So much sea salt

It’s in my blood to believe that I can build a better mousetrap nutritionally. Supplementation, caffeine, citric acid, and now sea salt make up large parts of my diet. What I surrender in reasonability, I make up in ritual. I dash my rationality, sacrificing it at the altar of gains. Eschewing science, rationality, and logic, I become the overman, and achieve it all. I’m reading Infinite Jest, Farewell to Arms, and East of Eden. My literary taste gives me an air of pretention unmatched by any in the western world. I must believe that my essays surpass Paul Graham’s. My insights would make Ezra Klein convulse, and my adeptness would bring about a cognitive renaissance.

I recently read An American Resurrection, which talks a lot about the author’s journey from child abuse and mental illness to relative stability, and the inspirational messages we should take from living life on the straight and narrow, even when things feel hopeless. Having also read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius recently, I’m increasingly becoming convinced that great art comes from miraculous pain. That the tools that allow us to rise up are based in resilience and failure. Only by falling low can we soar. I’m not sure whether I believe this, but I want to.

I don’t feel especially successful. I’m 24, I went to an okay school, have worked okay jobs. I doubt I’m getting promoted super soon, and although I’ve ventured in and out of libertarianism, I don’t feel as though I’ve accomplished anything especially successful. I have moments of insight where I believe that my critical thinking allows me to see things differently, but I don’t have the rigorous training nor the discipline to make my work into something amazing yet.

In fact, I often feel aimless, it’s not clear what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, and I think it’s a challenging affair to transition from college, where there was something I’ve been working to, to life in general, where the meaning I make is entirely my own. There’s a lot of beauty around me, and I wonder what I could best serve my time by doing.