, where there was such skepticism, but once results were shown, cities started competing to get it and we forget anyone ever doubted it in the firstplace.) So, we find those ideas and give the R&D departments of the world the chance to dump their budgets into their dream scenario. We find a GE environmental engineer who wants to build a highly sustainable village of bio-fuel powered houses built out of sod and set deep into hillsides. A physicist working on thorium nuclear reactors which will ultimately have drastically safer waste, but have trouble getting traction because of the "not in my backyard" syndrome.

Projects like Google's Sidewalk Labs and Facebook's Gehry-designed company city show how these tech giants, aware of the potential for improvements (and with their usual attitude of “well, let’s just do it ourselves”) have begun investigating the benefits of more centrally planned and technologically integrated cities, so they could be included as entities in the process of some of these Clean Slate test cities. In exchange for that chance to test even more theories and iterations, they could be asked to lay out some of their massive cash reserves to help cover the costs.

Bonds?

This is a random thought, but what if we set up a way for Americans to “buy in” to the new cities, like they once did with war bonds to support the military? They’d be government-backed, and appreciate in some relationship with the cities as they developed to become economically more significant as engines of growth. This idea is extremely underdeveloped, but I’m curious what someone who knows more about bonds would think of it.

AMERICA CAN’T HANDLE THAT INFLUX, IT’S TOO MANY

A million is a lot of people, and it may feel like there’s no way America could possibly support that all of a sudden. But guys, seriously, America is HUGE. Our population density is 35 People per square km. We could accommodate a massive amount more people without even noticing if the structures are put in place to support it. We don't need to become some Coruscant-like city planet to achieve higher density, either. Hell, the UK's population density is 267 people per square km, and you can still get to picturesque little farm villages less than an hour outside London.

Or, consider that Jordan alone has taken in 600,000 refugees, despite having an economy about 0.1% the size of America’s, and being ¾ the size of Pennsylvania. And even more importantly, economies aren’t zero-sum games when discussing this type of project, as it provides a path for refugees to become economic actors, driving supply and demand and growing GDP just as population growth does. (I hate the phrase “productive members of society” because it’s often used in such a condescending and soulless way, but that's what we're talking about here.)

Incidentally, this would also function as an economic stimulus package. It’s work for a huge number of construction workers, manufacturers, and the sort of blue collar American jobs that politicians always go on and on about wanting to save. At the same time, it provides a really unique chance for experimentation and development in the idea and design economy that keeps America on the cutting edge of the world.

SECURITY

Here it is, the biggest stumbling block in gathering political will for taking in refugees. I’m not sure what I can say that hasn’t been said by others. I already talked earlier about how accepting these people can actually be a net positive for our long-term national security. ISIS wants us to be afraid of refugees so that we’ll reject them, making them desperate enough to turn to ISIS instead, in turn bolstering their numbers and political strength. The only way to defeat that strategy is with empathy and compassion, not walls and fear.

You don’t solve the problem of terrorism by killing terrorists. Humans only resort to such atrocities out of desperation. Present an alternative, a better world, and the vast majority will take it. Let’s go back to a World War II analogy for a second. The problem: an expansionistic, insanely violent political party (the Nazis, of course) were spreading throughout Europe, conquering and committing terrible genocide, while maintaining popular support through whipping up xenophobia and promising a better life for all. In sum, not as different from ISIS as we might think.

So, how did we solve that problem? Well, we eventually went to war, yes, but did we kill every single member of the Nazi party? Of course not. We stopped them militarily, but then (and this is the crucial part we often forget) we helped the country rebuild. The Marshall Plan invested significant amounts of money in rebuilding Western Europe, including Germany, because we were able to accept that the citizens themselves were not our enemies, the ideology and preachers of hate were. 60 years later, Germany is one of our closest and most economically powerful allies. We need to take a bit more of the long view on this one, everyone.

Then there’s a reorientation we may wish to consider when it comes to how we think about risk.  Let me put it this way: if we treated terrorism like we treat drunk driving, we would have far better luck stopping it. We have attacked the drunk driving issue on many fronts, but only one of them is more severe punishment for perpetrators. No, far more importantly, we actually changed the culture that gave rise to it. We taught people that it was reprehensible, that it was their duty to stop their friends from doing it, and we gave alternatives to the goal–namely, getting home after a night out. The designated driver, calling a cab, getting an Uber, these strategies have all massively and measurably reduced drunk driving. Remove the reason for a behavior, make it unacceptable, and give a better solution to the problem the behavior is responding to, and it will drastically decrease. This is basic psychology/behavioral economics.

Still, despite our successes, there are still drunks on the road, and we drive anyway. Every time you drive a car, you’re in danger. There are accidents every day. But it’s necessary to living our lives, so we do what we can to minimize the risk and get on with our lives. The same approach would cripple most terrorist strategy. Our fear, our overreaction is essential to the way they operate.

