Hey AR,

Too bad about the flat situation.

Now that I am in S’s position, I realised that most people don’t make decisions this quickly. They don’t know what they want and then chicken out at when a decision of consequence has to be made

Too things to note, first I didn’t get the homophone nor the entendre.

Second, yes, people are poor decision makers. I am of the belief that it all stems from greed – “What if there is something better out there? I feel so much better if I acquire the better thing!”. This is such a decpetive kind of greed, by the time you notice it, you are in too deep.

There is nothing wrong with this kind of greed, everyone always deserves better. But I do feel like this greed must be better sculpted. Greed only works, when there is vision. The vision should be something that leads you to a possible equillibrium state, where greed is not the default behaviour.

Well, this letter was not even going to be about greed. I am not going to discuss this further (here at least). This is actually about something I had internalized years ago, but I have genuinely felt it over the last months, and even as recently as weeks in a super strong way.

Save for chemical imbalances, it’s impossible to excessively happy for extended durations. Conversely, it’s impossible to be sad for extended durations. The regression to the mean effect on emotion is incredibly strong. I don’t think your flaky potential tenants thought about this, when they were waying their options (esp for those which your flat met all their criteria).

You know, a couple of months ago, I won 25k through a pitch contest. Felt happy for maybe 10 hours. We got a giant cheque we could take home. Now I treat that giant cheque like a society invalid. It’s just laying on the office floor, pretending to not exist.

I hired an amazing intern recently, who is clearly overqualified. Felt happy for a few hours. Don’t feel much about it now.

We closed our first full enterprise customer. They promised to pay $150k over three years. Felt good for a solid 3-4 hours. This happened a couple of days ago. I feel nothing now.

My birthday, I can’t even remember it. Except the vangi bath. That went hard.

My point being, all of these things were fun, but became boring fast. There was a temporal gap between the two feelings though. Now, when I am think something will be fun, I just remember how it will be boring too. Fun, but boring.

Now, one might think that this is a sad chain of thought. Well, in reality, it is quite the opposite. And I know I am preaching to the choir here, but just make boring fun. Too bad you wrote that essay last week already. So I used this opportunity to weave recent autobiographical events, because this is afterall a correspondence, not an essay.

So, when you come here, I have some solid (fun) plans with you:

1. We go to a broadway show. I want to see Hamilton, I am a big fan (I know the words). You can go to some other ones too – I will show you hacks to get cheaper tickets (ie., the lottery)
2. We hit my favorite dive bars. Dive bars are extremely nyc, and are oozing character.
3. We eat ethiopian food. My top 5 cuisines.
4. We eat food. NYC food is quite incredible, mostly as a function of it’s diversity.
5. Frisbee in central park. I have become an ultimate frisbee fan. I will call the crew.
6. Off key karaoke – one of my all time favorite group activites. It’s karaoke, where you slam some Sake and compensate for skill with amplitude.
7. Make some art. Films, writings, anything. This is the city of art.

Good that you are here for a while, this list continues to grow.

Have fun,
A