“Work, work is my passion. Or perhaps that's an alibi” - March of the Falsettos

It’s been a while since my last blog. Many things have happened since – I’ve declared my minor in polisci, New York City has become my temporary home for the summer, and the US launched 30,000-pound MOP bombs at Iran’s nuclear facilities. Meanwhile, the AI overlord is yet another step closer. Situated at MIT and surrounded by the little microbiome that is Silicon Valley, I have come to grin at the mention of AI safety. Not really because of the substance of it all – many of my friends have joined the crusade of preserving humanity’s last shield against tyrAInny. Instead, what amuses me more is the linguistics. The cult-esque following has engendered a novel form of greeting, supplanting the hellos and whats-ups with language far more intellectual: “What’s your AGI timeline? Do you believe we can even align AGIs? what’s your p(doom)?”

I digress.

As the world at large morphs at an ever-accelerating pace, I have paradoxically entered one of the most peaceful episodes of my life. Life is flowing more or less according to the trajectory I planned out. Last year, I interned in San Francisco at a startup. While I had a great time, I’ve come to the conclusion that the city simply had too much angst. The sea of people all searching for the holy grail of AI, each a spiritual guru x tech visionary who will emerge as the next Steve Jobs. Granted, I am in no position to criticize them, and if anything, whatever I say is most probably just a projection – it’s really no secret that sooner or later I will join the exact same mob. Nevertheless, before I throw my life into the crowd of phonies, I want to at least check out how the other half lives.

A photo I took while walking in Manhattan.

New York City is a curious place. The different walks of life all co-exist in the same city like a big melting pot, yet they are simultaneously separated and insoluble like oil and water. Sometimes when I stare at it for a long time, I can almost pick out the rules of the jungle. Alas, I will not digress too much as the topic warrants its own separate blog post. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend taking a look at “Cities and Ambition” by Paul Graham. The irony is not lost on me that Paul is a co-founder of YC. Nevertheless, it’s short and a great read.

I digress.

For my part, I’ve maintained a humble and peaceful life for my brief sojourn in New York. Wake up at 7; shower and get ready; workout for an hour; put in my 9 to 6; wind down; sleep at 11; rinse and repeat. It’s a sense of peace I haven’t felt since, well, I can’t recall. Growing up in China meant I’ve been in a constant state of competition since elementary school. Only the top select few could qualify for my city’s most coveted and prestigious middle school. If I am frank, elementary school was by far the most stressful period of my life, totaling 20-30 hours of extracurricular classes per week. Middle school took place in the US – thank god, but there were always prestigious private boarding schools to look up to. Of course, there was the fun of college admissions and the pandemic during high school. Then college. For its part, MIT has imposed very little stress that I didn’t impose on myself. Nevertheless, the late-night problem sets meant free time never felt completely free – you could always grind the next pset or study for the next exam.

Yet here I am, pondering what to do for five hours after work every day, left to deal with myself for the first time. Do I just scroll through YouTube shorts? It felt wrong, but I didn’t even have any obligations to pretend I was avoiding, which somehow made it worse. When I was younger, I used to tease my mom for working during family vacations. In the least cliche way possible, she’s the hardest-working woman I know. As I got older, I realized that work is simply the most fun thing to her. Funner than vacation, funner than yoga classes, and funner than going out to restaurants. As I struggled to cope with the abundance of free time, I began to understand why. I started to wonder if peace is overrated – maybe I should just work longer tomorrow and spare myself the free time.

Peace is hard.

I used to evaluate people on how much entropy they have. My friends and I endeavoured to find an exact measurement of the chaoticness of a person, and we settled on entropy as a silly and unnecessarily convoluted proxy. Ridiculous as it sounds, I prided myself on having an exceptional amount of entropy. It feels easier to embrace setbacks and unexpected circumstances when the range of experiences is already wide. To be chaotic is to be unsatisfied with what is. There’s always something more to work on, something weird and spontaneous to try.

Today, a paper I worked on for a final course project was rejected by a conference to which I submitted it. On the same day, I spilled some granola flakes on the company kitchen floor. I got depressed. As an act of self-vengeance, I skipped dinner and drank three protein shakes, as illustrated below (they were delicious, though).

A scrumptious dinner for a fine Monday night.

And my peace was disrupted. My chronic canker sores have been acting up, and I overslept and couldn’t work out in the morning a few days ago. And my peace was disrupted.

Peace is hard.

Alas, I am obviously no expert in peace and am therefore in no position to preach. Frankly, I do not know what the takeaway should be. Maybe chaos is just the better way, and ignoring peace is a okay.

Maybe I’m just not very good at peace yet. That’s fine – David Thoreau spent two years sitting next to a pond to figure it out. Seems pretty hard.

Maybe that’s the point, peace isn’t supposed to feel like winning or bliss; it’s just another skill I need to practice, so that when chaos inevitably returns, I will be a little steadier – maybe even a little bored.

Or maybe this is all just a cope, and this is all a skill issue. IDK

If you made it here, thanks for sticking with my ramble. My friend Michael recently made an excellent point that I should blog more, with the argument that more blogging equals more good, and I was sold. This will be part of a (hopefully lasting) revival of the blog, as I push out more posts – some babbling like this, and others more formatted and argumentative.

Also, thanks to Michael, I’ve finally joined Substack – this will be cross-posted on both Substack and my personal website. Feel free to check out whichever platform works for you.

That’s it for now.

Alex Fan
10:49 PM @ NYC
Time To Sleep
2025.6.23