This is not giving up and accepting terrorism as the new normal, but rather a different intervention model, one with the goal of eliminating as much of the problem as possible and approaching it systematically, rather than with emotional, reactionary posturing and sweeping changes that seem impressive, but have less actual impact (so-called “security theater”).

So even if there are radicals who slip through the screening procedures we put in place (which are actually pretty rigorous, you know), giving them the chance to engage in this hopeful vision of a new future will be as much a blow to domestic terrorist action as never letting them in at all. I’ll also point out that, just as we’ve reached the cultural point of rejecting drunk driving (“Dude, Chad, you’re wasted, give me the damn keys,” proclaim responsible frat bros all over America), these new communities would be mostly made up of those who have fled halfway around the world to escape ISIS’s violence and brutality, so they’re going to be just about the most hostile breeding grounds for ISIS recruitment you could imagine.

ULTIMATE CONSEQUENCES

Much has been made of the potential consequences of admitting more Syrian refugees, but what are the consequences should we turn our backs? Looking at the course of history, so many intelligent people have wound up being so wrong about so many moral issues, in ways that shock and horrify us today. How could anyone have ever thought slavery was an acceptable state of affairs? How could we have intentionally given smallpox-infected blankets as “gifts” to Native American populations? How could the US have refused to take in Jewish refugees during the Holocaust?

I’m not saying we should hate these historical Americans because we’re so morally advanced in comparison. I’m saying that while we can know we’re doing comparatively better than they were, we should be careful not to let that make us think human morality has nowhere to grow from here. I often think about one of my favorite quotes, from anthropologist Robert Ardrey.

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. 

I like to go one step further, and think of us as not “risen” apes, but rather “rising” apes. We are not yet at the zenith of our moral arc.  I often find myself wondering– in 100 years, what will our great-grandchildren find horrifying about the world we live in today? Sadly, we can make some good guesses. The US prison-industrial complex, for one. Our continuing constellation of marginalization, violence, and discrimination against oppressed groups of various stripes. Probably also our failure to respond adequately to the threat of climate change.

But of all the issues we can look at past iterations of, the taking in of people in need seems like it’s particularly recurrent, and America historically always seems to respond with fear over compassion. Yet, as far as moral positions go, “help people in need” is pretty universal. The religion of every one of the US governors saying to keep out the refugees tells them to help others. “The Parable of the Good Samaritan” is explicitly about a foreigner helping someone beset by danger in their own land.

You know what, I’m really not a moral authority, nor am I even a Christian, so I may not exactly have standing to admonish people with scripture. Let’s see what, for instance, Martin Luther King, Jr. had to say about that parable, which he addressed in his famous "I Have Been to the Mountaintop" speech.

…I'm going to tell you what my imagination tells me. It's possible that those men [who passed the injured man without helping] were afraid. You see, the Jericho Road is a dangerous road. I remember when Mrs. King and I were first in Jerusalem. We rented a car and drove from Jerusalem down to Jericho. And as soon as we got on that road I said to my wife, "I can see why Jesus used this as the setting for his parable." It's a winding, meandering road. It's really conducive for ambushing. You start out in Jerusalem, which is about twelve hundred miles, or rather, twelve hundred feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho fifteen or twenty minutes later, you're about twenty-two feet below sea level. That's a dangerous road. In the days of Jesus it came to be known as the "Bloody Pass." And you know, it's possible that the priest and the Levite looked over that man on the ground and wondered if the robbers were still around. Or it's possible that they felt that the man on the ground was merely faking, and he was acting like he had been robbed and hurt in order to seize them over there, lure them there for quick and easy seizure. And so the first question that the priest asked, the first question that the Levite asked was, "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?" 

But then the Good Samaritan came by, and he reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?" That's the question before you tonight. 

I assume it doesn’t take much effort to decode how clearly that applies to the question of the refugees, but just in case: The first question the governors asked was “If we help these refugees, what will happen to them?” But what about “If we do not help these refugees, what will happen to them?” That’s the question before us right now.

…That section got a little more didactic than I’d intended it to, but that is really how I feel, so I don’t see much point in trying to edit it towards a more palatable but disingenuous even-handedness. Moving on.

ONE FINAL PHILOSOPHICAL QUESTION ABOUT AMERICA (AND A TASTE OF MY NEXT ESSAY)

So, setting the philosophy aside once more, the main point of this article is the desire for imagination in how we tackle this problem. Now, perhaps these types of ideas are being discussed all over the place. Perhaps Obama's advisers are frantically trying to map out a way to save every refugee. But somehow I kind of doubt it. I imagine anyone thinking about saving a huge number of refugees gives up before they even get to the planning stage. After all, how could we possibly do something like that when the political will is so against it? When the country is so afraid and so angry?

