Obsidian Sync 2024-11-19 18:01:45

content/daily-notes/2024-11-19.md

@@ -27,7 +27,15 @@ Great list of easy to understand tips for when I get around seriously using the
 #### Don't Deceive Yourself
 [don't deceive yourself - by Celine Nguyen - personal canon](https://www.personalcanon.com/p/dont-deceive-yourself)
 
-Started following Celine Nguyen on Substack only recently, but her essays contain detailed analysis and lovely references.
+Started following Celine Nguyen on Substack only recently. Her essays contain detailed analysis and lovely references.
+
+> What disturbs me, what keeps me up at night, is how I lie to myself. “Self-deception,” Joan Didion [wrote](https://www.vogue.com/article/joan-didion-self-respect-essay-1961) in 1961, “remains the most difficult deception”:
+> 
+> The charms that work on others count for nothing in that devastatingly well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself: no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. With the desperate agility of a crooked faro dealer…one shuffles flashily but in vain through one’s marked cards—**the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which had involved no real effort, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed.** The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough.
+> 
+> But how do you resist this kind of danger, when—by definition—the deceived self can’t even identify the lie? I’m trying to teach myself how to see what I don’t know about myself; to find the failures that my ego tries to ignore.
+
+…
 
 > I used to be jealous of the people who seemed to just _write_ more, _do_ more, _make_ more work than me! But lately I’ve realized that, while some are lucky to have an easier life (the prototypical trust fund kids, for example)…many of those people, in Didion’s words, knew the price of things. They wanted to make certain projects happen, and embraced the consequences.