Clarity and Purpose

Finding my way in the dark

Blindfolded in the dark

I struggle with where to go next.

On a short-term, tactical level, that’s never a problem. I am decisive and pragmatic and tactically sound — in the short term. Next three steps in a board game? Priorities for the next two weeks of sprint? How to best allocate 4 days before a deadline? Done.

At low depths, with limited options and no option to exhaustively search through every option, my decision tree heuristic works fantastically well and is usually close enough to perfect.

(Learning & studying algorithms makes me think like an algorithm. I may as well be a fine-tuned Large Language Model).

But for the bigger issues, the crucial life decisions, the goals and directions in life, I have no idea at all. Often times it feels like I’m finding my way blindfolded in the dark, carrying a lantern with no candle.

Actually, it gets worse than that — at least blindly stumbling would leave me in the hands of capricious fate, and it’s outside my control. I’m searching with a map copied from somebody else. I compare a lot, I am driven by envy, and I am trying to follow the path of someone who started somewhere different, values things differently, and wants to go somewhere else.

But just because I see them in a happier place, all I can think is:

Do I want it for myself? Is it really where I would enjoy? What do I really want? Perhaps it’s true that I’ve lived so long in a dark place, darkened by my own self, that anywhere else looks brighter and happier in comparison.

Comparison is the thief of joy indeed, and it has also stolen the light from my eyes; metaphorically, in terms of being able to see the light (ha) and positivity in my life, and metaphysically, in terms of blinding me to the way forward.

Fork Me

Two roads diverged in a wood, the path ahead forked; and I was struck by indecision, unable to decide where to go.

I underplay and downplay myself a lot. It’s as if I am asserting that my feelings are important, my value is at a discount, I can leave money on the table. It stems from a place of viewing and treating myself badly.

I disregard my feelings, I put myself down, I accept bad situations. I treat myself badly because I used to, and that’s what I’m familiar with: the devil you know. Even now, even though I had a touch of optimism and gained some positivity, I can still feel the old familiar patterns and habits re-asserting themselves.

I desire happiness too, but maybe somewhere along the way I decided I didn’t deserve it.

So when it comes to looking ahead, my pathfinding skills are nil. I choose the wrong things; I look for security and safety over taking risks, I accept lower pay and rewards just because they’re higher than what I had before, and I settle and accept something that’s just-good-enough, not great, not perfect for me.

Epsilon Greedy

I don’t have a good memory. That’s not actually true, I have an excellent memory for horrible, negative, bad memories and mistakes I’ve made and regrets that I have and carry around to this day.

What I don’t have is any space left over in my memory. I forget things a lot, I can’t keep too much in my brain, and everything gets dumped and flushed regularly so I can use whatever’s left of my mind. I forget a lot of things and so I can’t remember a lot of things and I can barely remember what all the useful smart algorithms are unless I study.

One algorithm I can remember at least, is Epsilon-Greedy. Greedy means at any point, you make the decision that has the apparent best value at the current state: locally-optimal, tactically best. Epsilon-Greedy is a variation where a proportion of the time, you explore; you try something suboptimal so that you have a chance to find something even better.

It’s far from the best algorithm — it’s short-sighted and greedy and according to Wikipedia sometimes produces the worst possible solution. The exploration saves it and helps it to discover new avenues, but also sometimes it’s close enough to approximate the best solution, and it can be good enough, on a long enough timescale.

Maybe that’s all I need for now. Not the highest peak, but good enough is good enough.

1 comment

  1. Hello. I still like to read your blog. This reminds me to reflect on my own life too. I’m rooting for you! I hope you see your own value and find contentment. Have a good week.

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