I was going to write a post about ‘what the hell have I been doing for the intermediary period of time between my blog posts on the 19th November 2022 and (today) 16th August 2023’. I was going to lay it out in a rather boring fashion – a list of what I did do and what I didn’t do, but then I thought I’d go one step further. I’ll set out the framework here in this post explaining how I’ll look back at the last 9 months, and then will follow up with another post with the assessment (partly due to trying to encourage myself to return, partly to have shorter posts that I can tackle in 25 minute segments).

I have a real big thing for choices. I get hard on the thought that we have agency. This first occurred to me in this way at the back end of 2021 I think. I was thinking about how joy should be the ultimate aim of life, and how do you get to joy, and how do you live a life worth living, which in this instance I defined as a life with a maximised probability of feeling joy for the longest period of time and at the highest intensity. I will re-visit this at a later point as it requires a much larger discussion, and without re-visiting my thinking and challenging it too deeply right now, I’m not sure entirely sure it’s correct.

Anyway, a by-product of that thought process revolved around Choices. The Path. Tim Urban’s graphic really sparked the way I was thinking about it. Each tree split in the graphic represents a choice (a decision tree), and along the y-axis you have joy at the top and no joy at the bottom. Each choice you make moves you closer or further away from the probability of experiencing joy for the longest period of time at the highest intensity over the course of your life.

I made an infinite number of choices during that time given each moment represents a choice being made, and that is the framework I’ll use to assess the last few months.

Appendix

Re Tim Urban’s graphic – I don’t want to be a blog that simply regurgitates other people’s ideas, but I’ll certainly allow myself synthesis from greater minds and will reference where I’m aware.