Oooooh buddy!! Its been a while!!
So Sorry!!!
Here is what has been happening:
I bought my first car
I almost got fired from my dream job (not really)
I wrote my first short stories and grant proposal
I figured out free will (kinda)
Let’s get into it!
🚗The Misadventures of a First Time Car Owner
I finally got a car!! It was a harrowing experience… A few years ago I told myself that my first car would be electric. A Tesla. Buuuuut given what I’ve learned about Elon Musk and the problems with Teslas, I realized such a goal was not ideal. Furthermore, my own lack of finances really put a damper on this dream. Even though electric vehicles are becoming more common these days, they are still not common enough to not be terribly expensive. Plus the infrastructure is still quite lacking. The fact that you need an app just to figure out where to charge your car is not ideal, especially since said apps are often not updated or not accurate.
Apparently, its a no-go to buy a used electric vehicle due to concerns about the costs of having to replace a dead battery. I still wanted to try anyways.
I wanted a car that was dependable, fuel efficient, fun to drive (ie responsive and comfortable), and good looking. It didn’t have to be fancy, but at least not look terrible. I heard the most popular and dependable cars were of course a Honda, Toyota, or Nissan, with a Kia and Hyundai close behind.
But honestly, though I’ve been considering getting a car for years now, especially over the past year or two since my family moved us to a city with no access to the Atlanta public transit system (as shitty as it is, still better than nothing), what pushed me over the edge was renting a car from Turo.
I rented a 2022 Kia K5 and for the first time in my life, I really enjoyed driving!! The car was beautiful. The seats were comfy, the wheel nice to grip, easy to steer, the brakes were great, the acceleration was perky, and the safety features were top notch. It felt ‘sporty’ but still elegant and had clear sight lines, unlike the first car I rented from Turo, which was a Dodge Charger, which often felt a bit much for me with really limited sight lines due thick ass A/B Frames as well as ‘narrow’ rearview/side mirrors.
I enjoyed the K5 so much that I began taking the idea of owning a car seriously. And it seemed affordable!! The K5 was actually near the more inexpensive end of mid-size sedans. The dealerships sold them for around 23K, which would be about $415 a month even with only 1k down, a 685 credit score, over 66 months for an estimated 5% APR… at least according to their payment calculator. That was doable!
Or so I thought.
Unfortunately, I got a rude awakening about that. But as I was vacillating over whether or not I wanted to saddle myself with another 5 years of payments (currently I am stuck paying an Income Share Agreement for a design program that was less useful than the free/paid apprenticeship program that actually helped start my UX career -_-)... I decided to do more research.
I asked around and a lot of folks (ie older folks in my family and such) suggested buying a used car that was really cheap but got from A to B. A ‘putt putt’ as my dad likes to put it. Though I understand where they are coming from with that… my own experience of witnessing how often those break down and leave you stranded or saddled with higher repair costs than the worth of the car really put me off that idea.
But I figured I’d take a look anyways. I searched up all sorts of lists and sites and articles on how to buy good used cars. What to look for, and what to avoid. Sites like Edmunds were a huge help!
It was there where I came across a 2016 Ford Fusion Hybrid with like 60K miles on it for around 14K (or 18K?) being sold by CarMax. They also had a nifty payment calculator, which showed me that I’d only pay roughly 300-400 or so over 4 or 5 years at 6-10% APR.
I thought this would be the move! That was the first even remotely electric vehicle I found with decent mileage at an affordable price. Now I am not exactly a patriot and I dont care for American-made anything… but in my research, I found something incredible about the Ford Fusion.
It is BELOVED. It was weird to randomly come across, but nearly every review I saw for this car was about how amazing it is! It’s low maintenance, highly durable, fun to drive, and it has a uniquely distinctive look that I really fell for. Whether it was the Hybrid or the regular non-hybrid version, people have been saying this car was great nearly since it was first introduced in 2010 or so. I was smitten.
Then I learned that it was discontinued in 2019!! Apparently it hasn’t been selling well. This was strange to me, because again, nearly every single review was glowing. People were always talking about how much they loved this vehicle, even for those that bought Hondas and Toyotas and such. They always mentioned how they planned to get a new one once their old one finally crapped out. And that’s when I saw what was happening… these Ford Fusion owners rarely ever replaced their car! Many of them put well over 200,000 miles on their vehicle. Even those that resold the vehicle at 100K miles would turn around and get another used vehicle with like 30K miles but a newer model. Ford wasn’t making much money with this car! But the resale value was quite high since the used market for this vehicle was quite hot (or at least very very warm for those that were in the know).
I even found a reddit community where people proudly touted their finally owning one, or how many miles they’ve put on theirs.
This made me want this vehicle even more! If a company stopped selling a product because it was too dependable and didn’t fit into their planned obsolescence cycle of consumerism, that was a huge green light to me! :D
But unfortunately, that’s when reality came crashing down. I had also sent in an application for the Kia a week earlier, and was planning on moving forward with that one so I could really compare between that vehicle and this one. Also, it turned out my family knew someone who worked at a Kia dealership and would be able to help me out with my application.
So in the same week, I ended up applying for pre-approval for carmax, and for Kia… and I got hit. Not with credit checks (that was expected and didn’t harm my score), but with the ugly face of the American capitalist credit system.
A rep from Carmax spoke with me about the process of buying from them. I understood that it would be a bit more expensive to go through them than some local dealer, but I also have seen personally how those small local dealers would absolutely rip you off. So I much preferred the great customer service and transparency with Carmax.
Unfortunately, once they ran my credit to get a more accurate idea of what the cost would be, they came back with me having to pay at least 16% APR AND a much higher dow npayment! It wasn’t until I spoke with the family friend from Kia that I learned what my credit score really meant.
Though I’m still not sure why I have like 740 with Experian and a 680 FICO score, the biggest problem with my credit was that I had no credit history. This really frustrated me because for the past year or so at least, I’ve been using Chime’s Credit Builder card precisely for that purpose.
