Many of the difficulties we face are those of our own choosing. Today was a tough day for me in some ways, but the troubles I can think of were all of my own causing. Doing web tech work, it is no mystery today why I had to spend many struggling to make Internet technologies do stuff. Nobody forced me to choose staring at screens, shuffling symbols and dealing with complex abstractions was a path I chose to go down. And so, sometimes I must endure suffering that comes with that type of work—being humbled by not being able to solve some problem quickly, sluggishness of body from sitting for long periods of time, and a mind tired from focusing on details that will probably go out of fashion within the decade.

Negligence is also a source of troubles. Failure to properly maintain equipment can lead to dealing with the aftermath of equipment failure. Likewise failure to maintain good habits and routines will lead to slow decline.

Agency in Failure

Sometimes it is tempting to brag of agency in success—what role I had to play in something that turned out well. Maybe a more edifying direction to turn to is to see how I have had agency in all the troubles I bring on myself.

Lots of things we don't choose—e.g. which famliy we're born into, many aspects of our childhood/upbringing, and accidents of our personalities.

However, lots of things we do choose and with a little introspection it is not hard to see how we could have done better. In retrospect, probably most people would be delighted if they could have "magically" made it such that they studied such-and-such language, or maintained relationships with so-and-so, or practiced some skill. On a day to day basis, though, we neglect to do many things that we might wish we had done if we could get these things for "free".

Choosing to go to school will bring homework upon you (especially if you choose a demanding major). Likewise, getting oneself into social obligations might be costly in terms of you having "time to yourself" for silence, reading, writing, reflection, etc.

Especially for those that gain freedom to "make their own way" (e.g. by living on their own) the responsibility of freedom becomes heavier. While a grade school kid can legitimately say "the government forced me to go to school", the "college aged" will typically have a weaker case to make saying that they were "forced" into higher education or some other arrangement.

Insofar as we claim agency in our success, I'm thinking we should probably even more so claim agency in our failures. We play a huge part in being the authors of our troubles until we decide to turn away from being our own worst enemies.

Recognizing our agency in failure means also recognizing our agency to choose not to fail when similar trials come our way. Whereas one might have made bad choices in the past from failing to do research and being too passive, or conversely being overly confident and aggressive—there is a common denominator which is how we choose to live day by day.

Some ways in which I "shoot myself in the foot"

Probably one of the main ways I cause trouble for myself is by "spreading myself too thin"; that is, trying to do too many things and thus becoming a "jack of all trades, but master at none". This is evident in my language study; I've spent many hours studying a lot of languages, but am probably less useful for most practical language-related applications than someone bilingual in say... English and Czech.

A related issue is that I lack refinement in many areas. I can pull of a "good enough/functional" in many areas but then get distracted by other things and thus choose not to put in the time to "finish what I've started".

In some things, I think I work fairly hard, but in other ways, I am often relatively negligent. For instance, I'm only beginning to get involved in the arts of physical training but I've spent many years as a somewhat chunky nerd. Like many Americans, I am not too practiced in many forms of (rote) memorization. I'm relatively skilled at a handful of forms of "reading" (e.g. scripts of various languages, software documentation, music...) but am quite underdeveloped in recitation.

I think there are probably many more ways in which I undermine myself which I will explore in later posts. The things mentioned here are a recurring source of me choose failure, however, so I think it is worth putting in writing here.