I created the 7 types of rest page today and looked over my 12 favorite problems again.
Looking over my 12 favorite problems made me wonder if there was anything missing. Something that has come up recently when I’ve talked with my partner is politics. He’s asked me if I would be interested in running for local office, and I’ve told him yes. But. Only insofar as the following: being able to be in the running and even elected would mean that I have enough understanding about how our city works to actually get things done. And the getting things done part is what I care about first. If I had that knowledge, those skills and were actually making the change that I wanted, I wouldn’t care if I was in office or not.
Remembering this made me think about a potentially different favorite problem that I’m interested in: how do I balance the ever so subtle desire to be famous for truly helping people with my active tempering of expectations that I’d ever actually get to that point? In total, the seesaw of these feelings leans towards the “don’t try for it” end. Self doubt is a powerful limiting belief. (HT Corey Wilks and his Four Horsemen of Fear article.) I find myself judging myself for even having a subtle desire for fame. But I’m actually seeing that the fame that I seem to have been longing for was really just a side effect of doing the kind of work, helping the kind of people that I truly want. The fame that would result would more so signal for me a being in community with people who value the same type of change.