dullbananas

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24986940

("the McDonald's girl" = girl 3. That phrase was the motorcycle boy's idea. This story is not related to McDonald's or motorcycles.)

Starting in January 2024, she occasionally caught my eye when I was in the one class we were both in. I mostly ignored her.

On February 29, when I was sitting down in class and the McDonald's girl was walking in front of me and I probably looked at her for a moment, she appeared to pause and make eye contact with me, and I was very shocked. Later in the same class period, when she was sitting in front of me, she appeared to turn back and look at me. I felt like I knew that she almost certainly had some sort of interest in me, maybe a crush idk. I gradually started to think about how good her personality was (this was likely affected by a lot of bias) and have a crush on her. The beginning of the crush was between March 2[^1] and March 5[^2].

This is around the time when finding my future wife before graduation if she could be found was slowly becoming almost like a goal, instead of just a hypothetical possibility in the distant future. (Both of these mindsets are worse than the exploration goal.)

On March 2, me and most other seniors went on a field trip to Disneyland. Experiencing scary rides for fun might have influenced my mindset.

On March 3 and 4, in a group chat (including the motorcycle boy, but not the McDonald's girl), I sent:

• "Last Thursday in religion class, [the McDonald's girl] looked at me in an interesting way"
• "It seems to reveal interesting feelings"
• "Probably attraction, but could also be a feeling of impending doom" (2nd part is joke)

I did not ask "Does [the McDonald's girl] have a boyfriend?" I did not reach that level of fearless communication yet. Eventually you will see that asking this would have made a difference.

I considered going to the table with the McDonald's girl during lunch and asking to sit there. On March 6, while feeling uncertain that I would be able to do it and that we would have the same lunch period, I saw her but gave up and did not ask to sit there. On March 12 (the next day that we had the same lunch period), I cared more about having undelayed success in doing it, and while being completely calm, I did it, and I was welcomed to sit there. Praying for strength in a bathroom stall at the beginning of lunch might have had an effect. I did this 3 times in total. Also, the motorcycle boy (one of the people I previously sat with) told me in a text "they both asked me what I did to make you sit over there. They thought I pushed you away! 🤬"

On March 17, at night, I believed that I would probably ask about her looking at me and confess to her at lunch the next day. The next day, the feeling of certainty faded away, and I did not do it. But in the evening, I sent her the creative writing club project that I was working on, with "I'm trying to impress you" as the message. It took several minutes to have the courage to click the send button.

On March 19, when all students were walking from the church to the school, the motorcyle boy appeared and told me something like "Dullbananaaaaaaaaaas. So the McDonald's girl was telling me... in case you forgot... she wanted me to remind you... in case you forgot... that the McDonald's girl has a boyfriend. I know it hurts!" This meant I was finished with the McDonald's girl. I felt calm at first. Then I started having negative thoughts in less than an hour. The decision of whether or not to sit at her table the next day seemed more scary than it should have seemed. There was a little bit of perceived risk in both choices. Also, I vaguely remember fearing that I would be humiliated a little bit. I thought "maybe I was too ambitious" (this thought is a big no no), but then I had these positive thoughts:

• My mental model, with lasting regret and lack of freedom being a worse danger, is still correct.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. This suffering is part of the path to an extremely beautiful situation that I'm looking for.
• This is better than the previous situations with other girls. This time I went so far and finished the situation in less than a month. I hit a new PR. (Very important)

I was slowly becoming nauseated. I constantly thought about the situation. That night, I felt so much shame, and multiple times in the same night I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere. In the beginning, the positive thoughts didn't stop the discomfort, but they did prevent me from being owned by the discomfort or doubting myself.

That evening, in the shower, I realized that what I was experiencing was the growth of only one person, and that I could try to have a ripple effect. Later, this led to sharing of wisdom and encouragement, and eventually Project Pansystellar. This stuff might be described in another post.

The next day, at lunch, I did not have the strength to sit at the table with the McDonald's girl or at the table where I sat previously, so I sat far away by myself near a tree and facing a field of grass. In retrospect, this was the right choice. It was therapeutic. I had a huge need for rest.