But… it turns out I have what insiders call a ‘ghost credit’... meaning there’s no credit or ‘trade lines’ on my account. For those still in the dark like I was… that means that I have no debt!!
Even though I am paying an ISA, it does not count as a student loan. I didn’t go to college so I have no student loans. And I’ve never bought a car or house before so I have no auto or home loans. I never opened a credit card either because I never saw the point. Why would I put myself in debt (or the risk of credit card debt) if I could just build my credit with things like Chime’s Credit Builder?
This isn’t the first time I came across an issue about having a credit card though. The first time I tried to rent a car, I learned that they will not let you rent a vehicle from any of the commercial rental companies, (Enterprise, Budget, Sixr, Avenir, etc) without a damn credit card!! Which is why I started renting from Turo anyways.
So… it turns out that in America, you literally cannot participate in much of the ‘market’ if you do not put yourself in debt (or significant, inevitable risk of debt)!! You can’t buy a car, you can’t rent a car, and you probably can’t buy or rent a home.
Even getting a credit card is quite difficult without having decent credit in the first place.
Anyways… it would end up costing me about 600 a month to buy even the Kia Rio, which was one of the cheapest cars they had, with a 17% APR and would require at least 2-4K up front.
I was distraught. I was angry. I was ashamed. I still am.
But I really needed a car. Though my job let me work from home, they really wanted me at the office at least 2 days of the week, and I did too!! It was just far easier to communicate certain things with the type of work we do at my job. Furthermore, it was really expensive and inconvenient to have to get a lyft every single weekend to see my partner. It’s incredibly frustrating to be in a relationship for nearly 7 years and still not be able to see your partner on a daily basis.
So I figured, maybe I’d just have to jump for one of these exorbitantly high APRs and use that to build up my credit. Folks told me how I could get it refinanced in a few months anyways, so long as I paid on time and built up my credit.
But I would need something cheaper. I couldn't afford to pay more than 500 a month for a vehicle, especially since I knew I’d probably have to pay a lot for insurance (being a new car owner), and would need to have some savings for any emergency payments, gas, and so on.
Thus began a seemingly endless chase of cheaper cars in the 10k-15k range. I’d look for ones even lower than that, but was hard to find anything reputable online for under 10K. And I didn’t have easy access to a car to go and hop around at local car lots. Every time I thought I found something affordable, it was already sold out, or in a different state, or would want all or most of the cost paid upfront… it was a real drain.
Then one day, I reached out to my friend and prior boss at the arcade I used to work at. I’ve asked him for advice on stuff like this before, and he’s always been open to helping me suss out good cars from bad. But he had more than advice this time! Turns out, his mother bought a new car about a year ago and they’ve been looking to sell her old car soon! It was a 2005 Nissan Murano with about 190K miles on it… but it ran. And it didn’t seem to have any major problems. They recently got new tires, brakes, fluids, etc for it.
I was able to test drive it and everything. The biggest problem was that the AC didn’t work… We tried to see if it was just a simple matter of adding freon. But it wasn’t. Nonetheless, everything else seemed to be fine. It ran well, despite sitting in their driveway for a year. They recently changed or topped up all the fluids and got new tires and brakes as well. It was clean and handled well. It was even an All Wheel Drive, so had a bit of a kick to it, which took some getting used to. I was worried about the high mileage… but I really needed a car. I was already invested and sick of having to send my significant other home in lyfts every weekend.
So I ended up getting the vehicle!! He sold it for me for quite cheap, even compared to what he could still get for it despite its age and mileage. That was the easiest and least stressful part of this whole experience.
Then I had to get insurance.
I tried to start this process beforehand, but apparently you can’t really get insurance without proof of owning a vehicle (or maybe I’m just dumb). But what made it even worse was that all those insurance quotes I was getting were ridiculously high… if they even approved me at all! Turns out, they have to approve you, seemingly based on your credit… and as I mentioned before, me having no credit lines meant I basically had worse than bad credit. ‘Too much of a risk’ I guess.
Luckily, my dad was able to get me on the phone with his insurance agent, who was able to get me my own plan with them. Unfortunately, it was a hot damn mess getting things finalized. The week before I bought the vehicle, I wanted to get insurance on it, so that I didn’t have to risk driving it down while uninsured.
The agent initially just asked for the VIN number and the bill of sale. But I wasn’t going to be able to get the bill of sale until I picked up the vehicle. I would then have to drive the vehicle all the way home and wait until they opened after the weekend to get it insured. I asked if they’d be okay if I just sent them a picture of the Bill of Sale that I’d have the owner send me. They said yes, that will work.
I sent them that and they accepted my application. Or so I thought.
About a week later (a few days after I already got the car), they came back saying my application wasn’t approved because ‘underwriting’ or whatever wanted a better copy of the bill of sale… but they didn’t just ask for a better quality copy; they apparently also wanted a notarized bill of sale! The contact I had talked to already started my coverage, but it would be canceled by the end of the month if I didn’t send them a notarized bill of sale.
What made this all the more frustrating was that they wouldn’t accept a better copy of the Bill of Sale, even though the Title and Tag office was just fine with an unnotarized bill of sale and my Title.
So now I had to figure out what that was and how to go about that. I thought I’d have to somehow be in the same place as the previous owner so the notary could see us sign a fresh copy of the bill of sale. But luckily, you could do it at different times with different notaries. Unfortunately, it was really difficult to do that at all because the previous owner was extremely busy with a new job that had them traveling a lot. We barely had much time to talk, much less have them get a document notarized!
I had to wait until the Tag office mailed back my Title, now in my name, and sent that to the insurance folks for them to reinstate the coverage.
Deep breath
For a while, it was nice! Here I was, driving my own vehicle… getting where I needed to go, whenever I needed to go. The AC wasn’t working, but I could just roll down the windows.
