A meandering series of vignettes.

I have a sense that I've halfway finished a journey. I expect this essay to be most useful to people similarly-shaped-to-me, who are also undergoing that journey and could use some reassurance that there's an actual destination worth striving for.

Gratitude
Tortoise Skills
Bayesian Wizardry
Noticing Confusion
The World is Literally on Fire...
...also Metaphorically on Fire
Burning Out
Sunset at Noon

Epistemic Status starts out "true story", and gets more (but not excessively) speculative with each section.

i. Gratitude

"Rationalists obviously don't *actually* take ideas seriously. Like, take the Gratitude Journal. This is the one peer-reviewed intervention that *actually increases your subjective well being*, and costs barely anything. And no one I know has even seriously tried it. Do literally *none* of these people care about their own happiness?"

"Huh. Do *you* keep a gratitude journal?"

"Lol. No, obviously."

- Some Guy at the Effective Altruism Summit of 2012

Upon hearing the above, I decided to try gratitude journaling. It took me a couple years and a few approaches to get it working.

First, I tried keeping a straightforward journal, but it felt effortful and dumb.
I tried a thing where I wrote a poem about the things I was grateful for, but my mind kept going into "constructing a poem" mode instead of "experience nice things mindfully" mode.
I tried just being mindful without writing anything down. But I'd forget.
I tried writing gratitude letters to people, but it only occasionally felt right to do so. (This came after someone actually wrote me a handwritten gratitude letter, which felt amazing, but it felt a bit forced when I tried it myself.)
I tried doing gratitude before I ate meals, but I ate "real" meals inconsistently so it didn't take. (Upon reflection, maybe I should have fixed the "not eating real meals" thing?)

But then I stumbled upon something that worked. It was a social habit, which I worry is a bit fragile. I did it together with my girlfriend each night. On nights when one of us travelled, I'd often forget.

But this is the thing that worked. Each night, we share our Grumps and Gratitudes.

Grumps and Gratitudes goes like this:

We share anything we're annoyed or upset about. (We call this The Grump. Our rule is to not go *searching* for the Grump, simply to let it out if it's festering so that when we get to the Gratitude we ac

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