I developed a mindset of fully allowing and embracing this level of discomfort in me, just like falling when learning how to walk, or like recovering after intense workout. On the next day (March 21), I changed my senior quote submission from "I accept control over Lemmy's code to sabotage Reddit, not Lemmy" to "Try, mess up, have nauseating embarrasment. Better than no ambition."

Before March 24, I had these thoughts:

• All I did wrong (not morally wrong) was I didn't ask if the girl had a boyfriend (as mentioned earlier), and I didn't recognize the lack of sufficient connection after 2 or 3 times of sitting at her table at lunch. The idea that I messed up more severely was an illusion.
• Reducing one's level of ambition is a poor substitute for tweaking the goal that is thought of. In other words, only change how the ambition is applied. (This turned out to be a important concept, and it's very fundamental to my design approach for the Pansystellar Architecture.) (In this situation, I decided to make my goal include finding a girl that I develop a deep enough connection with easily enough in the beginning. This did not fix everything, as you will see in a future post.)
• Physical attraction, either to or from me, should be mostly ignored. (This one is not very useful, and it's probably false. The underlying problems can be solved differently, partly using things from my other posts.)

Around a month later, I realized that my discomfort and doubt after finding out that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend was probably mostly an attack from Satan, and that a person like me having the persistence needed for the path to marriage and parenthood is probably scary to Satan because it's a path to things that strongly oppose Satan's vision for society, including these things which all cause increased similarity to Jesus:

• Obsession with the happiness of someone other than myself
• Positively influencing the world through how I raise my children

Eventually I knew that the motorcycle boy was surprised that I didn't know that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend.

I quickly began to see this as just a high school memory.

Key ideas:

• Don't treat uncertain information as very likely to be true (in this case, the girl having interest in me that I should act on).
• Someone being interested in you is not necessarily a special and important situation. (Seeing your ability to do something that makes someone feel good is different)
• Other people can overestimate your knowledge about someone.
• An uncomfortable situation is not a forbidden situation.
• Taking a break can be a good choice.
• Think of the past and the future so you can recognize self-improvement and not falsely see your current situation as being disconnected from goodness. To be clear, you shouldn't try too hard to make your specific actions connect with a future goal.
• Emotions don't accurately reveal something about you. Judge your actions and decisions using reason. Be skeptical of negative emotions.
• Modify the mental system that ambition is applied to, instead of reducing the level of ambition. Resting is an exception to this.
• Allow the present to be like a childhood memory.

[^1]: On this day, I said a joke hoping it would impress girl 2 (in the same restaurant near Disneyland in which I wrote this comment).

[^2]: On this day, in the shower, I thought about telling the McDonald's girl that I have a crush on her.

Edit: to clarify, my discomfort was about the situation I perceived myself to be facing, not about the fact that the girl had a boyfriend

Edit 2: this might have been the beginning of me sometimes having less social anxiety than average

Edit 3: see also https://lemmy.ca/post/24986940

Edit 4: Some clarification related to the sanity of this experience. The influence from Satan is something between normal everyday satanic influence and a stereotypical "demonic possession", and probably closer to the former. In Catholic high school, it was taught that Satan is an active deceptive enemy against our pursuit of happiness. Caring a lot about finding someone to marry is mostly just conformity with some adults' enthusiasm about marriage and parenthood, which is closely related the Catholic view, which can be summarized as thinking that vocations (marriage, priesthood, etc.) are super awesome and are kinda like the main quest (in reality, the main quest is pursuing union with God, and vocations are the main thing that help with that). "I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere" might be less weird than it seems because I've had sleep paralysis many times and "seeing static everywhere" is an amplification of visual snow which I always have. The exact way in which I wrote about this experience prioritized lesson sharing first and entertainment at my expense second. The importance of portraying myself as sane and making things properly understood by a different culture was underestimated.

("the McDonald's girl" = girl 3. That phrase was the motorcycle boy's idea. This story is not related to McDonald's or motorcycles.)

Starting in January 2024, she occasionally caught my eye when I was in the one class we were both in. I mostly ignored her.

On February 29, when I was sitting down in class and the McDonald's girl was walking in front of me and I probably looked at her for a moment, she appeared to pause and make eye contact with me, and I was very shocked. Later in the same class period, when she was sitting in front of me, she appeared to turn back and look at me. I felt like I knew that she almost certainly had some sort of interest in me, maybe a crush idk. I gradually started to think about how good her personality was (this was likely affected by a lot of bias) and have a crush on her. The beginning of the crush was between March 2[^1] and March 5[^2].