The biggest problem for me was my gas being so expensive. Even before gas got crazy high, when it was just getting over $4, I would pay about 55-60 for a full tank from empty… about 2-3 times a week. That seemed a bit much to me. Yeah I was driving a good amount, but no more than maybe 30-80 miles a day (depending on if I had to drive to work).
Welp, after about a week or so, my oil light came on. At least that’s what I thought it was. I tried to check my own oil level… but I didn’t know wtf I was looking at. It looked alright to me, even after watching some YouTube videos about it. So I went to get my oil checked,... but everything was closed already except for a Jiffy Lube basically across town.
But right when I got there (really when I got back after dropping off my siblings), their computer went down! Apparently they can’t do a full service with their system down, so the dude just checked to see if I even needed an oil change. He showed me that I definitely did! My oil was old and wouldn’t do much for the engine.
We went to Vickery Falls that weekend, which is a Chattahoochee River park about an hour drive from where I live. On the way back, my car started to make a weird grinding/whining sound! It definitely wasn’t the brakes, so I figured this was the engine problem that they predicted.
The next day, I went back to that Jiffy Lube…. And it turned out the dude from before left my oil cap off!! So the sound was likely related to that… smh. Luckily nothing crazy happened, but they gave me a discount for the mistake.
And turns out that oil light was actually referring to low oil pressure not the oil levels… which again, was already a problem even before they left my cap off.
Despite the gaff, I really appreciated their service. They showed me how dirty my filters were and changed them for me (yes, it was an upcharge, but well worth it I think). They also pointed out a few problems I may need to watch out for, such as my radiator having to be changed as suggested by the manufacturer. It was amazing how much information they were able to pull up through various scans and such. I wish such a tool was available to the public, but it seems it's not.
After the oil change, I only had to spend about 40 for a full tank every 3-4 days.. Still not great, but better, especially as gas creeped up to $4.30-4.50 a gallon!
And theeeen my alternator crapped out on me… right after I was on the way back from getting a new one.
The day before, the battery light and brake light came on at the same time. It would go off every now and then, but would stay on while I was driving. Now… as a first time car owner, I didn't understand what this meant. I found myself searching these two things separately, figuring I needed to look up two separate problems. But nothing seemed to be wrong with my battery or my brakes.
It wasn’t until the next morning where the Google auto-suggest came in handy! I figured I’d search up again about the brakes and saw a result that asked ‘what does it mean when the brakes and battery light come on at the same time.’ Turns out this is a different sort of problem and really important! It means the alternator is in imminent danger of failing!!
Luckily, I was working from home that day anyways, so I tried to call around and verify this. Everywhere I called verified the problem… but none had availability today to help me fix it. I ended up calling a mobile mechanic that could change it out, but I’d have to get my own alternator. This is where I made quite the silly mistake… I drove my car to the AutoZone to get a new alternator. I thought I’d be able to make it there and back since I was driving all day the day before and if it was that bad, it would have failed yesterday… Thus how I ended up stuck on the side of the road just far enough away from the AutoZone to not be able to turn back.
Fortunately, I was able to wait a little bit to get more charge and drive over to a nearby church parking lot where I could wait in the shade for the mobile mechanic. There went another 400 bucks though.
Turns out the alternator charges the battery, so if the alternator goes out, the battery won’t stay charged and thus can’t power the other stuff in your car. Ugh… it really is remarkable yet scary how incredibly complex cars are!!
But wait! There’s more!! The mobile mechanic showed me that my radiator coolant was pretty much empty! Which was weird because it was full when I got my oil changed.
I filled it up that day, but a few days later, it began overheating as I was driving! I hadn’t noticed green fluid leaking out of my car, so I didn’t think I had a leak. The problem ended up being the hose that connects the reservoir to the radiator! It had apparently been glued on previously and was now coming off!! You could see green liquid pooling on the opposite side of the car, presumably it was shooting out of the reservoir hose into this area in the car.
Another mobile mechanic I called told me how I could glue it back on, but unfortunately the only real way to fix this is to get a new radiator. Just as those Jiffy Lube folks predicted… But I didn’t have the money to replace the thing so I took his suggestion to glue it back on. He suggested the JB Weld high heat paste, and It worked!
Untiiiiilll I finally noticed the leaking. Idk if it was the high heat (we had nearly 100F weather the last few days), or the patch on this area putting more pressure on the other weak point.. But now I started to notice a bit of coolant dripping out when I parked, and whenever I checked the coolant levels, the reservoir was lower than before. (This was an improvement though, because previously, the reservoir was empty AND the radiator cap was empty too). So I got some Stop Leak fluid which seems to have patched the hole(s)!
Sike!
After a few days, I noticed coolant leaking out again… so much so that I have to top up the coolant every few days! :’) So then I ordered a new radiator and got some Bar And Leak’s Stop-Leak to hold me over… luckily the Stop-Leak actually stopped my leak! I still have my spare radiator in case it leaks again, but I’m truly amazed that it worked so well (better than K-Bar’s stop leak I tried before).
Aaaaannd…. now I’m noticing my steering wheel and/or wheels make some squeaking/creaking noises when I turn at low speeds…. Sigh
This car has definitely been helpful. I’ve been able to experience more things in the past month than I have in the past year. Hanging out with friends and family more, traveling to nature parks, spending more time with my partner, going to the office consistently, going to community/activist events and so on… But lawd has it been a struggle.
I would definitely like to get a new(er) car, specifically an electric or hybrid car. Gas just keeps going up (or it was!), I hate supporting oil companies and polluting the environment even the infinitesimally tiny way that I do buying their gas. Plus, I want to do day trips or even cross-country trips and I do not think this car will cut it. Also, after finally getting my AC checked (took quite a while to find the time) it turns out it will cost nearly 1k to get it fixed, since the AC compressor is broken!! ARGH!!