I’m pretty sure Obama’s approach is that it’s better to focus on the 10,000 refugees plan, one that’s perhaps marginal and reasonable enough that people will accept it. That’s been the go-to play from his administration, and he’s generally been pretty good at playing that chess game. I only worry sometimes that when they want 100% of a plan and the other side wants 0%, they think “Well, let’s just ask to do 30%. That’s reasonable, surely they'll accept that compromise”, but then in the debate between 30 and 0, they get dragged down to more like 10%. Why not propose the 100%? Start way out there from the beginning, and even if it’s still dragged down a lot, you end up closer to the original plan (it’s called the anchoring effect). So, let’s start at a million and work from there, and if we only accomplish 10%? Well, it’s still 10 times more refugees saved than the current plan. But I haven’t heard any major voices pushing for that kind of major, significant increase in refugee admission.

So, when did the rest of us regular citizens stop thinking about how we might solve big problems? Well, we didn’t. I know a lot of people whose brains work in just that way, trying to work through massive problems and make the world better, but sometimes it feels like 99% of that creativity and drive for solutions gets siphoned into the world of tech start-ups and consulting firms. I know a lot of people in those two worlds, and any one of them would be an amazing elected representative or governmental worker, but I'd guess the odds any will consider it are slim to none.

It’s not that people are lazy or no longer want to improve things, or even that they only care about the money (they do care about the world a lot, I promise), they just don’t see the government as a productive path by which to effect change, which is a result of the political stagnation and partisan entrenchment we’ve grown up with. Now that I’ve said my piece on Syria, it actually segues pretty well to what will be my next essay. I have some thoughts about what can we do to get younger people invested in running for office again, and maybe do something about gridlock in the process. Consider that your teaser for Punching The Bursar’s Grandiose Ideas Series, Part II – Project David.

Please comment, text, write manifestoes on legal paper and stick them under my door… whatever method you want to give me your thoughts and perspective. The point of putting this out there is that I’m totally spinning this from thin air and internet research. I know that I know people with way more governmental policy, architecture, engineering, etc. experience than I do, and I’d value input from them, or anyone out there who reads this and has a thought. Everyone has a different knowledge/skill set/perspective to contribute.

And towards that end I ask that if you found this idea at all intriguing (which presumably you did, since you just finished a 5500 word article on it, you champion) please share it around. I just want to hear people bouncing around ideas and discussing this humanitarian crisis as an exercise in problem solving. Seriously, if I didn't think we could accomplish anything by this conversation, I wouldn't have spent weeks writing it. You never know what thoughts could come out of the discussion.

Looking forward to hearing all of your input!

Cheers,
Joseph Labatt

New Name! Also, More Hamilton Analysis/Personal Reflection

My blog's new title IS...

Guys, I found this gif  while reading the Genius.com Hamilton annotations on "Wait For It"

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Punching the Bursar

Curious how I decided on this? Well, I'll tell you...

First: there was the poll, for which the three I started out liking better all got zero votes. Polling was a good idea.

Hey, I said I'd be happy with like three votes. Five? Oh, ecstasy, thy name is 166% achievement.

I can now see the three bottom ones were appealing to me mainly because they were me trying too hard to be clever. Whereas the other two actually sound potentially like blog titles.

BUT WAIT if "Racing Thoughts" got more votes, why isn't it the title? Well, I never said the poll was binding, merely a way of acquiring feedback. So it was down to the top two, and I realized two things. One, the cynical marketing/branding side of my brain realized that "Side Effects May Include Racing Thoughts" sounds like a medical or ADD blog or something like that, as well as completely not Google unique, so anyone searching for my blog would first get a giant list of every page mentioning a medication with that side effect.

But this isn't a professional blog or anything for me, so the SEO part of it was way less important than having a title I could justify as far as what I wanted to write about and why. The source is of course, Hamilton, in which the title character describes how he tried to apply to Princeton "seeking an accelerated course of study", to graduate in two years and join the Revolution sooner, but when the administration denied him apparently the person delivering the message "looked at [him] like [he] was stupid" at which Hamilton "may have punched him, it's a blur."

So there's a lot wrapped up in that little exchange. There's defying authority. There's refusing to be condescended to. There's an insistence that his thoughts and ideas will be taken seriously, dammit (it resonates for me with the Federalist Papers exchange he has with Burr which I described here). And he's doing it because he wants to join in something that he thinks is important, to contribute whatever he can.

So personally, something I've had a lot of trouble with in the past is visualizing revolutionary change. I grew up in a pretty conservative society. Not necessarily the kind of rural, hardcore culture wars type stuff, but rather one that tended to be dismissive of the possibility or desirability of change. So, it wasn't that they overtly hated gay people, they just didn't see why it was necessary to make such a big deal over things like discounted "couples" tickets to the prom only being sold to heterosexual couples. And particularly, young people who didn't agree were seen as cute little aberrations going through a phase.

Oh, you're a liberal? Well, just wait until you start seeing how much the government takes out of your first paycheck and you'll change your tune quick... 

Oh, you're an atheist? Well you haven't yet really faced any real hardships of the type that show you when you have to turn to God, so you'll come around...

Or in other words, I'd tell people about my beliefs and they'd look at me like I was stupid. And I was NOT stupid. I never punched any of them, though. So now I shall. But, you know, with words. Word-punching is ok.