This is around the time when finding my future wife before graduation if she could be found was slowly becoming almost like a goal, instead of just a hypothetical possibility in the distant future. (Both of these mindsets are worse than the exploration goal.)

On March 2, me and most other seniors went on a field trip to Disneyland. Experiencing scary rides for fun might have influenced my mindset.

On March 3 and 4, in a group chat (including the motorcycle boy, but not the McDonald's girl), I sent:

• "Last Thursday in religion class, [the McDonald's girl] looked at me in an interesting way"
• "It seems to reveal interesting feelings"
• "Probably attraction, but could also be a feeling of impending doom" (2nd part is joke)

I did not ask "Does [the McDonald's girl] have a boyfriend?" I did not reach that level of fearless communication yet. Eventually you will see that asking this would have made a difference.

I considered going to the table with the McDonald's girl during lunch and asking to sit there. On March 6, while feeling uncertain that I would be able to do it and that we would have the same lunch period, I saw her but gave up and did not ask to sit there. On March 12 (the next day that we had the same lunch period), I cared more about having undelayed success in doing it, and while being completely calm, I did it, and I was welcomed to sit there. Praying for strength in a bathroom stall at the beginning of lunch might have had an effect. I did this 3 times in total. Also, the motorcycle boy (one of the people I previously sat with) told me in a text "they both asked me what I did to make you sit over there. They thought I pushed you away! 🤬"

On March 17, at night, I believed that I would probably ask about her looking at me and confess to her at lunch the next day. The next day, the feeling of certainty faded away, and I did not do it. But in the evening, I sent her the creative writing club project that I was working on, with "I'm trying to impress you" as the message. It took several minutes to have the courage to click the send button.

On March 19, when all students were walking from the church to the school, the motorcyle boy appeared and told me something like "Dullbananaaaaaaaaaas. So the McDonald's girl was telling me... in case you forgot... she wanted me to remind you... in case you forgot... that the McDonald's girl has a boyfriend. I know it hurts!" This meant I was finished with the McDonald's girl. I felt calm at first. Then I started having negative thoughts in less than an hour. The decision of whether or not to sit at her table the next day seemed more scary than it should have seemed. There was a little bit of perceived risk in both choices. Also, I vaguely remember fearing that I would be humiliated a little bit. I thought "maybe I was too ambitious" (this thought is a big no no), but then I had these positive thoughts:

• My mental model, with lasting regret and lack of freedom being a worse danger, is still correct.
• There is light at the end of the tunnel. This suffering is part of the path to an extremely beautiful situation that I'm looking for.
• This is better than the previous situations with other girls. This time I went so far and finished the situation in less than a month. I hit a new PR. (Very important)

I was slowly becoming nauseated. I constantly thought about the situation. That night, I felt so much shame, and multiple times in the same night I had sleep paralysis while seeing static everywhere. In the beginning, the positive thoughts didn't stop the discomfort, but they did prevent me from being owned by the discomfort or doubting myself.

That evening, in the shower, I realized that what I was experiencing was the growth of only one person, and that I could try to have a ripple effect. Later, this led to sharing of wisdom and encouragement, and eventually Project Pansystellar. This stuff might be described in another post.

The next day, at lunch, I did not have the strength to sit at the table with the McDonald's girl or at the table where I sat previously, so I sat far away by myself near a tree and facing a field of grass. In retrospect, this was the right choice. It was therapeutic. I had a huge need for rest.

I developed a mindset of fully allowing and embracing this level of discomfort in me, just like falling when learning how to walk, or like recovering after intense workout. On the next day (March 21), I changed my senior quote submission from "I accept control over Lemmy's code to sabotage Reddit, not Lemmy" to "Try, mess up, have nauseating embarrasment. Better than no ambition."