All the while, I’ve been watching videos about places like the Netherlands where they have an absolutely amazing public transit system and walkable/bikeable cities. Sigh, I can only dream…
👨🏿💻Being a failure at work 👨🏿💻
Another big event for me was work. I really enjoy my work… but it do be hard sometimes. For a little bit there, I started feeling like a real fraud…
I felt like I completely ruined a major client project!
Some background: I currently work as an XR (Extended Reality) Design Strategist for a ‘futures technology’ company called Futurus (which has a gaming segment called Amebous Labs). The company has been operating for around 8 years as of 2022 and primarily creates augmented reality and virtual reality experiences for various types of companies.
I first started working there as a contractor in the summer of 2021 where I helped design (via written storyboards) a Mount Everest experience for a startup client that is trying to take extreme sports to office workers. That was a fun and interesting gig!
I then got hired full time to design safety training simulations for a new client of theirs: Georgia-Pacific, one of the largest paper manufacturing companies in the world. They are trying to improve the safety of their facilities and are utilizing a number of technologies and initiatives to do so. VR simulations that allow people to experience bad day scenarios, then learn how to do things correctly, are one of these efforts.
My job thus entails utilizing my knowledge of virtual reality and user experience to create simulations that actually deliver this experience in an intuitive, engaging way.
I unfortunately can’t say too many details right now, but my gaff happened with the second of these simulations. My process was much more nebulous then, but I basically do the following:
Have a meeting with a Subject Matter Expert from GP who works in the specific area we are simulating to get as much info as we can about the job and various safety risks
Wait for a high level outline from the client that would give us some direction on what they want to focus on for their simulation and get reference imagery that our art team can model
Develop a storyboard, and iterate based on feedback, scope, and feasibility limitations. This is basically the entire simulation with script, stage directions, and more
Create a map, user flow, and 3D visual storyboard to further define details about the environment, scenes, animations, and interactions
Communicate the storyboard to the devs via a spreadsheet that defines every discrete element of the storyboard into something the devs can implement into their modular code
Test the builds they develop to ensure it is accomplishing the client’s vision and is as user friendly as possible
Deliver!
As I began creating the storyboard, I tried to get a solid idea on what the client wanted to focus on for this sim. However, over the course of weeks, we constantly went back and forth about various details. It got to the point where I had already developed the storyboard and was communicating it to the devs, but still had a number of things the client had not exactly confirmed. So I ended up having to go back and change elements of the storyboard, which meant having the devs change things they had thought was to be implemented.
Due to these miscommunications, timelines went off course and even a few features got abandoned!!
I felt like I had completely let the team down. I was supposed to be the main point of contact between the client and the dev team. I was supposed to deliver a clear, user friendly script/storyboard that detailed the client’s vision in a way that the devs could implement.
I felt like I failed.
The devs were unhappy having to backtrack with code. The client was unhappy with the features that wouldn’t be delivered.
I am embarrassed to say that I went days, probably even a whole week feeling like the team secretly hated me and was mad at me for this fuck up… I started to even worry that I might be fired!
Buuut after finally sitting down with the CEO and, later, the rest of the team, … turns out they never even blamed me! Not really. Perhaps I could have communicated things more clearly and more consistently, but I was technically doing two and half jobs, UX, QA, and also PM, even though I was not hired on to do project management or quality assurance (though there are always elements of those that go into UX). The CEO usually helps with scope and acts as PM, but she was busy getting other clients and stuff. Furthermore, the client's PM was busy with some major projects on their side, and our devs should have also asked for more clarification on things before it even got to this point.
Everybody felt like I did a great job considering what I did deliver despite all these balls in the air! And the sim did end up being quite good from both a design perspective and development perspective, despite the amount of complexities I had to include, and the messy process.
From that, we learned a lot about the importance of communication, project management, and QA. So, we hired a great PM who has been a huge help! I documented my process and set timelines along with our PM, so now we have a pretty good idea of how long every step in our design and development process should take. Furthermore, we brought over a dedicated QA person from another part of the company to help us test things out more regularly and rigorously as well.
From this experience, I also realized more about the importance of process. I knew beforehand that process was important to have. But in design (and really in most other professions), the focus is put too much on a specific brand of process, when really the important thing is having a process, and fine tuning that process to be effective and efficient for your context.
Having a process allows you a guideline to follow, a checklist to make sure you aren’t skipping important things. But its also a necessity to communicate expectations as well. It allows you to give timelines, to have a good idea of scope and effort, and to be consistent across projects.
However, a process shouldn’t be stringent. It shouldn’t be this set thing you do the exact same every time, because every time you do it, there are variables and unique issues and context that you have to adapt to!
There are indeed ‘bad’ processes, like the infamous ‘Design Thinking’ many designers are taught, which isn’t actually that helpful or consistent in terms of detailing the important steps and tools you can/should use at different points in your work. What makes a good process is being specific about the various tools you might need at any point in the project, an understanding of why/when to use those tools, and the ability to effectively communicate what to expect at each step. And once again, you’ll need to be flexible without missing key components that could make or break a project.
Additionally, I’m learning a lot about how to design virtual experiences. But also about how to work with a team on a level that I never have before. I’m learning how to communicate with clients on a scale I never had to before as well. Above all, I’m learning how to make mistakes that can indeed be costly, but also how to come back from those mistakes, and to grow from those failures.
☀️Solarpunk Projects🌼
As for my work after work,... I applied for a grant! And I also submitted three short stories; my first ones ever!!
If you don’t want to go through a yet more harrowing recounting of my endeavors, feel free to just check out my applications below:
Grant Submission:
C/Change Proposal - Solarpunk Community Project (Due April 20th)
Short Story Submissions:
Saint Andrew’s Solarpunk Art Project, What If Things Turned Out Okay? - A Reclaimed Future (Due February 22nd)
Android Press, Cyberpunk/Solarpunk Anthology - As We Do, When Trees Rebel (Due April 30th, then May 7th)
Imagine 2200, Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors - Beyond the Skies, When Winds Sing (Due May 5th)
But if you’re here for the drama and the stories… Here's how these went down…
The story behind ‘A Reclaimed Future’
Saint Andrewism (now just Andrewism) put out a call for a solarpunk art project that he was going to be doing. The first one he did a year or so was for visual artists and was really cool! This time, he was doing one for literary folks. I don’t have much visual skills, but I do like writing!