All this is not to claim I was some progressive visionary in my youth--far from it. My own journey, for instance, from childhood homophobia to fiercely supporting LGBT rights is a whooooole other story all its own. But though by high school I was an atheist Democrat in Texas, one of the most liberal people I knew, I had still internalized a lot of that dismissiveness towards my more radical tendencies, and that stifled them for a long time, I think. I wanted to change things, but always wanted to do it in "sensible" or "efficient" ways, without being too disruptive to the system, and to this day when I get even a little grandiose in my ambitions, I immediately have the instinct to pull back, to not commit so fully and risk looking like a fool.

So perhaps what I admire most is Hamilton's total lack of embarrassment at his own massive grandiosity. He announces that he WILL change the world. His writings WILL be read. He WILL NOT throw away his shot. Unlike Burr, who would try to stay out of trouble in order to keep his options open. I've been acting the Burr for far too long, and I honestly don't know if I'm a Burr who wishes he was a Hamilton or a Hamilton who was taught to be a Burr, but either way I've been striving back towards Hamilton-ness over the past couple years.

So the new mission statement for this newly re-titled blog is severalfold:

• Legitimately question the status quo towards progressive change or increased understanding
• Exhibit authentic self-expression no matter how embarrassing or imprudent in context.
• Connect with like-minded and un-like-minded people to discuss and learn together.
• Being open to the possibility of making mistakes and being wrong.

This will take a lot of forms. Some posts will be writing about pieces of media that I want to draw a message or theme out of, or that I had a particular reaction to (so, you know, the thing I actually studied in college). Some will be my takes on political or social issues, even if I'm not necessarily the best informed or positioned to speak on the topic. Some will be actual grandiose proposals of solutions and action that might be taken. Areas in which I already have thoughts brewing include: thorny geopolitical situations, contemporary worker's rights, real estate concepts, modern parenting, and a whole host of other things that from my resume I have no business discussing, but will be anyway because even if I'm DEAD WRONG I'd like to have the conversation about why I'm wrong so I can learn going forward.

So yeah, welcome to Punching The Bursar, by Joseph Labatt. Stay tuned and get ready, because a big upcoming post is likely to strain the "grandiose ideas" thing to just about its breaking point right out of the gate. 

Should be a good time.

Why the Writing Stopped Again

Wasn't he going to write more, like at least semi-frequently? What happened to that?

There's a thing that a lot of people I know do with late email reponses. If they needed to get back to someone on an email a day or two ago and they suddenly remember, they'll usually respond as soon as possible. But the longer it's been, the more anxious they get about responding so late, and less likely they are to ever actually respond without prompting.

...Wait, I'm sure I've seen this articulated in a comic somewhere. (Quickly Googles "Email late response comic" and The Oatmeal comes up, because of course it does.)

So yeah, basically this.

That dynamic totally infiltrated my new resolution of blog writing. I posted the link to my sleep apnea post being like "Wooooo two days in a row, I'm on FIRE" and promptly managed to intimidate myself into feeling like I needed to keep up that pace, at the prospect of which I promptly shut down entirely, and then every day I didn't post consistently I felt like I'd need more and more elaborate excuses for having had a gap (Oh hey look what I'm doing right now).

Also, instead of the act of writing things down and publishing them alleviating any pressure from the bubbling thought cauldron upstairs, putting my words out there actually seemed to stir things up. Suddenly, I was simultaneously mentally composing four new essays, but they'd make points or digressions that relied on referencing each other, so I mean what order should I post them in? Maybe I could post them all at once? But that meant instead of just writing one I'd need all four finished before the next posting, and anyway shouldn't I space my blog posts out more? (At this very moment, a "Blog post vs. Essay" blog post/essay about that terminology which I have brewing in another tab is getting me mentally sidetracked.)

So, anyway, this is just a short post, mulling over that dynamic and recommitting to actually taking it easier on myself in the service of getting myself to write more. Fun mental judo!

…Oh, the one other thing that threw me off briefly was after like three people in one day said how much they hate the word "millennial" I went on a compulsive brainstorming session about potentially changing my blog's name (after all it's early in the writing, so it would be much easier to rebrand sooner than later…) 

So here for your reading pleasure, without further ado, is the verbatim stream of consciousness sequence of new name considerations I typed on my phone 4 nights ago:

I should rename my blog to some pun or take on the Federalist papers
Federalist Pages
The Federalist Sticky Notes
Nerdsalist papers
The Federalist posts
I am actually a Federalist (states rights can work as innovation labs, but to block progress they are always the opposition to civil rights)
Millenialist Papers
Labatt Looks Again
Look again, Labatt
Confessions of a...
Confessions of a whathaveyou
Confessions of a something-something
Shakespeare/Hamilton/media/empathy
Punching the bursar
Clown shoes
Barefoot ponderings
Barefoot in clown shoes
Wet blanket firebrand
Paradox oxymoron
The sharp dull
Ain't the sharpest sharp in the sharp
Hook hanging
Hanging out on hooks
Doing this instead
Labatt essays
Fire and powder
Methodic madness
Methodical play
Methodically mad play
Prospero quote about infirmity
I'm fine; I'm better; don't worry about me
Positive brainwave pressure
Continuous positive pressure
Methodically medically mad
The ticket cup
Something empathy
Empathic madness
Folie a deux
Jobot's Log
Lord protectorate
Windows screens
Fear the helpful machine
Don't rage, the machine is only doing its job
Side effects may include racing thoughts
Racing thoughts
Uncorking
Convection currents
Doing this instead
Instead, I'm Doing/Writing This 