Before March 24, I had these thoughts:

• All I did wrong (not morally wrong) was I didn't ask if the girl had a boyfriend (as mentioned earlier), and I didn't recognize the lack of sufficient connection after 2 or 3 times of sitting at her table at lunch. The idea that I messed up more severely was an illusion.
• Reducing one's level of ambition is a poor substitute for tweaking the goal that is thought of. In other words, only change how the ambition is applied. (This turned out to be a important concept, and it's very fundamental to my design approach for the Pansystellar Architecture.) (In this situation, I decided to make my goal include finding a girl that I develop a deep enough connection with easily enough in the beginning. This did not fix everything, as you will see in a future post.)
• Physical attraction, either to or from me, should be mostly ignored. (This one is not very useful, and it's probably false. The underlying problems can be solved differently, partly using things from my other posts.)

Around a month later, I realized that my discomfort and doubt after finding out that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend was probably mostly an attack from Satan, and that a person like me having the persistence needed for the path to marriage and parenthood is probably scary to Satan because it's a path to things that strongly oppose Satan's vision for society, including these things which all cause increased similarity to Jesus:

• Obsession with the happiness of someone other than myself
• Positively influencing the world through how I raise my children

Eventually I knew that the motorcycle boy was surprised that I didn't know that the McDonald's girl had a boyfriend.

I quickly began to see this as just a high school memory.

Key ideas:

• Don't treat uncertain information as very likely to be true (in this case, the girl having interest in me that I should act on).
• Someone being interested in you is not necessarily a special and important situation. (Seeing your ability to do something that makes someone feel good is different)
• Other people can overestimate your knowledge about someone.
• An uncomfortable situation is not a forbidden situation.
• Taking a break can be a good choice.
• Think of the past and the future so you can recognize self-improvement and not falsely see your current situation as being disconnected from goodness. To be clear, you shouldn't try too hard to make your specific actions connect with a future goal.
• Emotions don't accurately reveal something about you. Judge your actions and decisions using reason. Be skeptical of negative emotions.
• Modify the mental system that ambition is applied to, instead of reducing the level of ambition. Resting is an exception to this.
• Allow the present to be like a childhood memory.

[^1]: On this day, I said a joke hoping it would impress girl 2 (in the same restaurant near Disneyland in which I wrote this comment).

[^2]: On this day, in the shower, I thought about telling the McDonald's girl that I have a crush on her.

Edit: to clarify, my discomfort was about the situation I perceived myself to be facing, not about the fact that the girl had a boyfriend

Edit 2: something very important I forgot to mention: my transition into having less social anxiety than average might have happened around the end of this story

Different things in your mind can care about different sets of things. An important example is your fear being disconnected from your inner state and your long term success. Harmony of these things is how to be free.

Bae: before anyone else

Baebos: before anyone else but our Savior

I should not have tried to directly resist feelings, but another thing I did which is good is lightly trying to make a tiny positive feeling become huge, which can do things like shifting focus and indirectly resisting exclusive attention. The only thing I can think of at the moment where I should advise resistance is if you feel negatively about someone being with someone else.

Proper use of control over feelings will be in the Pansystellar Architecture for sure.

Edit: also gotta stay away from lust

Taco Bell, a Debt Collector: Pay $4.99 to resolve your $109.00 balance. Call 911 or goto https://www.tacobell.com/food/burritos/burrito-supreme ToOptoutTxt STOP

I recently started a document called "what I like". It's mostly things from observations, imagination, and values.

Each section, and a small sample of the items for each one:

• Mandatory: wants to have children and raise them Catholic
• Likely necessary: can comfort our children, doesn't complain about people in a way that needs to not happen in my relationship
• Love languages: she doesn't rely too much on giving me gifts
• Traits or actions that have made me feel something or have interested me after I noticed them: confident passionate speaking in presentations and debates, shows laughter or excitement in response to something I do or make, often has big smile, silently waving to me, welcoming towards me, staying in pew to pray when others aren't, being curious about me
• Other signs of good match for me in particular (mostly imagination of what complementarity would look like): seeks my thoughts, explains things in my mind that I can't explain, inspires me to pursue something, our humor fits together and we enjoy each other's humor
• Things that should be acted on in a big and complementary way: imagination, curiosity, excellencism
• Things we should be able to enjoy together: creativity
• Misc.