So, I figured I’d give this a shot. There was some procrastination involved…, but I was still able to create and submit ‘A Reclaimed Future’ before the deadline! No problem, barely even an inconvenience. The hardest thing was taking my ideas for a futuristic, ecological world and distilling it into a short story. I had no idea how to even begin doing that, but I figured I could do a little poem where I would just describe the world. It wouldn’t really be a story, more an overview of this world I created.
I think I did a decent job for my first time doing something like this!
The story behind ‘When Trees Rebel’
But then, there were a few people in his discord sharing links to more solarpunk short story submissions: Android Press and Imagine 2200. They sounded very interesting! During the creation of that poem, I ended up writing a whole lot about this world. Not only that, but I could even ‘see’ in my mind how the world got there, and how the world would change over time spans of hundreds of years.
I was practically foaming at the mouth to share these ideas more publicly! At the same time, I was also doing research into indigenous cultures and also doing some spiritual work in my personal life. One thing that struck me about these ancient egalitarian cultures was their spiritual beliefs, and how they thought of the world as a living, intelligent ecosystem. We call this ‘animism’, the belief that every organic and inorganic thing has some sort of living soul within it. This led them to believe that they could commune with these spirits: the plants, the weather, the animals, the dead, etc… they could and would communicate with them!
Obviously this was not a ‘scientific’ way of thinking, but what really bothered me at the time was how modern day researchers and other people would kind of dismiss this thinking as ‘irrational’, ‘magical’, or otherwise primitive. This dismissal seemed terribly arrogant and stupid to me because these people managed to develop and maintain incredibly self-sufficient societies for hundreds or even thousands of years!!
I won’t get into the whole spiel about how many people mistakenly view our pre-historic ancestors like some dumb ‘cavemen’ again… but it bares repeating that these people were just as intelligent as we are today! The only difference is that they had not yet discovered everything we have now. And yet, despite (or due to?) their ignorance, they were able to figure out how to invent tools, build homes, and grow all manner of foods. In fact, there is some really interesting climate data I mentioned in a past newsletter about how the world was far colder and less stable for most of human history. The ‘Holocene’ era that marks the beginning of mass agriculture around 12-10k years ago was largely possible due to a stabilization of relatively warm temperatures.
I say all this to give context as to why I think it made perfect, rational sense for people to have an animistic belief system. Because though we would be able to identify patterns in the environment, those patterns would change seemingly for no reason.. Very much like humans and other living beings that can change their behavior for seemingly ‘no reason’.
I put it another way in this podcast: https://anchor.fm/trillionaire/episodes/Politics-of-media-and-sci-fi--solarpunk-animismvoudon-e1fsg0e
Where I also mention how we are extremely social beings, and we are able to anthropomorphize pretty much anything! This is a natural (perhaps even a healthy?) evolutionary adaptation. We can sit next to a tree, and notice how calm it makes us feel. We then might share some of our thoughts and feelings with this tree. The tree may move due to the wind, but it could/would likely sway in such a way that it feels like it's talking back! This coupled with that calming feeling we get when around nature gives us a therapeutic experience.
Eventually, we may give this tree a name, a personality. We form a relationship and give it gifts. Those gifts likely attract critters like squirrels or deer which we can then hunt for food or other materials… which feels like the tree is giving us gifts in return!
This is just one small, mundane example of how these sorts of things can play out. Even to this day, many of us have similar relationships with our cars and pets! So is it really so irrational and ‘primitive’ to develop such beliefs?
Furthermore, to get back to these stories, these spiritual beliefs lead people to really care for their environment. They often would develop all manner of rituals to give back or ask for certain things from the environment. And the environment would often provide. Even if the ‘real’ reason was something different than what people thought, it was still consistent enough to be predictable and dependable.
I think these belief systems are an incredibly important part of the puzzle that explains how we became so estranged from the environment today.
Climate change is not a new thing. Yes, the global scale of disaster is new, but ever since the development of mass agriculture, we have experienced climate disasters due to our own inability to understand the consequences of our actions. Almost every empire and centralized society since mass farming has either collapsed due to infighting or due to droughts, famine, disease, or other environmental disaster as a direct result of exploitative resource allocation practices. Throughout history, all civilizations inevitably fall from the throne they claim for themselves atop the world.
What you will also notice with these societies is that most every one of them abandoned that animistic belief system in favor of some sort of hierarchical belief system. One where some all-powerful god(s) decides what happens, and where certain people are granted power because they alone ‘know the will’ of said god(s). The centralization of spirituality seems to harbor or signal a deterioration of personal freedom and societal estrangement from nature.
HENCE!... I wondered what it would look like to bring these more egalitarian belief systems into the 21st century. How can we make people feel more connected to the environment, while still respecting the scientific knowledge we have gained today??
Thus techno spirituality. I figure I could write science fiction stories that showed people communing with nature thanks to advanced technologies. Imagine ‘talking’ to trees through computer algorithms and data sensors that can pick up on the signals they send to each other through their fungal network, and are able to copy those signals to act like a tree. We could more directly see and ‘hear’ exactly what different trees need, and ask in turn for resources we might need. What if we could tap into their senses to find hidden water sources, or gather data about the complex ecosystems they are tapped into, or measure how much carbon any one tree recycles in order to further optimize or predict our own carbon sequestration attempts?
On top of all that… I wanted to write stories from their perspective! Personally, I get kinda bored reading about human drama which is always some manifestation of the same ol’ same ol’... plus they usually reflect the author’s own biases and ignorance (and I always enjoy worlds and abilities more than characters in most stories I read anyways).