Ok, so posting this list was originally just a joke, but looking at it again I actually really like some of these, or some slight variations on them:

• Punching the Bursar
• Side Effects May Include Racing Thoughts
• Methodically/Medically Mad
• Emphatically, Empathically Mad 
• Confessions of a Twenty-Something, Or what you will.

Does anyone out there have thoughts on any those names? Comment about them! Not in the "I have a blog and more comments is evidence of higher traffic and more engaged readership" way people sometimes ask for comments, but like I'm actually curious what people have to say. 

I could even go full CNN-desperate and have a poll, too. Should I have a poll? Do I have anywhere near the kind of readership to justify a poll? Eh, why not, even if it's like three votes that's fine.

Favorite New Name?

Punching the Bursar

Side Effects May Include Racing Thoughts

Methodically/Medically Mad

Emphatically, Empathically Mad

Confessions of a Twenty-Something, Or what you will.

Poll Maker

Comment if you like any of the rest of the list, or you have questions, or a couple of suggestions.

"Joseph Labatt ain't the sharpest sharp in the sharp" is definitely going to be my bio for something, someday.

Playing You Out:

Sleep Apnea 101, Or Why Snoring isn't as Funny as You Think

So what's the deal–you've got a sleep problem or something?

I have a severe case of a sleep disorder called sleep apnea. A lot of people who know me know that much, but I get the sense people frequently don't know if it's okay to ask me about it, or are afraid I'm tired of explaining it over and over (which is at least a little true). I've mostly dealt with the explaining by getting to the point where I can rattle it off really fast and without thinking too hard about it, but recently it's gotten so quick and rote that I think people just nod along until I get through my routine, without really understanding it. So I decided to write it down.

This post will cover the basics of the disorder in general, and some specific details of my case, for any out there who may be curious. 

OK, you have Sleep Apnea. So what the heck is that?

I could write out a long technical explanation, but wouldn't you rather watch a video of it all being explained to and then repeated by an adorably confused Shaquille O' Neal? Of course you would: 

That video is courtesy of the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School, which has an excellent and comprehensive website if you're curious for more detail.

So, some people stop breathing while they're asleep, then their brain wakes them up just enough to start breathing again, then they fall back asleep and stop breathing, so their brain wakes them up, then they fall back asleep and stop breathing... Rinse and repeat and you can lie down and close your eyes for 12 hours but "wake up" in the morning feeling like you got no rest at all. 

Could a mutant healing factor fix sleep apnea? The world may never know.

In addition to just being tired all the time, it can also lead to long-term problems, including heart problems and even depression.

Well, that sounds like it sucks. Is it possible I might have sleep apnea?

We've reached the truly PSA-esque section of this article. I know several people who, when I explained what my deal was said "Oh, I wonder if I have that, too." If you're thinking that, get a sleep study done. Go to your health insurance online provider network-use your parents', get Obamacare, whatever, go into their system and find a sleep study center in their network and schedule an appointment.

It might seem weird to spend a bunch of money (and depending on the center and insurance, it might not be as bad as you think) but you're essentially screening for a chronic problem, which can save you money in the long run (the cost of a sleep-stress related heart attack at 50 will be much higher than this study, I assure you).

From the Mayo Clinic Sleep Apnea guidelines:

The most common signs and symptoms of obstructive and central sleep apneas include:

• Loud snoring, which is usually more prominent in obstructive sleep apnea
• Episodes of breathing cessation during sleep witnessed by another person
• Abrupt awakenings accompanied by shortness of breath, which more likely indicates central sleep apnea
• Awakening with a dry mouth or sore throat
• Morning headache
• Difficulty staying asleep (insomnia)
• Excessive daytime sleepiness (hypersomnia)
• Attention problems
• Irritability

Consult a medical professional if you experience, or if your partner notices, the following:

• Snoring loud enough to disturb the sleep of others or yourself
• Shortness of breath, gasping for air or choking that awakens you from sleep
• Intermittent pauses in your breathing during sleep
• Excessive daytime drowsiness, which may cause you to fall asleep while you're working, watching television or even driving

Is it the same for everyone who has it?

No, there are varying types and levels of severity. Apnea events fall into two broad categories:

Obstructive Apneas- Here the main problem is that muscles around your throat relax too much as you sleep, so your airway closes and you struggle to breathe, trying to gasp unsuccessfully, just like someone choking on a foreign obstruction. If you have these primarily, you're diagnosed with Obstructive Sleep Apnea, the most common and easiest to treat.

