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I've noticed that consciousness recedes when I'm deep in a coding phase, many back-to-back days in flow. My mind narrows to tunnel-vision, fixated on the software and its issues. My sense of self shrinks; non-code ideas cease to arise; I get less curious; writing yields little.

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Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Oct 18, 2020

It's an odd feeling: flow is experientially satisfying, but the creeping self-abnegation is worrying. I also notice it takes quite a while to "reset" from this phase, to start hearing myself think again, to feel like less of an automaton.

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Kurtis Lockhart

@kurtislockhart

Oct 18, 2020

David Foster Wallace writes about this self-abnegation and sense of flow pretty beautifully in Pale King when writing about tax auditors at the IRS.

Andy Matuschak

@andy_matuschak

Replying to

@kurtislockhart

Oh! I love DFW and have read The Pale King but I don’t remember this passage. Do you recall roughly where it was in the book? I’ve just done a search in my ebook but can’t find it.

3:17 PM · Oct 18, 2020TweetDeck

Replying to

I guess I was mistaken, not in Pale King per se, but a profile of DFW and review of his work in New Yorker (newyorker.com/magazine/2009/). Profile says, "A typed note that Wallace left in his papers laid out [The Pale King]’s idea:

Kurtis Lockhart

@kurtislockhart

Oct 18, 2020

“Bliss—a-second-by-second joy and gratitude at the gift of being alive, conscious—lies on the other side of crushing, crushing boredom. Pay close attention to the most tedious thing you can find (Tax Returns, Televised Golf) and, in waves, a boredom like you’ve never known...

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