So yeah, I wanted to do a lot…
The Android Press submission wanted to see people transition from where we are today, to a more utopian solarpunk world. While the Imagine 2200 submission wanted to see a story taking place in about a hundred years from now.
These were right up my alley!! I absolutely love thinking about building a better future over the span of decades and centuries. There was a LOT I could say. But I wanted to make sure it was all grounded in real science, technology, and spirituality.
I ended up spending soooo much time doing research and thinking about preparing all of this stuff, that it wasn’t until like a week before the deadlines that I even began writing the first story in earnest!!
But once I got to writing, I couldn’t stop. Within like two days I wrote twice as much as the word limit for the longer Android Press submission. And I wasn’t even done!! I struggled to really show the world from a tree’s perspective, but the challenge was incredibly engaging.
I was trying to portray a whole decades-long global revolution within a 7k word short story. But as the deadline approached and I found myself still with more to say, plus a whole other story to write, I knew I had to claw it back.
In the end, I turned the ‘story’ into more of an overview of all these events… a story told in retrospect. I didn’t even get to delve deeply into the techno-animism aspect a whole lot. I was very much disappointed and frustrated with myself. But it was this or nothing, so I sent it in with a note:
I am going to be super transparent with you. This is my first story I've ever written. And I procrastinated a lot trying to do a ton of research on trees, revolution, social ecology, philosophy, and so on. However, I really wanted to at least try submitting something. I believe this is a fun theme that features ideas and perspectives not usually explored in this genre. Hopefully, if you all do accept this for some reason, I will be able to submit a finished version (this one is pretty much more of a narration than an actual story, apologies!).
Then I moved on to my next submission that was due soon, the grant proposal!
The story behind the Solarpunk Community Project
Luckily, I had already started working on this one when someone sent it to me weeks before. I’ll spare much of the details for this one, because it was much more straightforward.
Someone who saw my Gatherverse Talk (or it may have been one of the other ones that I did at the time) was inspired and really appreciated my story! They heard about the C/Change R&D lab, which was looking to help folks build out a prototype of a technology application that would foster cultural (ex)change.
Since I was already steeped in Solarpunk, I figured this would be a great opportunity to build something that would inspire more people to get into solarpunk and change/exchange their culture through the lens of eco-utopian futurism.
As evident by my earliest newsletters, I’ve been obsessed about urban planning for well over a year now. Thus I knew that a large part of culture is one’s lived environment. If we could immerse people in different environments, we could better change and share different cultures.
The person who brought this to me was a finance executive, founded a data science innovation company, and worked with the XR Safety Initiative. He was open to serving as an advisor on the project.
But we knew we needed a team to really be competitive with this! We felt like the biggest hurdle was my own lack of experience and work examples. He believed in me, and I believed in myself to make this happen, but how do we show them that I could do this?
Long story short, I couldn't find anyone to join us. I didn’t really know any developers working on the specific webXR tools I needed. I did find a few folks who were interested in helping here and there, but none had the time to dedicate to a program like this.
Nonetheless, I drafted up a Notion doc, and set out to get feedback on it.
However, about ten days after I submitted ‘When Trees Rebel’, the Android Press folks emailed me back!! They said they’d be interested in reading the finished version if I could send it in before May 7th!
I was excited to do so, but I hadn’t even touched the story since then, and I still had to finish my grant proposal. So now I had this grant on my plate, the prospect of rewriting a nearly 7k word story, and also I needed to submit the Imagine 2200 story (3k-5k words) soon too!
I wasn’t going to turn any of them down. So I got to work.
Back to the proposal! Everyone I showed my draft to really liked it and had some great feedback. I was able to complete that submission and send it in with no real issues (besides worrying about my lack of a team and lackluster portfolio). I really wanted to redo my website portfolio to reflect the new projects I’ve been doing at my job, but I knew I didn’t even have the time to figure out how to communicate everything I do there effectively, much less fight with Webflow to edit the site.
(Feel free to check out my ShapesXR design on the web via this link, or in VR on a Quest with this code: 1Z47W5C7)
I submitted the proposal, prayed to the ancestors, and moved back to my tree story.
This time, I tried to use this wonderful formula on how to write short stories through Branden Sanderson’s How To Write series: Lecture #7: Short Stories — With Special Guest Instructor Mary Robinette Kowal
The formula is as follows:
Opening
Who - Wind (point of view, action - what are they doing)
Where - City (sensory detail)
Genre - SciFi (specific & unique)
Try/Fail Cycle
Setup - What is character trying to do and why (MICE thread)
Barrier - What is stopping them (relevant to MICE thread)
Yes, but …
No, and …
Resolution
Try/Succeed
Yes, and…
No, but…
Closing (mirror the opening)
Who - action/reflection
Where - sensory detail
Genre - specific and unique mood, tone change
But as I was busy rewriting that story, I completely forgot about the Imagine 2200 submission date… or rather I misremembered when it was due.
The story behind ‘When Winds Sing’
For some reason, I thought this one was due on the 10th of May… I thought I had more time to work on it. So I only did a little bit of work on it as a part of that video I mentioned above.
By the time I ‘finished’ the tree story (really just got to a point where I had to admit there was no way I could fit everything I wanted in such a word limit with level of experience), it was already too late to submit to Imagine 2200.
So with two days before my new deadline for Android Press, I quickly wrote up this new story anyways, figuring I’d just send it to Android Press.. To give them options…
Maybe it was the formula, maybe it was my added bit of ‘experience’ writing three stories in like two months, but I was actually able to finish this one before the 7th.
Again, I wanted it to be from a non-human perspective, and I wanted it to take place much further in the future. Subsequently, I chose the wind as my muse, and far enough into the future where humanity was building space habitats for the setting.
I sent it in. Prayers and all that.