Central Apneas- Less common and a bit harder to treat are apneas that are caused not by your airway being obstructed, but rather because the brain (central nervous system) is for whatever reason failing to send the electrical signal to even attempt a breath, so you don't even try to breathe. Primarily having these is called–shocker–Central Sleep Apnea, which is less common and a little harder to deal with.

Some lucky scamps get a combination of both, which is called Complex Sleep Apnea, and is both the hardest treatment to get used to as well as the most complicated to diagnose. (Guess which one I have! Hint: it's this one.)

I know, right?

So How Bad Can it Get?

The severity of any given case is measured primarily by what's called the apnea/hypoapnea index, or AHI. Apneas are defined as complete cessations of breathing, and hypoapneas are periods of overly shallow breathing or an abnormally low respiratory rate. AHI is the average number per hour of apnea and hypoapnea events lasting at least 10 seconds.

Based on the AHI, the severity of Sleep Apnea is classified roughly as follows:

• None/Minimal: AHI < 5 per hour
• Mild: AHI ≥ 5, but < 15 per hour
• Moderate: AHI ≥ 15, but < 30 per hour
• Severe: AHI ≥ 30 per hour

The most severe cases can get up over 100 AHI, and those are the people who present as essentially narcoleptic–falling asleep in the middle of conversations, or even while driving, that level of disruption. 

My untreated AHI turned out to be 41. So, doing some quick math–41 events at least 10 seconds each is 410 seconds, or roughly 7 minutes. So at minimum, I was spending 7 minutes out of every hour, over 10%, of my time either struggling to breathe or totally choked. Yeah, it really messed me up for a long time.

Me untreated, every day by about 1pm.

How's it treated?

The most common treatment is called CPAP–continuous positive airway pressure. It fixes obstructive apneas by pressurizing your respiratory system, essentially inflating your airway like one of those long balloon animal balloons, so it can't collapse. Or (if you want a more medical analogy) it's like stinting a blood vessel, but using a set air pressure instead of an implanted device.

Various flavors of sleep apnea use different types, like Auto CPAP, Bi-PAP, V-PAP, Auto V-PAP, Adaptive Pressure Support Servo-Ventilators, etc. etc. They handle the way air is delivered differently, whether they change the pressure level or keep it constant, whether they force you to breathe in a steady pattern or whether they adapt around irregularities, that sort of thing. 

Mine is an ASV Bi-Pap, which means it's providing continuous pressure at a low level to stop obstructive apneas, slightly raising the pressure to help on inhalations, dropping that pressure whenever I exhale, and will pulse really hard (basically becoming a respirator for a moment) when I have a central apnea. That combination of complicated and sudden pressure changes is one of the hardest to tolerate.

Me IRL, trying to sleep.

Successful treatment is characterized by how low it makes your AHI, with <5 being the goal, and how much you can tolerate using it (ideally all night, every night).

How successful is your treatment?

I started treatment at the same time I went back for fall semester of my senior year (senior year 2.0, that is). At first, I was on a simple CPAP for a few weeks and noticing no difference–they hadn't yet realized my case was Complex because the central apneas only manifested recognizably once the CPAP was applied (it had to do with the higher air pressure changing the rate of my blood CO₂ elimination–apparently one of the weirdest responses my doctor has ever seen to treatment and part of why the saga of figuring it out took so long for me).

I got a new machine, which improved my AHI a lot but I could only tolerate an average 1-2 hours per night. Even that much, though, took me from basically nonfunctional (I'd say 15% capacity) to a minimal functionality (30%? 40%?), so I went through most of Nov-February drifting between terrible 0-0.5 hour nights and the good 3-3.5 hour nights. Then in March I got a minor cold over spring break and couldn't tolerate the machine at all for almost three weeks, which nearly made me drop out again. It brought me back to the worst depression I'd ever felt (yeah, the sleep issues gave me clinical depression) right when I needed to be writing my thesis.

I struggled back from that hole though, going on anti-depressants and finally getting well, plus I got diagnosed with ADD (which I've also apparently had all along, probably in part due to the sleep apnea as well) and for a variety of reasons being on Adderall helped normalize my sleep so I finished out the year getting a solid 4-5 hours a night.

I took last summer off mostly to really seriously focus in on changing my treatment course to increase my machine toleration rate. My doctor and I checked in about every week, making lots of incremental tweaks on pressure settings or medication rhythms and tracking the effects. I tried three or four different types and models of breathing masks. Eventually, around mid-July this year, I finally got my nightly sleep with machine treatment up to 6-8 hours a night, with an AHI of around 2.

