Georeactor Blog

Writing some jumbled thoughts now instead of coding or continuing reading my book (about halfway through a book about the Soviet version of the Manhattan Project).
Ever since leaving the Asia Foundation, my job searches have been long, meandering…

• The first time I did some contracts, a short stint at a YC startup that briefly forgot my application, and met my hiring manager after a Meetup talk.
• The second time I had scheduled an onsite interview at Google (even had a post-final, tiebreaker interview the day I arrived in the Faroe Islands). I can remember their question, and one from another startup, and meeting a quantum startup in Austin (was it an interview?). Weeks later, on the way back from the Singapore Zoo, I read a bit of a Supreme Court decision and sent an application to the redistricting program, where I only got in because we'd collaborated on a summer program. Crazy to think I still do redistricting contract work.
• The third time is less definable because I could do contracts and apply to stuff more openly. Also there was covid, which made everything so strange and dire. There were companies which went up to one last call which never got scheduled, or everyone sounded positive, and some of these are still cringey for me to remember, 'cause sometimes I think I figured out what was wrong, but maybe I don't know. Then suddenly two companies sent me offers while I was in Ketchikan. Market forces, interview experience, or me absolutely losing my creative and personal light? Who knows.
  When I reconnected with a friend who hadn't talked to me in 2020–2022, it was kind of impossible to discuss the future because they had no idea how lost I felt through this process.
• This fourth time again started out with travel, big plans, and a final interview which fell through. I knew from the previous job search that this was going to be obnoxious and possibly take a year, but that fear didn't counteract the wanderlust, work issues, timing, etc. I thought that a couple of years on an ML product team would've taught me something or upped my rep. The big plans quickly turned from 'put Chicago-based and remote ML jobs first' to 'hey these guys have an email, write something direct' to 'I don't know what anyone wants to hear'.
  The apartment situation makes it complicated, but bigger than that, I don't feel like I get another chance at this, like the next job should be at least five years while I save up some $ and set myself up to DIY from then on.

Anyway the rest of this post is a retro-journal about the side quest last September when I went to Jamaica.
This was something I was already warming up to - months earlier, I was getting ads for supervised k therapy on Instagram and got my family's opinions. Then the Eye Crisis convinced me to find the right program out of several in the Caribbean [example: there are longer-term yoga and fungi programs in Guatemala]. In the moment that I was in the program, I thought that blogging about it was kind of silly / egocentric, so I didn't. There were times when I would be thinking too much about how I can describe it (like the Instagram traveler stereotype). Unlike when I am fully conscious and shrug this meta-thought away, this went recursive for levels and levels until I hit a stack limit.
I start with that example because OK, I didn't speak to machine elves or merge with a tree, like in a cartoon. It was more this type of "huh am I thinking this" experience.
The day before, the facilitator welcomed me to her vegan home. We had a video call before, so the night of we went through the plan and issues in a talk therapy format. That morning she gave me some chocolates and we talked a bit about breathing. Then she said "I think it's time for you to lie down". She was very right. I had my eyemask and headphones.

For me the stages could be categorized like the ending of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Colors, snapshots of life, star-baby.
The first stage had some color. I had no idea how much time passed so I raised the eye mask, but the facilitator said it was just starting.

• Vague thoughts about colors and patterns like I was 'supposed to' see
• The fan or other elements in the room made a repetitive sound, this became sort of a beat, and if I accepted that, there were some color patterns. I became convinced faint synesthesia is how thought is organized all of the time 'deep down'
  The main color pattern here reminded me of a blue-green-purple patterned pillowcase which we had during childhood. I felt 'let in' on this being inspired by psychedelics.
• I was near a wall and touching that surface with my finger made me feel a bit more grounded / falling asleep at my childhood home.
• There were other sensory snapshots from when I was a little kid - locations, textures, and sounds -  to the point I decided that I was cycling through all of my neurons. There are two libraries which we visited a lot as kids, which I remember vividly. 'Libraries' is one of the few things that I wrote down in my journal. I had the concept of a library poster with all the categories bursting out of a book, again I felt 'let in' on reading posters being inspired by psychedelics (note: sounds more like mental mapping and Dewey Decimal System).
• Cycling through neurons was a bit scary. There was one part where I was breathing weirdly. Then I was fine and could drink water, walk to the bathroom, etc. when I needed to. I remembered some warning about looking in the mirror but I was alright. Before you do the program, you'll see advice online that you will fear that you'll be stuck like this. If I felt weird, I would be intentional about calming down.