Unfortunately they all ‘failed’... all of my submissions (besides Andrew’s, never heard back from him, but he did mention he wouldn’t be able to respond to any of them until like September)... but all the other ones were declined.
Neither Android Press or C/Change gave feedback as to why they declined.. Just that my submissions were not what they were looking for.
The rejections hurt like hell. And I haven’t really done much with any of these projects and stories since then.
BUT I WILL!! After nursing my wounds and burnout over the past weeks, I’ve been re-reading and re-thinking about these submissions.
I’ve asked for more feedback and got more great insights. My next newsletter (or next next one), will likely entail updates on all of these.
As I reflect on these past months, I am figuring out more and more about myself and this mysterious ‘willpower’... (terrible segue, sorry not sorry :P)
💡The Problems with Free Will🤔
I’ve been finding myself thinking more and more about the question of free will. Here are a few podcasts I’ve done on the topic in the last few weeks:
I think I’m going to write a whole newsletter about it, so I won’t spend too much on it right now. But here are some broad thoughts I think are really important to mention, just to get folks thinking about it.
What is free will, really?
I think we need to seriously reflect and analyze our ideas of free will more closely. Defining free will, or at least specifying more about what we mean when we say ‘free will’ is really important to give us a better idea of what the hell we’re talking about.
I find that many people assume not just that free will exists, but that it is central to their life. You can see this if you ask people what it means if they don’t have free will after all… many people automatically assume this would mean their life is meaningless… that they have no agency… that they cannot control their life, thus what’s the point of even trying? They give up and become the worst kind of nihilist.
But this is a reactionary response. This is like a toddler having a temper tantrum because they haven’t learned how to deal with their emotions in a mature way. Once a spoiled child realizes they can’t get everything they want all the time, they assume life is unfair, because they were raised to believe they should get everything they want as soon as they want it. They don’t realize how unhealthy (and unsustainable/unrealistic) this lifestyle actually is.
I think the same goes for free will… we are raised to believe that life is about making choices. And those choices determine how our life goes. We assume life is a sort of immediate gratification loop, where every choice brings you closer or further from where you want to go. Even delayed gratification is still ‘immediate’ in our minds, because we usually assume that we are making ‘the right choice’ by doing something that will pay off later.
You can probably break this down further but I’ll leave that for the future newsletter dedicated towards this topic :P
The point is that we are sort of spoiled to believe that reality works in a way that actually does not make sense… and that is ultimately unhealthy and unsustainable due to how self-centered it makes us think.
Worse still, our entire society is based on this view of reality. Our legal system is built on figuring out people’s ‘intent’ in their ‘good or bad’ choices. We then call people ‘criminals’ or ‘bad guys’ if they made ‘bad choices’...
Our economic system assumes you basically deserve your lot, rich or poor, because of the ‘smart choices’ you make with your money. The entirety of capitalism runs on the idea that people are ‘rational buyers’ or whatever, who always make the best decision about how to spend their money… thus the ‘market’ works because it ‘responds to the desires of the consumers’...
Our schooling system, advertising, healthcare industry, insurance, and so on all depend on this assumption that people are usually free to choose what’s best for themselves. We ‘merely’ use education or marketing to ‘guide’ those choices one way or the other…
But I think all of this is wrong. And we have ample evidence suggesting so as well.
I think free will is just an illusion masking the more complicated fact that our consciousness is not built for ‘free will’. Our consciousness does not enable us to make ‘choices’.
I think choices and decisions are actually a far more basic instinct or mechanism that pretty much all living (and even some nonliving or semi living) entities possess. I think any self-regulating system makes countless choices all the time in order to maintain its homeostasis.
A computer program makes choices based on the algorithms and/or other systems it is built for. Ants make choices about where they are going to nest.
I think choices are the least interesting thing about consciousness. (Granted, I do think how different animals make choices is really fascinating, but more because of the sheer amount and type of variables they consider, not because of what it tells us about consciousness).
I think consciousness is not about simply making choices (ie ‘free will’ and agency), but instead about the fact that we have experiences about those choices. The fact that we are aware of the choices being made.
Every animal makes choices… but not many of them (if any) understands anything about why those choices are being made.
No other species seems to tell stories about choices.
I think somewhere along our evolution, we developed the ability to become aware of the choices being made by our bodies and subconscious minds. The prefrontal cortex, which seems to be responsible for decision-making, is essentially a simulation machine. It constantly simulates reality in order to allow us to practice making choices in these simulated realities. Or, to be more specific, it simulates different reward payoffs and allows us to balance the short-term rewards gained from reflexive, thoughtless actions versus the long-term rewards from reflective, goal-oriented actions. So, I think what’s actually going on here is not necessarily that it allows us to make choices … but instead allows us to make informed, considered choices. That is, it allows us to be aware of the choices we are making, and actually think about whether these are the correct choices for our goals (and even to create goals, which are imagined ideal realities) in the first place.
Brains of any type are basically pattern-matching machines that utilize sensory data to perceive and parse our environment. That data then informs the type of decisions our body makes as it tries to maintain its homeostasis and reproduce.
Of course this is a simplification, but it allows us to understand a bit more about ourselves.
As we hominids became more and more social, it became more and more imperative to not just process data about the physical environment, but also the social environment that was the relationships we had with each other. But unlike the physical environment, the social environment is largely immaterial. All the sensory data we get about other people is insufficient at allowing us to parse this burgeoning network of interpersonal resources. We therefore need ways to understand how we would benefit from these immaterial, often long-term relationships.
If you recall my last newsletter, I brought up a theory of evolution called FCC that suggested it was thanks to females that we gained sapience. But even if that specific theory is not true, pretty much every theory of evolution suggests that social intelligence lead us to sapience. In fact, there is a lot of interesting research showing that the development of the prefrontal cortex is greatly influenced by how social the environment a species/individual is raised in.
