#28: Main Character Energy, and having your cake and eating it
Third Culture Kids lack Main Character Energy. In my case, I think I know why.
Having your cake and eating it
Ever since I started work I’ve struggled with consistency of effort and attitude. Some weeks I find it easy to work hard, others, I struggle to get any work done at all.
My old boss said the contrast was dramatic: “some weeks you were on fire, on others it seemed you were holding yourself back”.
“Why am I like this?” I’ve continually wondered.
Today, I think I know why.
Hard work leads to results. Results lead to praise. Great results lead to conversations with senior people about your “founder potential”. How, if you only put in a bit more effort, you too could accomplish “Great Things”.
It occurred to me today that I might do just enough work to be considered to have “Great Founder potential”, and no more. I want to be thought of as smart, agentic, potentially successful, without having to go through all the glass-chewing to actually Make It So.
I want to have my cake and eat it too.
There is a part of me that wants to go “all-in” on work. This child-like part of me is obsessive and intense and hyper-focused.
It also wasn’t particularly rewarded in childhood. My parents teased me mercilessly when I would bring them some obsession or other. They believed there was no one worse than the boor who only talks about his business or projects for the entire evening. Above all, they told me, they wanted to avoid their son “being boring”. It would make it hard for him to make friends.
There’s another part of me that is afraid, if I go “all-in” on work, that I’ll like it too much.
I’ve been an outsider my whole life. I’m most comfortable occupying the centre of attention as “the new kid”. I’m uncomfortable holding the spotlight for anything else. I’m afraid of getting attention for being “known” for something, of being visibly one-dimensional, of only having One Thing. In short, I’m afraid of “being boring”—exactly what my parents worried about.
The dilettantism of my youth is a defence mechanism that protects me from this fear. If I know something about everything I can ask good questions of anyone about anything. This means—to them—I’ll never be boring. And it means—as a perennial outsider—I can quickly build rapport with new people.
The cost of dilettantism, though, is never having a Thing. Never getting serious about something. Never going “all-in”.
The point of life is not to be something to anyone. It’s to build things with people you love and admire, that help others, and make the future better. It’s impossible to do this as a dilettante. You really do have to choose. Choosing dilettantism is choosing irrelevance. The curse of optionality is that you never get anything done worth doing.
On wanting and Main Character Energy
I’m often told by silicon valley types that I should be more ambitious. But I don’t think a lack of ambition is my problem. My problem is that I rarely want anything at all.
How does one Get Good at wanting? And why am I bad it?
I’ll answer the latter question first, before returning to the former.
I think my lack of wanting is partly due to the way I grew up: as a Third Culture Kid, being dragged from country to country every 2-3 years.
As a New Kid, you’re uprooted from your friends, school, and routines. You lose your support group in the old place. so you either risk being alone or spend all your energy building a new support group.
After spending 2 days sitting alone on the Friendship Bench, as a six year old at school in Singapore, I realised that friends don’t just come to you. You have to go out and befriend them. I spent most of my childhood making friends in new places, and adopting their wants in order to befriend them faster.
I’m good at wanting what other people want and charming my way in.
But I’m bad at investing in communities and building long-term relationships with people. I never got to practice that step; I had to move countries instead. I’ve been a peripheral figure in several communities around the world, but a Main Character in none of them.
What is a Main Character? And what does Main Character Energy have to do with wanting?
I think a Main Character is someone who has a sense of purpose within a given community, someone who knows where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and is proud to share it.
In other words, a Main Character knows what they want, and why.
I think the only time I’ve built Main Character Energy was at university, a place where I chose to go, a degree I was excited to study, and where everyone I met was new at exactly the same time as I was.
My lack of main character energy manifested in an interesting way. Every time I moved to a new place—high school in Switzerland, ski season in France, exchange in Montreal—for the first few months, I was terribly unsuccessful romantically.
Until I had a support group, I never felt OK. And I didn’t have the ability to want anything, other than companionship. I felt, and was, unattractive.
Because I’ve never had a stable home, I don’t really know where I come from. And because my childhood moves happened to me suddenly, as a kid, I never got the chance to define where I’m going. As an adult, I’ve retained that childhood pattern. I’m at home living in the lurch, never really choosing where I’m going and why I’m there.
Since I was dragged to so many new homes as a kid, my default mode when moving to a new place is a kind of bumbling purposelessness. Like a child waking up from an extended dream, and foggily going into the world.
I couldn’t listen to my inner wants, because I had to do what I needed to do to survive: make friends, develop routines, and get on with life.
As soon as I felt stable in a friend-group, my romantic prospects would shift—often dramatically. I began to be able to want things other than companionship. I started developing Main Character Energy, becoming attractive in the process.
Growing up, I accumulated my wants and identity characteristics from the people I met—either in alignment with them, or in opposition. Kids in Minnesota have a funny midwestern accent and I have a funny British one! Kids in Greensboro play soccer and I like that too? There was mimesis or anti-mimesis, but never introspection.
The few activities I’ve enjoyed my entire life: reading, writing, going for walks, have been solitary pursuits, and until recently, I’ve been embarrassed by them. Like they’re my “silly little projects”. In the name of making friends, I’ve always prioritised what I think other people want to do.
So how can you learn to want things for yourself?
I think it starts with paying attention. How do you feel? Does one action feel better than another? Inspect that.
Practice talking to people about what you like to do. How does that change their mental model of you? Notice that. If it feels true, lean into it. Be vulnerable.
When you do things in life that are counter to the person you want to be, it feels like pushing a ball uphill. But sometimes, if you pay attention, you can notice the sensation of the ball rolling downhill. The slightest push releases it and it goes and goes with inexorable momentum.
When you’re doing an activity, look for the ball running downhill.
Those are the things you really want.
Ongoing projects
I thought it might be interesting to catalogue what I’m working on currently.
I’ve left Turpentine, and my plan is to talk to lots of people and explore a few company ideas, before either starting a company, or joining an early team.
I’m open to more unusual arrangements too, as long as it involves working with smart people who want to make the future concretely better in ways I care about.
If you want to chat, reach out!
Open projects:
Touchrugby.org — there is no good website that explains how to Get Good at touch rugby, so I’m building one. Also “touch rugby” gets 10-100k searches /mo on Google so I think people will use it.
Current status: draft website up touchrugby.addpotion.com
Training for Touch Canada — I’m in the selection squad for the 2024 Touch Rugby World Cup. I’d like to get picked!
Current status: aerobic training. Gonna double down on running over the Christmas period and then switch gears to do more strength training too.
Exploring startup ideas — I’m exploring ideas in immigration/moving, network states, and climate/energy. I’m especially interested in LLMs as an enabling technology in these areas. I’m very curious about AI and crypto as well but more as enabling technologies rather than ends in themselves.
Current status:
applied torejected by On Deck Fellowship, chatting with a Vancouver VC about a potential EIR opportunity, talking to a few people a week.
Writing this newsletter — you’re reading it!
Current status: aiming for weekly publishing
Learning to drive — I’m in the last generation of people who need to do this, but I really should do it. It will expand my agency a lot! And it will make me a better partner too.
Current status: learner’s license secured, first lesson booked.
Future projects I’m considering:
Podcast — I’d like to interview people who are building idiosyncratic careers online and/or I find interesting. Paul Millerd, Riva Tez, JAKE, Jeremy Giffon all come to mind.
Getting Canadian citizenship — I like Canada.