NOTEBOOK.MADEBYAL

There's an Iranian film (which I guess is technically French and German) called The Seed of the Sacred Fig. It's about a judge who works for the regime, and after a surge of arrests due to the protests, his superiors order him to just sign off on executions without due process. He realised, at that point, that he had a choice: He could either uphold the law and be out of a job, or he can be an instrument of the state and keep his job.

I thought about this today because I listened to the This American Life episode about immigration judges in the US, and how they're getting orders to dismiss cases so that migrants and asylum seekers can be deported more easily. And the judges who refuse to comply end up retiring early, or losing their jobs entirely.

A friend sent me an Instagram carousel of Lulu Wang and Barry Jenkins hanging out in their garden with their newborn baby and bees and chickens, and it made me want to fall in love.

I was talking about it with a different friend, and she asked if the kind of life they have is the kind of life I want. And if not, if I have a clear image for the kind of life I want.

I want a garden, yes. I'll take the chickens too. Maybe the bees as well, even though I know nothing at the moment about beekeeping. But what I really want is that romantic love. To share art and ideas and admin -- this brief time we have on this floating rock -- with someone who feels as lucky to be with me as I do to be with them.

Of course there's no way to know for sure if that's the kind of love Barry Jenkins and Lulu Wang have, or even if their conception of love is the same as mine, so I cannot say for certain that I want what they have.

I know what I want. I know I want to be with someone who shares my faith. Someone who's creative or at least who thinks about art critically. A growth mindset, playful soul, and someone with great conflict resolution skills. And because this is romantic, of course there has to be chemistry.

But outside of those, I don't really have a clear picture of what that person looks like.

I know the manifestation folks will tell you that you have to know and picture exactly what you want for the universe to give it to you, but I don't think that's entirely sound because we often don't really know the sum total of the things that can make us happy. Unknown unknowns.

And in addition to that, I believe that relationships are living things, which means they're constantly changing and shifting because the people in them are constantly changing and shifting. Alain de Botton said something to the effect of "Compatibility is an achievement of a good relationship and not a pre-requisite" and I believe that.

In the last 7 days, I've watched 14 films. That's on average of two films a day.

I've also finished two books: one that I've been reading for over a year now, and another that I started earlier this month.

In the same time-frame, I've also been writing on here. Posting every day.

All of this is very unusual for me.

I'm mostly off work, so part of it is that, but I also think something is happening with me that I cannot quite name.

What's blocking for? And by blocking, I mean blocking someone on Instagram or Twitter or... even Whatsapp?

There's a school of thought that sees blocking as a kind of punishment. Someone says or does something awful to you, and you block them. It's the digital equivalent of telling them "you're dead to me".

And I get that. I used to believe that. And honestly -- even right now -- if someone were to block me, I would find it very hard not to take it personally.

But if we pull back and ask ourselves from a third-person point of view --

What does blocking actually do?

We'll see that simply put, blocking prevents the person being blocked from seeing or sending messages to the person who blocked them. That's it.

Which is to say, the person being blocked can do everything else their heart desires -- their account is not restricted or throttled in any way -- except contacting the one person who blocked them.

Presumably, the person doing the blocking does not want to keep hearing from the person being blocked. The reason why doesn't matter, because if the goal is to stop hearing from the person, blocking gives them that agency -- they now have the power to achieve that goal.

Tap. Click. Done. The person is gone.

How the person being blocked feels about it is out of the hands of the blocker, and is quite frankly not their business.

But what if it's "their business"? What if their goal of blocking is to punish the person being blocked?

Well, they could do the exact same thing, and the person being blocked might feel punished. And then they could get mad and block right back to retaliate. Or -- and this is where I'm getting -- they could get the message that they don't want to be heard from, and then stop messaging.

My point is, if you're trying to punish someone, blocking them is a very unreliable way to go about doing that. You essentially have no control over the outcome. And it's also quite frankly a bit arrogant, because what you're essentially saying is that I'm so vital to your life that not talking to me is punishment for you.

One of the foundational ideas in personal development is differentiating between the things that are in your control and the things that are outside of it. And realising that a lot of unhappiness lies in focusing on trying to control things that are outside of your control.

Serenity prayer.

A couple of years ago, I was going on dates with someone who was really fun and attractive, but who I had the feeling did not care about me as a person and was only going on the dates for sport. She almost never replied or engaged with my text messages, and only texted when she wanted to do something and was looking for someone to do it with.

I did not like the feeling of being summoned by someone on a whim, but I also knew that I did not have it in me to say no if she came calling. So I blocked her.

Some months later, we ran into each other at some event, and she asked why she hadn't heard from me in a while.

"It's because I blocked you," I said.

"Oh really?" she replied. "I hadn't noticed."

Now maybe she just said that to hurt me because she was hurt that I blocked her, but the only reason that would hurt me is if I really did block her to hurt her. Because if I'd blocked her as a kind of commitment device to keep me away from falling back into old patterns and she hadn't even noticed, that would be amazing. It would be a win-win.

