> Prologue
Tracing the thoughts that made me who I am today isn’t as easy as it sounds. That’s because, to begin with, I didn’t question those thoughts. Why? I think it’s because I was trying to falsely dismiss the feeling of fear itself as either a nuisance or something “of course” to be expected.
In search of the conflicts and emotional hunger I don’t recognize in myself, at some point I started trying self-analysis — again and again. Not to reminisce about or reflect on the past, but with a vague feeling of wanting to know the reason? If I know the fundamental reason, maybe I’ll improve a little… that’s how I started.
How satisfied do most people live? (I’m not other people, so I don’t know.) When you actually look, there really isn’t much of a problem. As long as I don’t feel it’s a problem, it’s an utterly natural, nothing-is-wrong world and daily life… but in search of the cause of that hunger that suddenly rises up now and then, one by one, I try to recall the past.
> High school
What’s visible (the fact or the limit) may not be everything (the truth) (Handan-gogi — book).
There is never such a thing as absolute right or wrong. Each person merely does their best in their own situation. It’s simply that our interests stand side by side, or our choices or environments differ. No one is foolish (diversity).
The outcome doesn’t depend on which choice you make, but on the attitude with which you face (approach) the situation no matter what you choose (pen pals).
The shock of watching a senior who ran a free children’s library and said he was learning about life from the kids, and another senior who won a newspaper literary debut but wrote poetry through manual labor, sweat, and the taste of soju.
Also: Kierkegaard, Pushkin, The Clash of Civilizations.
> The military (Fools say they’ve done their best — book)
In the end, the choice between growth and limit is mine. Will I live just complaining about uncomfortable truths or unsatisfying situations? Or, for the self that is frustrated by its situation, will I build little nudges and improve my environment primally, at least?
The problem isn’t my circumstances or the fact that all I can afford is a sandwich (the complaint or the unfairness); the problem is that even so, I’m picking up the sandwich again with my own hand.
Earning money in proportion to the effort I put in is natural. What matters isn’t the fact that I tried, but whether what I produced with my effort can generate income on its own.
Also: Fingerprints of the Gods.
> University (major change, double major)
Wrestling with my own choices and the dreams that follow from them.
Branding, Che Guevara, reality, story, authenticity.
Thinking about others — a brand that can hold not the bourgeoisie but the everyday lives of ordinary people.
The insight I gained through performance art — “the democratization of art.”
> Work
The meaning of connections (not people in the same field, but people from all kinds of other fields who, when I’m standing alone, can turn my ideas into reality even when I don’t realize it — when you start a fashion company, your network isn’t the senior people in fashion, it’s the nameless president whose name is on a business card).
Connections in the end are just connections. When you’re doing well, they gather on their own; when you’re struggling, they scatter on their own.
Also: The Birth of Thought, Han Fei Tzu.
> Business (normalstory)
Cheap products, luxury products, good products — there are endless amounts (enough that the word “competition” itself loses meaning). Just as production methods since the Industrial Revolution evolved into new approaches like package design and display, going forward, simply focusing on the product or the price for branding inevitably hits a ceiling. Especially for personal brands (businesses), it’s not a winnable game. People buy a product in the space that contains it, through resonance. In other words, what they’re ultimately buying isn’t just the product — they’re buying the space that product sits in and the feeling (resonance) of that moment.
They buy coffee not to drink a beverage but to feel at ease; they buy expensive clothes to comfort themselves and hope for a better tomorrow.
A platform for small merchants, a design factory (incubator) for indie artists,
Services that let ordinary people turn their daily lives into art or give them meaning.
Made me realize I was a frog in a well.
Made me realize I’m not a vessel fit to be served by someone else, or to take responsibility for someone else’s life — I’m someone who’s busy just taking care of myself.
Also: Beyond Consciousness, A Thirty-Year-Old Asks Psychology.
> Work (IT)
Shocked by the differences in what’s considered common sense within an organization. (Keep being shocked.)
Made me realize just how endlessly wide the world is. Made me aware of my desire to learn.
Made me realize that with just a bit of IT, you can turn almost any idea into reality — it’s the most fitting method. My imagination exploded thanks to this, and I became aware of my own capacity for insight. At the same time, I clearly recognized that compared to that capacity, my physical circumstances, specs, will, and action were overwhelmingly inadequate.
I learned that, in going into the village of one-eyed monkeys to understand diverse lives, you can end up gouging out your own eye.
I learned that I am a frog (a vessel: internal and external limits). In the process of defining (or being forced to define) that limit for myself, cognitive dissonance occurred. I felt again the limits of reality and of the situation. Not the emotional limits of high school but the real-world ones, and deep thought about solving that problem.
I began thinking not just about the product but about platforms and user experience, and in that process I realized that all of it (art, service, daily life, business) ultimately converges on psychology and philosophy.
I learned that the insight I gained in college (the democratization of art) remains meaningful going forward.
I learned that the meaning of the projects I ran at normalstory and the platform-style way they were run can serve as a common BM pattern usable across IT and many fields.
Also: Ten Thousand Behaviors, Business Model, Strategy Puzzle, Incognito, Glimmer, Whose Future Is It?, A Whole New Mind.
(Seems like after the military, this is the period I read the most. During high school and normalstory I barely read… Because I couldn’t multitask? Because I didn’t have the mental room? Or because I was doing my own thing, I didn’t feel the need (questions, problems)?)
> Recent worries
It’s about turning thought into reality.
For that I need learning or an appropriate hub group (big name), but because of the practical problems of daily life I haven’t been able to make a direct approach or figure out the way forward; stuck in the everyday situation (life as a member of the one-eyed-monkey village) I’m being pushed around, and even my values — my fundamental purpose and worldview — are now feeling threatened.
Ultimately, I seem to want to run my own service. Of course, it won’t be something I “own.” Running normalstory made the limits of my vessel clear. It’s just that my stomach turns at seeing others take my ideas and build them in some inadequate form or cement them in a direction that’s, well… wrong?
Or is it that I want recognition? Sure, probably. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But whether this dissatisfaction, this discomfort, or this feeling of not-enough is really from looking at myself — that’s worth thinking about. Because the situation is already incomparably better than it was when I was younger.
And this ongoing thirst for study — is it envy of their knowledge or their hub (big name), or is it that their knowledge or their hub is necessary for my goals? Even if it’s not the whole of it, only part. If there’s anything like that, I’d like to make it clear so the confusion I create for myself decreases. I must not forget that I am the kind of vessel that wobbles even at such small things. Formulaic advice, or a quote from some famous person, can actually be dangerous for my constitution.