Now I separately write about some people with a few other specific observations. For example, in the document about the girl I've likely been most obsessed with in terms of personality (I was prematurely committed to someone else and/or in denial until it was too late), I included how she laughed when I said this joke about her project "Pretty Places by _, more like Porta Potties by _" (honestly I included this one so she knows this is about her if she sees this post) and memories of her speaking with perfect confidence (that time in religion class when she said something about keeping legs closed might be my favorite). I could have avoided regret by quickly paying more attention to my vague feeling about her (partly with what this post is about) and trying more to have fun.

Thinking and writing about this stuff will probably help with having a more certain and accurately scaled perception, resisting the confirmation bias caused by the appeal of the idea that my search for someone good enough for me is easy or already finished.

To be clear, this is not the entire process of figuring out what to look for. These lists are mostly unfiltered, except I don't feel like writing about most of my physical attraction mostly because that would be boring. The whole thing should not be used as a checklist, and it should keep on evolving. It is an additional input to intuition.

My search for my future wife might benefit from also writing about platonic friends.

This kind of activity will likely be part of the Pansystellar Architecture.

I often felt attracted to her from September 2023 to March 2024. I had a crush on her at least 2 times. We sat at the same table in a class from January 24 to March 5.

On February 5, with a simple mindset against regret and a growing repulsion towards postponing brave actions, when she went to her desk, I noticed some strength and ability in me, I quickly took advantage of it, and I successfully said "hi, [girl 2]". In response, she said "hi". Then the perceived difficulty of doing this seemed a little funny to me. Earlier that day, during lunch, I went to confession for the first time in about 9 months, which was a somewhat nervewracking experience that might have given me strength.

I have a note that was last edited on February 13. It's mostly about when I wanted to read a short story I made to the people at my table in the class (just my crush and 3 other girls) but did not do it. Here's some of what I told myself in it (edited a lot):

• I didn't do it because I forgot how good and euphoric it would be for me.
• I did sabotage.
• I did pull out the story, so I'm halfway there. I will do the whole thing next time, including the second half which will be more peaceful than self-induced regret and stolen fun. (I actually did not do it)
• Isolating myself from those people is a bad action with bad consequences for me.
• I should see those people as friends.
• With repulsion, I can become unable to choose sabatoge.

On February 27, I had the idea of saying "[girl 2], I like your hair". I then considered the possibility of this becoming a reality. Considering this possibility required me to be a little crazy because I still had a lot of social anxiety. I decided that I wanted to do it the next day. The next day, I randomly woke up 60-90 minutes earlier than usual (after having a dream where I reunited with my rabbit who was dead in real life, which suggests that I had deep optimism in my mind) and had thoughts that helped me find strength, including but not limited to:

• This is exercise. Discomfort when doing this has the same meaning and acceptability as when weightlifting.
• God intends it. He's suspiciously filling my mind with preparation. (I'm not completely sure about this, but it's very likely)
• I have a history of overestimating regret and not actually feeling much of it after doing something, like the one time I said hi at the wrong moment and felt almost no regret. But I have kinda regretted not doing some things.
• I heard the compliment over and over again in my head, which is the only reason it sometimes sounds weird to me.
• Doing this is ordinary.

I made an effort to remember these things. I successfully did the thing. It probably got rid of at least half of my social anxiety. The girl was silent, then she whispered a bunch of things into another girl's ear. I really noticed the secrecy. She was likely talking about my interactions. I vaguely remember that I might have very faintly heard what I said, but it was almost silent. They laughed. I was a little entertained, not embarrassed. My biggest regret in this situation is not saying something about the whispering for fun.

There's a least one time where during first period, which was mostly just time available for doing things like homwork, I sat and did nothing, with the intention of conserving energy so I can be brave enough to do one of the interactions with this girl later in the day. I don't know how much difference it made. It might have worked through the placebo effect.

The firecracker in this meme reminds me of my interactions with this girl: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/s/0DvRrdJpxQ

Key ideas:

• Be very skeptical of (and hopefully identify) the thing in your head that tells you to wait, and think of waiting as a risky action.
• Be very skeptical of the division between fantasy and what you are capable of in real life.
• Be very skeptical of the feeling that a planned action is weird.
• Try to prevent yourself from forgetting at the last minute why you should not doubt your decision to do something.
• Regret of not doing something is the result of your own choice.
• Do not avoid discomfort. If it happens, it's a signal of growth, not danger.
• Action is usually less risky than lack of action.