Additionally, the phenomenon known as ‘willpower’ is finite. It runs out the more you make decisions, and quite literally needs to be fueled by eating. What does that mean for ‘free will’? It seems to me that free will is a terribly insufficient idea to explain what is really happening in our minds.
The Alternatives to Free Will
Again, I’m going to try and keep it broad, even though I already went into a bit of detail above 😅; nonetheless, it is not enough to simply say we don’t have free will or that life is deterministic. As I noted in the beginning in this section, the natural (reflexive) reaction to this information is to just give up. To believe that we have no ‘purpose’, that there is no ‘meaning’ in anything and that the universe is uncaring to our troubles. People think that just because we might not have as much (or any) control as we thought we did, then we no longer should or can value our experiences.
This is an understandable reaction, but it is an immature one and ultimately unhelpful. I believe it is paramount to show people what we can be doing instead, what we can value instead, and what does matter beyond the illusion of control.
I believe what’s more important than simply making choices or the nebulous feeling of ‘free will’, is awareness. I believe consciousness is best defined and, if I may use the word, ‘phenomenologically’ understood as the experience of becoming aware… becoming aware of the world, the self, causality (thus the concept of time), and so much more. The more we are aware of things as individuals and as a species, the more we are conscious.
The more you feed your awareness, the more options you have for your decision-making to even utilize. If you aren’t aware of something, then you can’t even make a decision about it! Therefore awareness subsumes and supersedes choice or ‘free will’. Awareness gives us access to willpower.. Or at least grants our willpower the currency to spend…
This is why they say ‘knowledge is power’, because knowing something exists gives you a huge advantage above those who don’t know that thing exists. Furthermore, having more actual power (ie access to resources) grants you the ability to make good on the options your vantage point grants you, and the ability to make the most of those resources. Thus why inequality is such a deeply troubling issue. Because no matter how much ‘willpower’ you have, you are at a steep disadvantage to those who simply have a better vantage point.. Who have more resources and knowledge at their disposal.
So, I think this means the ‘alternative’ to believing in free will, is to instead shift your attention… to your attention! Instead of worrying about the ‘choices’ people make, consider instead the reasons why they made those choices. What led people to make such a choice? Why did their brain think that choice was the best option (at least in that moment)?
Of course, you will likely never know why! Even if you know a lot about their background and environment, you will likely never know their internal world; their thoughts, the stories they tell themselves, their perspective, their emotions, their beliefs, and so on.
But I think that’s a good thing! We already can’t know these things, but when we ‘judge people based on their actions’ we often (almost always) assume that we know their intent and why they made those actions. Even people who claim to not care about intent, only results, still necessarily respond with the assumption that said actions/results are the full story, or at least good enough to act upon in return.
I am not saying we shouldn't hold people accountable for their actions. Accountability is a huge feedback mechanism that provides additional information about your environment after all. What I am saying is that accountability can and should be more about helping people see why those actions were done.
What I am saying is that it's more important, more impactful, and more useful to illuminate why and how decisions are made rather than the mere decisions themselves.
On a personal level, that means finding your purpose, meaning, agency, freedom, and so on not through some nebulous and misleading idea of ‘free will’ or ‘choices’ you think you made all on your own; instead, you find all of that through how aware you are of the myriad reasons as to why you are making said choices.
This means becoming more sensitive to where and how you focus your attention. This means learning more about your habits, environment, personality, temperament, neurology, culture, knowledge, skills, beliefs, biases, and so on. This means being more human. More sentient. More conscious.
Making better choices does not come from just some mystical ‘willpower’, but instead from understanding yourself and your environment enough to make those best choices the most obvious and easiest options for you to make. Making better choices means molding your environment such that the right choices are the easiest paths to follow at any time.
This even explains people who are highly ‘disciplined’. These people are ones who have spent the time and energy to create habits and/or an environment that aligns very closely with their goals. Disciplined people may or may not have more ‘willpower’ (I’m not sure if there is any research on this to verify), but they certainly have better habits so they don’t have to actively think about doing what they need to do, they can simply execute.
On a societal level, this means focusing less on putting people in boxes based purely on choices they seem to make ‘of their own free will’, which doesn’t actually tell us much about who those people really are, nor does it actually solve the core problems of our society. Instead, the focus should be on the systematic variables such as the geography, cultural background, genetics, psychology, education, access to resources, and more to understand behavior and to change the systems that afford those behaviors and decisions.
Instead of calling people criminals, poor, bad, or even rich, successful, etc and reducing all of their actions to the results of their choices, we should instead be looking at what enabled them to make those choices… how the environment leads them to making such choices. We should be focusing on how to create (or constrain) the variables/influences that lead people to make said choices. We should hold people accountable to becoming ever more knowledgeable of the why behind those choices if we ever hope for people to make better ones.
Perhaps that will mean holding people accountable to their bad decisions by putting them in an environment/situation where they will have to learn the consequences of their actions and truly incorporate that into their being, rather than merely punishing them in an environment where they will learn nothing but how to make more bad decisions.
Perhaps that will mean structuring our society so it maximizes equal access to resources, rather than merely the illusion of ‘equal opportunity’ with vastly unequal access to resources.
Perhaps that will mean actually seeking to understand one another rather than to judge and discriminate against each other.
Anyways, I spent way more time on this section than intended. Kind of par for the course at this point. But I hope I’ve given some good ideas on how you can think about the question of free will! If/when I expand on this, I want to bring in more sources, data, and insights from my research to really give more context and veracity behind these ideas.
I suppose I’ll end this long ass ‘newsletter’ here for now.
I’ve also been hiking various trails around Atlanta, been expanding my fashion to include dresses and crop tops, watching/reading some really good (and not so good) stuff, as well as getting to tour big companies like Mars Wrigley and Delta… but those are all stories for another day (or podcast). 😉
As always, let me know what you think about any of these topics, or anything else, in the comments below! Or email me! I’m always excited to discuss these things with other people.