Gilded age mindset

Texts to my friend, S

Thanks for sending this.

One of my 5 year plan thoughts is I might want to be operating at this level of problem solving

Other visions** are compelling as well: isolated inward facing curiosity driven scientist, Miyazaki-focus-level art creation eg. animation or movie music, extremely present and relationship focused life eg. Tusedays with Morrie

But this type of highest level, monopolistic, expansionist, visionary entrepreneur class team builder chasing desires from the future consistently comes back to me as bad ass

I think the distinction might be that this class of person treats their identity as the center of the skill tree, and not any one skill or path with the sole purpose of achieving their goals. The answer to “what you want to do in 5 years” is just “whatever it takes to achieve my vision of the world in 5 years”.

Like there is really a most epic Polytopia monopoly catan stratego game happening rn, and it seems like the only requirement to be apart of it is that you think you can, and there’s sm so emboldening about reading these humans operating on such a grand level with human words and human thoughts

Part of me never wants to stop believing in possibilities/reality, and I part of me knows that when I do that’s when I die, and it seems these guys do nothing but chase possibilities/reality

When I get back to ucla that’s the number one thing I want to run back—choosing an ambitious idea, building a team, and trying to make shit happen

Some different ambitions I’ve been gathering so far:

Studio ghibli orchestra event, real steel level combat robotics league (teleoperated boxers), Tokyo drift style mid night go kart mafia, space shot (mini payload to space), direct an animation/movie,  live dating/new ppl events (I think I talked to you abt this before), etc.

Other visions**: hiking/piloting around the world, learning to fly, National Geographic/red bull type photography, fuschia Dunlop-esque culinary history exploration

I think, again, that the key difference here is that these visions are primarily valuable in and of themselves, and not for any other purpose. I think that these general domains hold potential to be combined with this other entrepreneurial class, eg. leading a team to build an animation, but they lose that defining focus required for excellent performance. Also, I might just do these things anyways (necessarily at mid performance) for fun.

I experienced this class of thinking for the first time in my life with trying to build that medical robotics thing, and it’s addictive af. Upon reflection, definitely when I felt most alive last year. Absolutely fucking hilarious how hard we failed but still so fun. Also made me pay way more attention in the rocket club and engineering clubs to how teams function and get stuff done at the system level, because this is actually something you have to think about when you’re leading a team   

To Substack ppl: yes this type of person exists—if you don’t think it’s possible atm u didn’t meet the requirement—that’s totally fine