0. exercises in paying attention

what this newsletter is all about

a tangent before we get to the meat of things

before my mom returned to switzerland in august, she taught me a new concept to understand humans. red, green, blue, yellow.

when you are a red human, it means that you are motivated by action. you do things to get things done.

when you are a blue, it means that you are motivated by order. you do things to make sure they are correct.

green and yellow represent orientations towards others: if you are a green, you are motivated by nurturing people. if you are a yellow, you are motivated by dynamic interactions. a green person likes one on one conversations. a yellow person prefers being in a large group where a lot of things are happening.

me? i don’t know. someone who has seen my quasi-manic phase might think i’m action-oriented red. in reality, that was just me making up for procrastination. i don’t know if any of my teammates at work will actually say i’m a green, but my close friends might. allowing them to see themselves more clearly is one of my greatest pleasures in life. but that’s not something that i make available to a lot of people. call it premium-tier membership to being vicky’s friend.

by process of elimination, if i’m not red, if i’m not always green, and if the idea of being yellow makes me want to shrink to a pocket-sized version of myself, then i must be a blue.

which on the surface is insane, considering that i have adhd and am usually not interested in pursuing a sense of coherence or obvious order. in my room, there are two laundry baskets. one for actual laundry, the other to hold a giant bouquet of dried flowers i bought for myself on my birthday. there are two stacks of books strewn about in my desk, with two rogue books doing their own thing. there is a random huawei thermos, a humidifier, and a one peso coin among dozens of other things. there are two lamps—a desk lamp and a night lamp, and atop the night lamp there is an hourglass.

so my sense of order may be surrealist, but it’s still a sense of order. it has its own private logic, so private it often seems obscure even to myself. i go by my gut feel of how i think things should be. writing this newsletter at this moment is how i think things should be. if i were motivated by action i would have done this ages ago, caring less if things felt like they were in order. if i were green or yellow… figuring out a newsletter would seem like a minor preoccupation. they’d rather be with people than address them in longform.

why is this newsletter?

i suppose this newsletter is one of my primordial hyperfixations, or rather, discovering things and then sharing them has been my preoccupation since childhood. i enjoy tapping into the similarly obscure logic of this cosmos and, to quote a prophet, i wish “to steal all the real joy there is to steal and lift it up for others to see.” i am dogged in unearthing the unobvious of the world. make it make sense! my head always screams. why do i dislike songs with a high keys? why do i love korean food so so so so so much? why is jungkook my bts bias?!?!?!!hieahfa83479 make it make sense!!!

so. i write to channel the determination, to document the journey, to make it make sense. i am writing now to give myself a sense of order to the joy, the confusion, the enthusiasm, the despair. to have a home for my questions, and my answers. welcome to my home, the patchwork, post-it filled funhouse that is my mind. i hope this will feel like a home for you too, seeking questions and answers. if not a home then maybe a pitstop in your journey.

what is hyperfixation?

hyperfixating is how i create a sense of order in the chaos of my mind that would otherwise be foggy and adrift because of my “attention deficit and hyperactivity.” hyperfixating is not limited to adhd, but it is one of its de facto coping mechanisms. it means being engrossed in the world, in a world so fully that you forget its limits—time, space, hunger. this newsletter will be about relevant hyperfixations. not the latest, but the ones that feel relevant. unobvious order.

what is this newsletter?

i am not going to limit the format of this newsletter, nor define its intended subjects (that’s counter-intuitive, as i am stimulated by novelty.) but i do want to be clear about its intent. i have discovered over the past few months that it is not fun to hyperfixate by one’s self. but at the same time, i don’t want to just passively allow myself to follow the hyperfixations of others by virtue of the algorithm.

what i am hoping is that these newsletters will ground us in conversation and discovery. let’s raise a raucous in the comments section together. it is a way for us, you-and-i, to have deeper connections and conversations with a far larger word count than any social media site will allow us to have. at the same time, it is more public than an email thread, which means others can chime in, too. in isolation, this kind of conversation feels like a wet dream to me.

i want to make you smile, to entertain you. maybe you will get to know yourself better as i get to know myself better by virtue of contrast. for me, i want to feel more grounded in a community of like-minded people. and also honestly i just want to share my enthusiasm in my own terms.

what can you expect?

i will steal all the joy wherever i can and i will share what i should. that could cover pop culture, recipes, playlists, or run the gamut of artifacts from my everyday life. conversations with loved ones. travel. random (likely) tangents and discoveries.

that means a lot of lists and mini-reviews. occasional essays where nothing is capitalized. we’ll take it as we go along, and if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

i will work hard to make sure that it is worth your while to read, so that you smile and get excited when you get a missive from me. i know i’ll be smiling when i send one out. let’s have fun together!

joyfully,

vicky