15 · The Last Micrometer

These days I think I am converging on the darkest thoughts. I start to realise why people break — they crack under this pressure and pain. It's psychotic what some people can bear, and I don't know how long I can stay in this storm. I don't know why God gives unbearable pressure to people. Some days it feels like I am not destined for greatness — that this is just suffering with no progress.

I think you only get the rewards — the revelations that reduce the suffering — by going through it and living through it. One revelation I'm getting these days: maybe the voice saying "I am suffering, this is killing me, this is torture" is just a voice of the flesh, and "I" am simply the one auditing that voice. There is no way the people I look up to have gone through nothing like this. If they haven't, something is wrong with the world; and if they have, then this suffering has precedent, and I am not uniquely cursed.

Why do I feel like I've aged ten years in the past two? I feel mid-thirties without having achieved anything, and the pressure between my ears is crushing. Is this what Satan attacking feels like? God. God is good.

My mental health was: bro, God is full of surprises — you thought last year was horrible, this year is a misery. Years keep going by and your life keeps falling apart. Just do something, please. Keep going forward. Why is my flesh breaking apart? It's already the 11th. You are a sixth into the war. Jamie, you are going to Cambridge. You are winning that IMC. You are winning that Putnam. You are building that quant portfolio. Don't break. Put one foot in front of the other. You can do this. Don't break under pressure.

I have never gotten any benefit from prioritising my mental health during radical quantum growth. I have no understanding of why, but in these situations it feels stupid to even weigh that variable. Every legend you look up to was faced with this same constant manifestation of stress — something always going wrong, pain, suffering, "why is this happening to me." They just have a higher threshold before the thought creeps in. And that threshold is an attribute — which means it is a skill, internal, trainable through constant exposure. You can improve it. You can bear this cross. YOU ARE GREATER THAN YOUR PROBLEMS. Don't mistake stress and detours for curses. They are blessings that negate the flesh and awaken the spirit.

There are two ways to end this crazy suffering. One: give up on your dreams, accept playing small, live a small life. Two: give up your sanity — give it up to Christ — do everything, force it into existence, make it happen through more and more failure, accepting that the entry ticket to the game is stress, failure, uncertainty, doubt, pain, force, rage. And just make it happen. But I can't guarantee the vicissitudes — the crumbling of your sanity, your soul, and your relationships with the people around you.

Why is it that some people seem to surf through reality while others suffer and toil away? Why do people say they want greatness but don't work for it, while some people make the correct decisions and those who don't care about money make the most? People who surf believe they earned it. People who toil believe they deserve it. Neither is fully true. But both feel true. Why do people with great lives seem to meet less resistance, while I force myself through the work that must be done and get nowhere? I need a W. Something has to break this continuous loop of failure after failure. Nothing in my life is going right in this phase — and still, the only way out is through.