the stories we tell ourselves

missing flights and being a *substack writer*

4pm on memorial day weekend and once again I find myself at the delta re-ticketing desk. This is not my first rodeo — which is to say I’ve missed the past 3 flights out of JFK and each time I refuse to learn my lesson. If I were to text any of my friends they’d say this is incredibly on brand — friday I was 25 minutes late to drinks at le dive, 2 hours late the next day to picnicking in McCarren park.

I’ve examined my horrific time management skills from every imaginable angle. Read self-help article about it, turned to ChatGPT for guidance. One of my favorite explanations is Tim Urban’s “Why I’m Always Late” which encapsulates any plan I’ve ever made to leave on time for something:

Step 1: make aspirational plan to be somewhere at X time

Step 2: procrastinate on leaving by continuing on current task

Step 3: completely blow past any chance of being on time

Step 4: panic

The number of dinners I’ve been late to, calls I’ve missed as a sleep deprived analyst, people I’ve pissed off because I’ve been late makes me want to throw up, but some habits are hard to break.

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The Delta agent books me on the 9pm flight — the last one out to Copenhagen for the day. It’s 5+ hours after my original departure time, so I have time to kill. In a manic frenzy, I migrate my blog to Substack, which if you’ve talked to me in the past few months, has been something I’ve been vehemently against. In the same way the world probably doesn’t need another average dude making a podcast (a joke!) the world probably doesn’t need another person that works in tech writing on Substack. There was something about Substack that felt less creative to me, and I was dead set on starting from a blank canvas to make *art*.

Said blank canvas required 3 months learning how to use a no-code platform, understanding the very basics of html and threading automations through Zapier before I even had a v1 blog that could be launched to the public. And even then I had bugs everywhere — I’d spend twice the time on little fixes that ended down rabbit holes and sinking $30 each month for a tool that I was ill equipped to use.

I complain fervently to my friend Sara-ling on a Sunday picnic in McCarren park on this grand dilemma: be creative on my own or chain myself down to a platform.

She’s a true Dane because she responds with exceeding pragmatism. A platform is just a platform. You can’t let the platform get in the way of what you’re creating. Otherwise you spend all your time working on details that are completely inane and irrelevant rather than focusing on the art. Another word for it: procrastination

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A few weeks back, I rush in (late) to cafe lyria to meet my friends drew and teddy. It’d been awhile since I’ve seen the two of them in the flesh. There was a time when we used to be neighbors in williamsburg, and we had this ritual where my best friend, lindsay and I would meet them at the australian cafe 2 minutes from our apartments on a sunday, to recount our nights at the mirage or elsewhere.

Today we’re talking about our jobs, teddy just started a new job and I never know what to say when people ask me how my job is. After working in banking for 4 years, my first instinct is to complain, but to be honest, I don’t have much to complain about because I genuinely love my job.

I do wish I studied cs in college, I find myself saying, finally. Being a business person at a tech firm feels so much like being a second class citizen. A software engineer at an investment bank. People only care about PMs because they do “technical work”

I’m always amazed when I hear men give career advice. They’re so blase about everything — titles don’t really mean anything, teddy says, it’s all fake anyway. If you want to be a PM, then just start talking to engineers and see what they want, talk to founders and come up with your own ideas. Once you build those relationships, something will stick, and then one day, you’re basically doing the job of a PM.

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At the beginning of this year I made a resolution to wake up at 6.30am everyday. I have never been a morning person, and waking up early just seemed like an aspirational thing that tech executives and clean aesthetic pilates girlies do.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the stories we continuously tell ourselves in our head. I am not a morning person because I hate getting up in the mornings. I’m always late because I’m a late person that doesn’t have their sh*t together. I can’t write on substack because I’m a lame tech person.

But apparently you can wake up one day and decide to take your life in a different direction. It took me six months (and 28 years!), but last week I woke up at 6.30 and went to the gym every day before work. I know that sounds corny and insignificant, but it made me realize that I spend so much time telling myself why I’m not ready or I can’t do something when in reality I am in control of how I want my identity to be formed.

This week, I read an advice column titled appropriately, “why am I so lazy”. The revelation heather havrilesky talks about is that the problem is not that we’re lazy, or perennially late, or procrastinate (it’s okay if we procrastinate if it’s a strategy that works for us). But the problem is when we get angry at ourselves for doing these things repeatedly as if we have no control over our own actions.

I know it sounds too flippant (and borderline cultish) to say that you can change your identity today if you wanted to, but to me it’s a good reminder that I have agency. The trick is that you have to want it. And you have to want it enough to put in the work (because it will be hard!) and want it enough to let it form your new identity. There comes this cognitive dissonance when you’re trying to leave on time while telling yourself that you're a person who’s always late. Maybe it’s part manifestation, but the adage holds true — our thoughts turn into actions turn into habits turn into identities. To quote atomic habits, it’s the subtle shift between, “no thanks I’m trying to quit smoking” and “no thanks I’m not a smoker”.

We live in these arbitrary titles that we put on ourselves most of the time without even realizing and then let these titles run our lives. In reality there’s no rule that says I can’t change what I want to be. A substack writer that’s still creative. A person who is on time. If it’s all fake anyway, then starting today, I am a morning person. And even though is 2am in the morning right now as procrastinate sleep to write this post, tomorrow I am someone who doesn’t miss flights.