I already mentioned some childhood senses, but I want to sound more organized so let's say that there's a second stage with memory and experiences:

• When I visited a little island on Hong Kong, there was an awkward and uncomfortable moment where someone (my host's ex-boyfriend?) was waiting outside the door and asked to come in. I let them but kept an eye on them to indicate we'd be leaving. Actually I handled the situation well?
• I had coworkers in OLPC and in the museum who had a few things in common (vegetarian, taught in Thailand, similar vibe) and even at the time I wondered if I was mentally blending them as one person. Then I remembered that the OLPC colleague had visited us at the museum and we'd hung out (note: confirmed later!) much more recently than I had remembered before.
• There was a thunderstorm which I believe was real, but I had to ask about it because I was connecting with other times I've been home feeling sleepy and staring into space. I thought about Henry Sugar looking into the candle. Was I accidentally meditating when I was a kid?
• I remembered smaller things and places, to the point I wrote something down about how AI can't possibly touch the human mind.

The facilitator would bring up issues from our talk therapy session. But I wasn't worried about family or relationship stuff. It was a relief to know that wasn't top of my wandering mind. But it was difficult to speak a whole sentence, wheezing by the time I could get out "there was a strange experience…".
Now star-baby stuff.

• I took off the eyemask and sat up for a bit, though the facilitator suggested I spend more time. I made a note to rewatch Undone.
  I didn't feel good about myself for a lot of reasons.
• Real life became enveloped in the 'dream logic' you get when coming out of a deep sleep. Had I really planned out a special build-up trip from Boston to New York to Philadelphia to Jamaica? I'd visited Haiti a few times, but here I could pop out of the airport and walk up to this lady from the internet. Had I really eaten all her chocolates? WTF was I thinking just snapping those up. Can I come out of this?
• When I stayed at that Hong Kong Airbnb, I was on a little island with quiet forests and hills and no cars. Everyone knows Hong Kong is a big city. Was that really possible? How did I do that?
• There are a few days in my life which could be described as 'unexplained', and I don't want to ramble about that stuff. But when I revisited these memories I was shocked. The coincidences stretched into other dimensions. Example: I hid that I missed a flight to a conference, and my first time in that city as a kid my eyes stopped working for a minute somehow, and my parents were arguing, and now THIS eye thing, so this is all embedded childhood trauma or an echo, how the fuck…
• Trying to link these goes against the whole UNIVERSE and I won't give up on basic reality and logic and causality, but what is going on there?

Anyway, the fog cleared. I let my family know I was OK. For a few more hours it was difficult to read/skim text on my phone. I was worried about checking the news in case something traumatic had happened. There's actually some PTSD research ongoing with people at the trance festival on October 7th and what psychedelics they were taking before/during/after the event.

The facilitator said that there would be neuroplasticity afterward. I didn't have so much to say or commit to in the integration talk. I asked about people scheduling annual trips, microdosing, strange side effects, afterlife stuff. My Uber driver said it sounded scary. When I got home, the funniest change was I felt a little queasy in the produce section of the grocery store.

Later I felt like maybe I had missed out on the music and nature experiences which some people have. Online you will see reviews that this was as significant as the birth of a child, or that they connected to some superhuman universal peace? Even from a therapy perspective maybe I did it wrong by not talking much. I don't want to be too hard about myself, but I can't really tell someone that this was a gamechanger. I have some weird preconceptions about this whole health thing though.
I haven't kept up in writing fiction, but I would like to incorporate this kind of therapy into a sci-fi story. Suppose years into WW3 you could pass a message back to yourself in a hippie therapy circle and everyone else around you is like "I love leaves".
Related, there is an Aubrey Plaza psychedelic future self movie coming out this month, My Old Ass.