I've lost 20-30 pounds over the past summer, I have vastly more energy and focus, I'm happier, and I actually often wake up spontaneously after about 8-9 hours instead of my previous nightly 11-14 hours if I didn't have an alarm set. I'm not 100% consistent, occasionally allergies or just a couple late nights will throw off either my ability to tolerate the machine or my sleep patterns, and I'll be a little more out of it, but no more (I think) than most people if they get poor sleep for a while. I'm especially more resilient it seems to only one night interruptions, so as long as it doesn't get bad for days in a row I'm almost unaffected.

It's been over two years of dealing with this shit. I deserve this GIF.

Let me know if you guys have any more questions about my situation specifically, the disorder generally, or if you want to talk about your sleep concerns (I'm obviously not a medical doctor, but I'm happy to be a friendly ear.)

Sleep well everyone!

(AND GET A SLEEP STUDY IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT NEED ONE)

Playing You Out:

Up All Night by Counting Crows

Don't Look Too Hard Before You Leap: Lessons Learned from Hamilton (And Parkour)

So guys, I don't know if you heard, but the cast recording of Hamilton was released recently. I haven't gone a full day since without listening through it at least once. The show’s amazing, the album is amazing, Lin-Manuel Miranda won a MacArthur Genius Grant, everything is awesome, and there will certainly be other thoughts about Hamilton appearing here in the future. For today, I'm writing about one particular reflection it's been eliciting in me that's also making me think about–of all things–parkour.

Some background: in 2013, I was in the fall semester of my senior year at Princeton. I was depressed and incapable of completing work, engaging with people, or doing anything at all, really. (It turned out later that I had a severe undiagnosed sleep disorder…that saga is a post for another day). Anyway, I basically dropped out and moved back home for a year. In that time I mostly worked on getting happier and healthier in whatever way I could–going to therapy, working out, learning to cook actual food, reading books for fun again… that sort of thing.

One of the activities I decided to take up in the interest of getting in shape was parkour. It had always been a joke at my high school, people would jump up three inches onto a curb and yell "PARKOUR!" but I'd always been curious about the real thing. So, after a few months of idly thinking about it, I actually searched and found a parkour gym in San Antonio that had beginner adult classes and started going to lessons once or twice a week. I rapidly discovered something about myself–I'm completely terrified of failure. I mean, I knew I didn't like it-who does? But it turns out if I'm not 100% certain of my success, I often let that chance of failure paralyze me.

I was at my first parkour class, doing a relatively simple circuit of obstacles, and partway through I had to jump from the top of one crate to another, perhaps 3 or 4 feet away. The boxes were both about 2 feet high. I got to the edge of the first one, and I froze. I was looking at the gap, thinking "That's not that far, you can make that. Do it. Just jump. Just jump." I crouched, preparing to jump, then stood up again in place. Crouched, stood. Of course then my head started going in the vicious cycle of thinking that my hesitation would sabotage me (And I'd Sail Cat right off the box), only making my hesitation worse.

The teacher could tell what was happening, so he had me step off the boxes and come over to the side. He marked on the floor the distance I'd need to jump and had me do it flat. I cleared the distance needed easily. He had me do that several times on the floor, then go back to the crates. I made the jump and continued, but even being SURE of the physical ease of the task, I could still feel the fluttery terror thrashing around in my stomach as I jumped.

I'm not sure I'd ever done anything that physically dangerous. Yeah, I know all the peril of hopping a four foot gap. But still, I couldn't think of anything like it. Maybe when I was really young, before I can recall, but probably not. I grew up in the era of obsessive safety for the children-I remember all of my elementary school’s best playground equipment being replaced around 1st grade, because it was too “dangerous” (in case you're wondering: a jungle gym shaped like a fire truck and one of those playground spinner things). 

Yet, that flutter had felt familiar. I tried to place it- thinking of times I was physically threatened. Maybe I’d felt it that time my car got hit? No, that was just an unpleasant jolt of surprise. My memory of most perceived danger was probably a giant wire swing line at summer camp, but it was a really thorough climbing rig that you were strapped into, so you knew you were actually safe. The slight thrill of fear up the back of my neck when jumping from the 40 foot wooden platform in my professional safety harness wasn’t even remotely comparable to the panicky feeling I had two feet off the ground on those crates.

It wasn’t until later after class while talking to my therapist that I was able to finally articulate why the moment had seemed so familiar, because the circumstances had nothing to do with bodily peril. It turned out I’d felt the same flutter of fear in a different context–attempting to express myself. Trying to ask a girl out, telling my parents I wasn't happy at school, showing a poem to a friend before creative writing class. That moment before the plunge of revealing myself, of being emotionally vulnerable, trying to make the decision to open up. That was when I would feel my stomach twisting in knots, my hands shaking (knees weak, palms sweaty, etc.).

So, what does this exposition about my history of expressive anxiety have to do with Hamilton, a hip-hop Broadway musical about one of America's Founding Fathers? Well, among the many subtexts and themes to be drawn out of the show (it's going to be the subject of at least 50 undergraduate theater theses in the next 6 months, undoubtedly) one recurring idea that really hit me was the continuous focus on how astonished everyone was by how prolific Hamilton was in his writing. 

