I'm halfway through the interview process with two different companies, so I'm feeling less terrified. Phew! Granted, both opportunities could still fizzle. But, knock on wood, it looks like I will get a job before completely running out of money. Just mostly running out of money 😝

We're fine — I have a parental safety net, thank God. I haven't pulled from any retirement accounts. So I'm being dramatic. Kind of a wakeup call, though? 'Cause like, you have an emergency fund, but then it gets spent? I guess "bigger emergency fund next time" is the answer to that conundrum.

Managing emotions is hard. A good attitude is so helpful, yet I waffle about trusting myself. Can I really truly sincerely 100% believe that I'll pull things together in the nick of time? No. Usually, sure. But really truly sincerely 100%? No.

Relying on my instincts has always worked in the past. Eventually. After the hole in my foot heals.

The funny thing is, even if you don't trust yourself, actually you do still trust yourself. Because you're trusting your own judgment about whether you are trustworthy. There is no escape!

How to handle this? Well, marshal evidence, and Do the Whole Epistemology, and just kind of figure things out. What else? It's interesting, though, that truth always bottoms out in the self.

And the self is a system. An amalgamation of blood and guts and hormones and abstractions like subagents, to use the nomenclature du jour; a neurological Ship of Theseus that can't do any better than extrapolating from what it used to be yesterday. An entity under perpetual maintenance.

The mysterious clanking noise is probably fine. Wheels ain't fallen off yet!

The main reason for today's newsletter. I had to share these, lest the stockpile grown unwieldy.

"For certain moments — impossible to know when they will happen, or why — it is enough that some things have taken place, just once."
From the accompanying post on X.

Okay, your turn. What's good? Or bad, or mediocre? Tell me what you're reading or writing or wondering.

xoxo, Sonya

Header art: Vehicles, drawn by my 3-year-old. He would say they are fire trucks — of various colors, since he is unconstrained by tradition. Also some of them have tails. Kitty fire trucks. Possibly mouse fire trucks.