a critical mindfuck seems to occur here:
"I just realized that I don't know if I will ever want it."
adding some sketching to get at the specific point of it:
"I organized my life with respect to the expectation that I *will eventually* want ████, and something just clicked, and I suddenly know for sure that I don't know for sure if I will ever want it."
this seems like the (or a) moment in which one realizes that time is less plane and more player
the *shape* of this recurs (is the white picket fence actually a memetically invasive species?), and I wonder if... hm.
the setup for this kind of shock seems to be catching sight of someone else's scaffolding and imitating it, creating a construction loop *alongside* the loop of one's own native self-development. the shock itself seems to occur when the self-loop starts making predictions with a shape that doesn't even diverge from the scaffolding but is straight up unrelated to the scaffolding.
*but* if you've been trying to see them as one structure, overlaid, I think there's still resource there. if the self-loop has returned enough times to start suggesting future-shape, the next step might be a "start removing everything that isn't an angel" kind of thing. your scaffolding was an imitation of something else, yeah, but it was *your* imitation and *your* construction. the elementary *parts* of the scaffolding all have you-shaped handles. you are absolutely not starting from scratch.
you know those 3D sculptures that only look coherent from a certain angle, and from any other angle it just seems like a collection of objects? I think I might be constructing an argument for that process in reverse - recognizing that the scaffolding you built only looks like something from a certain angle, recognizing that what you've *actually* assembled is more a collection of nutrients than a structure to live in.
the system remains productively incomplete throughout, but realizing that the incompleteness was in a different direction than you were building for... the recalibration grief can be stunning. I think that's half the reason I (Isaac) write about this stuff. discovering my homosexuality, discovering my autism, discovering my leadership...
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