There's no correlation between how cute the first encounter you have with your partner is, and what the quality of the relationship that follows will be. Still, I've tried to make many relationships work over the years primarily because I thought we had a good meet-cute story.

Many years ago, back in university, I stepped out of my off-campus apartment for a minute to get something from the 7-11, and immediately, it started pouring. The kind of tropical rain that would drench you down to your soul if you stayed in it for too long.

So I stood there outside the 7-11, waiting, hoping the rain would subside. A couple of minutes later, this girl who lived in the same off-campus apartment building walked up to the 7-11. I'd seen her around, but we'd never talked. I always thought she was cute though.

She leaned her umbrella by the door and went into the 7-11. The thought crossed my mind to ask her to share the umbrella on the way back, but I immediately dismissed it because -- why would she? So I turned around, facing the rain, and waited.

Someone said something, and when I turned, it was her. She was standing next to me, smiling.

"Would you like to walk back together?" she said, gesturing to the umbrella.

This was 2007/2008, so the whole time we were walking back, I had Rihanna's Umbrella playing in my head. I tried hard -- so hard -- to make that a thing. I friended her on Facebook. I made several suggestions to hang out. But we never hung out again.

About 10 years later, an acquaintance -- friend of a friend I'd really never had an interaction with -- and I randomly ended up at the airport together at the same time heading to the same destination on the same flight. So we checked in together, sat next to each other, and by the end of the 12-hour flight, I wanted to make it a thing.

And we did. For a bit. We went for a couple of dates and then it fizzled, which was fine because we weren't really compatible, but also not fine because boy did I want that airport meet-cute.

I've gone on many first dates in my life and have had a handful girlfriends, but I've never had a great meet-cute story.

Can a.i write a book? Can it make music? Paint a landscape?

I think those are the wrong questions. A better question is --

What's art for?

It's expression, yes. Also inspiration, and sometimes it's there to provoke contemplation. But I'd argue that at its best, art is for building connection.

I think of art as a beacon -- a flare or smoke bomb -- that the artist sends up as a signal. And that beacon has two purposes:

To bring people to the artist.

To bring people to each other.

Read enough books from an author or watch enough films from a director, and you might feel like you understand them as people. Because, perhaps, you've had similar life experiences. Or they're into the same things you're into. As an artist, having people engage with your work makes you feel less alone; and as a person engaging with the art, having feelings and emotions you've experienced reflected back at you does the same.

It's a similar situation when you meet someone new and find out you're into the same art. It makes you feel like you already know something about that person, something more than the sum of the things you factually know. The art acts as a bridge -- a third thing that brings you together.

Now even if a.i were to have a linear temporal life experience with a trajectory that maintains a stable identity, it's unlikely that that experience would in any way mirror a human one. Which would make it very unlikely that a human would connect with the "a.i artist" on the level of reflection.

But it would still work as a bridge. Two people can connect over an art work even if the artist is a.i. Or non-existent. Death of the author and all.

I spent most of today in the bed, then on the couch, and then reluctantly -- after using every once of will power in my bones -- my work desk.

The work I had today wasn't much, and after I eventually sat down and got to it, it only took about 2 hours to be done. But I took about 8 hours to get to those 2.

A friend of mine recently got on Ritalin, and he was telling me today how much easier doing things has been for him.

"The biggest help it's been is in task initiation," he told me.

For years, I've suspected that I have ADHD. At some point, I asked my therapist -- who I was seeing for something else entirely -- if she could diagnose me. She could not, because it wasn't her specialty.

A couple of years after that, I saw a different therapist, who does specialise in ADHD, and after a single-session, he said he doesn't think I have it, and that getting the diagnosis is quite expensive, and that I shouldn't bother.

And then not long after that, I heard the Search Engine episode on ADHD, and I thought -- maybe it's fine that I'm not on speed.

Ezra Klein has talked a lot about how much difficulty he has concentrating as a kid, and how if it'd been today, he would've been put on medication.

Not all my days are like today, just some of them. But on days like today, I really wish I had something that can just push me to start.

Something happens to you and you tell the story to a friend immediately after. You're not quite sure how you feel about it, but in the process of telling the story for real, you're also figuring things out in real time.

Afterwards, your friend asks you some questions, and in the questions, you gain more insight. Different parts of the story come up for you to consider.

You sleep on it.

The next day, you meet a different friend and tell them the story. The story is now better. Probably shorter, but definitely richer. There is more insight. You're still figuring out what it means.

You keep telling the story for real until there comes a point where the story ceases to be interesting because you can't process it any further. You've mined it all. The story becomes shorter the more you tell it, but not any richer.

At this point, you essentially have two options: stop telling the story, or approach it as a performance.

A performance is when you tell the story with a simulacrum of emotion and vulnerability in the service of giving your audience an experience. But in reality, it does nothing for you because the processing has already been done.