"How do you write like you're running out of time?" several characters ask Hamilton throughout the play. You can hear Lin-Manuel Miranda's admiration for Alexander Hamilton in every line. As a writer himself, Miranda knows how incredible it is to keep up such a relentless pace. This actually winds up being one of the reasons Hamilton (historical spoiler alert) comes into conflict with Aaron Burr, whose anthem in the show is literally called “Wait For It” and who eventually grows jealous of Hamilton's success. (Eventually, once people get tired of summer stock productions of 1776 and Hamilton being paired in rep, a regional theater will schedule a season with Hamilton and Amadeus together, and everyone will be like “OMG so dramaturgical”) 

Now, I have an entire notebook full of potential essays/blog posts. My takes on any number of political and social issues. Lists of movies, songs, books I want to analyze. Personal stories to tell. On and on, down to things as specific as expostulations on the aesthetics of realism in the theater, how the realism aesthetic is harmful to the practice of modern stage combat, how the realism aesthetic is hurting modern straight plays on Broadway (I have a lot of thoughts on the American defaulting-to-realism-in-straight-drama thing). 

I have several reflections on my undergraduate playwriting thesis project, split into multiple posts for different aspects of it, and just reams of other concepts. Many of them have a title and their main ideas laid out with first drafts, full paragraphs typed out. But every time I gear up to actually write one of them and put it out there (often when news/current events raises a topic I’ve been hashing out), I decide "well, everyone's writing about this right now. I'm sure someone out there will say it better than I ever could". Or in other words:

Burr: "No one will read them".
Hamilton: “I disagree”
Burr: “And if it fails?”
Hamilton: “Burr, that’s why we need them”

–The characters discussing the Federalist Papers, which Hamilton has asked Burr to help write. He refuses.

Now, that scene felt almost like a personal reprimand at the time I saw it in the theater. (Yeah, I managed to see it in person. Jealous?) And I FIRMLY resolved to go back to my hotel that night and write something, anything for my blog and actually post it. 

I managed half. 

I wrote a first draft of what was actually a rap response to the show, thinking I'd record myself rapping it in the hotel room, but the background noise made a really poor video quality when I did a test run, so I decided to wait until I got home where my better microphone was. I had the motivation to put my work out there revved up, but I'd missed something else I could have taken from the show about how to approach writing. I was listening to the cast recording again this weekend on a bus to Philadelphia (going to a stage combat workshop–another thing I should post about later), when a different moment clicked in my brain. This time it wasn't something Miranda wrote, but a real historical document–Washington's Farewell Address (which the show includes quotes from as we see Hamilton help Washington write it).

Miranda reads out the second to last paragraph of the Address, which is all about errors, defects, and faults. It's Washington's reflection on his term and his assertion that he may have messed up, but he did try his best at every turn. So what clicked was the way my fear of error (what I call "perfectionism" to make myself feel better about it) turns into procrastination. “If I wait one more day, I can edit it better.” “I’m tired now, I’ll give it fresh eyes in the morning.” “I don’t want to post it like this–it’s sloppy and terrible and I know I can make it clearer.” (Ironically, I wrote this paragraph four days ago and have been faffing about editing and rewriting the post since then. I’m literally doing what my own writing is saying I should do less of.)

So, step one is starting to write in earnest–not just for my own notebooks, but putting it out there. I may screw up, on levels ranging from typo to factual error to even advancing a political view that is wildly misguided… I don't know yet. But what I'll say right now, if I can blatantly use something from Miranda’s show, which uses something from Washington’s address, which uses something from Hamilton’s quill, is that my message to the audience of my blog is the following:

Though, in predicting the incidents of my writing, I am unconscious of intentional error, I am nevertheless too sensible of my defects not to think it probable that I may commit many errors. Whatever they may be, I fervently beseech my readers to avert or mitigate the evils to which those errors may tend. I shall also carry with me the hope that my audience will never cease to view them with indulgence; and that, for the remaining years of my life dedicated to writing with a forthright zeal, the faults of incompetent abilities in me will be consigned to oblivion, as myself must someday be to the mansions of rest.

Writing my thoughts down and putting them out there for other people to read. Writing down stories or putting them on stage for others to experience. Hey, what a way to spend a day. I make a vow, right here and now: I'm gonna spend my time this way.

Playing you out:

(A thing I'm thinking about doing consistently, where each post ends with a link to a song I think is a good companion to the tone/subject of the essay but not directly related)

Odds Are by Bare Naked Ladies

Recommended Related Reading:

Ta Nehisi Coates on Writing - A video released as I was writing this post with essentially the same conclusion

How Perfectionism Can Turn into Procrastination (and what to do about it) - I'm working on this, but I'm not perfect about it yet, and that bothers me, so I try not to think about it and... wait a a minute.

Doctor Nerdlove’s Three Second Rule - This is more intended as dating advice, but applicable as far as the psychology of putting yourself out there in any context goes.

The Overprotected Kid - An article about an intentionally dangerous playground and childhood developmental risk taking