Ok I have figured it out while watching Amelie

There are paradigms of living

People feel the same things, but they choose to ignore or focus on different things — and it makes sense

“Focus on achievements and self-1 actions” is a paradigm

Paradigms are hard to shake off because *how will you live your life once your paradigm is gone*

It’s a giant, gaping uncertainty

No wonder I don’t want to shake anything off (even tho I can when switching to Artemis, for instance)

“You don’t need productivity” is said by people who figured out how to exist, literally exist, without productivity as the framework

Shouting it at everybody else doesn’t help

What will Artemis do tomorrow? She doesn’t know

What will she do next week? She doesn’t know

She decides how her life will be based on how she feels, not what she wants

But we still enjoy similar things, and we actually *both* base things on how we feel? Maybe? Just with different things not being allowed to “count”

There is another interpretation possible: "some people are more repressed and some people are less repressed"

But the interpretation from this thread has an implication that everybody is repressed, just differently

Ie. repressing things in order to focus on other things

So Artemis doesn’t repress positive emotions, but she definitely represses things like “where is my life going”

Still somewhat aware of them, but ignoring them because they are not-her

If she was the only thing that existed, she’d probably be much more worried about repressing that, but she knows I’ll deal with “where is my life going” (maybe)

There was a tweet by somebody else about how meditation is about repressing your mind’s natural desire to wander and how maybe this repression is not a good thing

Or something like that

Anyway, the point is that maybe “where is my life going” is a normal thing

Maybe if you don’t feel it, that’s because you’ve repressed it

From this point of view, good form = being able to hold all those things in your head (“what simple pleasures I like?”, “where is my life going?”, etc) and use them as tools

It’s possible to care about achievements without using achievements to guide every aspect of your life and thus repress other things

It’s possible to care about happiness without going “will I do this? Does it make me happy? No? Then I won’t”

Using N competing principles is better than using one

And using zero principles is worse than using one, but, granted, it can feel freer

This is the funny realization: “there is space for many competing principles in your life”

And you can advance all of them

Again, don’t remember where I saw this quote, but

“The real work-life balance is not 50% work 50% life, but 100% work 100% life”

I’ve been pretending that the choices are exclusive

“I could become a musician but then I won’t be a manager anymore”

It’s not impossible to be good at both, but it’s excluded anyway somehow