Inkhaven, 25 days in, 5 days remaining

How did it go? What do I still want to do?

There’s only five days of Inkhaven left. It’s time to review how it went, and figure out what are the last things I want to do in the few days remaining.

Did I get better at writing?

In Interlude: soul searching at inkhaven, I wrote down some of my writing goals. How did I do?

Which Inkhaven outcome would make me give myself an A grade?

• Writing down the ~5 posts about French AI policy I came here to write.

I only wrote France is Ready to Stand Alone. I have lots of drafts for the rest of the series, though, but they would require me to do a lot more research. I’m rationalizing that I’ll have better access to info necessary to write the next posts once I’m back in France, and also more motivation due to being in the French AI Policy environment again. I’d like to publish one more before the end, though.

Although, there are other posts I wanted to write before the end that I did get out, like an intro to Signals of Competence! So overall happy with the “important posts” output.

• Getting to the point where I can write down in one hour a good 500-word essay about something in the world I care about, given a preexisting idea. Not just unedited ramblings like this.

Yeah, this happened. Sometimes it takes more than one hour, but I did make posts I’m proud of in an hour.

• In a more general sense, having “writing an essay about it” in my daily toolkit. Having enough mastery that I’m comfortable using this tool over and over.

I have mixed success in this. I got much better at identifying things I’d like to write about, for sure. The remaining issue is that the posts I really want to write are the ones I care about doing right, so those are the ones I end up procrastinating on and write easy things instead.

• More specifically, getting my first pass generator good enough to have prose I’m satisfied with for most purpose. That would greatly reduce the cost of writing.

This definitely happened. My one-shot prose is much better. A big part of it is using The Most Dangerous Writing App so much. I wrote at least 10000 words with it, and it forced me to get good writing out without editing.

Did I make progress on the big questions of my life?

Actually much more than I expected. I got more clarity on how to find the relationships I want, whether to move to the Bay or stay in Paris, and whether working in AI Policy in France is the most impactful thing I could do.

However, most of the progress might come from having developed the skill of articulating my thoughts. I already knew that writing about an issue I’m thinking about helps with resolving it, but I discovered that reorganizing my ramblings to make them understandable to someone else is actually the process that makes me figure out the actual shape of the problem. So, writing blog posts > unedited ramblings to figure out what I want to do.

Did I make friends?

I also came to Inkhaven to meet people and make friends that I’d want to keep hanging out with and talking about writing and more over the Internet.

Breakdown of my relation to every resident

Residents I became friends with and intend to keep in touch with:

• A.G.G. Liu

• Claire Wang

• Jenn

• Vaniver (coach)

Residents who were already my friends and I was glad to see them again:

• Camille Berger

• Croissanthology

• Linch Zhang

• Mikhail Samin

• Skyler

Residents who became “warm acquaintances”. I like hanging out with them, but we did not yet connect on a deep level. It feels like we’re on our way to friendship though.

• Adrià Garriga Alonso

• Eneasz Brodski

• Justin Miller

• Margarita Lovelace

• Daniel Reeves

• Georgia (coach)

• Valentino from SMTM (visitor)

Residents I would have like to spend more time with and become their friend:

• Abram Demski

• Ben Goldhaber

• Daniel Paleka

• Lydia Nottingham

• Mahmoud Ghanem

• Markus Strasser

• Michael Dayah

• Ozy Brennan

• Raye

• Sasha Putilin

• Sean Carter

• Justis (coach)

Other residents I feel like I “get”. I’ve interacted multiple time with them.

• Amanda Luce

• Justin Kuiper

• Rob Miles

• Vishal Prasad

• William Friedman

• Aaron (coach)

And finally, the residents I barely talked to. For some, I don’t even know what they look like.

1. Alex Altair

2. Angadh Nanjangud

3. Ben Steinhorn

4. David Gros

5. Harri Besceli

6. Hauke Hillebrandt

7. Human Invariant

8. Michael Dickens

9. Nikola Jurkovic

10. Simon Lermen

11. Tomás Bjartur

12. Tsvi Benson-Tilsen

13. Vasco Queirós

I’m surprised I did not end up interacting with a third of the residents. If you’re one of those, come talk to me! I want to know you!

Did cool stuff happen?

Yeah!

I paid Alexander Wales $6 for a 6-words story about Inkhaven:

Pens speed up as midnight approaches.

I got tumbled by giant waves at Bodega Bay.

I went to an authentic relating game that generated so much drama.

I played Crawl with friends on the giant screen in the courtyard.

I wrote an eschatological article for the LOOP.

I hiked barefoot in the forest.

And much more!

(To my friends in Paris: Beware! An Inkhaven memories night is coming. Prepare for four hours of me excitedly talking about the things I did.)

So, what do I want to do for those five remaining days?

If I sit silently and listen, what does my heart cry out for?

I want to actually try to become friend with Lydia

I want to actually try to make another French AI Policy post

I want to have friends who will continue writing with me after the program ends

I want to share my gratitude with those who made my Inkhaven so great

I want to publish my “Contra³ Rich Friend, Poor Friend” post, and discuss it with Jenn