Jokes and Journals (Ricky Weekly #15)

This is where I share 3 things every week with my friends and anyone else interested.

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Including a piece of audio from a Joke Workshop I went to at Mutiny Radio. The jokes were all new and pretty bad, but the feedback session afterwards was hilarious so if you’re gonna listen, make sure you keep listening. I have a show this coming Saturday that I have to get ready for but I haven’t worked on comedy in a while. Lmk if you want deets to the show.

A picture from my life:

Here’s a picture of me and my friends Richard and Jun. I was feeling pretty down on Monday and was randomly telling Richard/Jun on Whatsapp that I went to a joke workshop. They happened to be hanging out in Hong Kong and wanted to hear my jokes so we got on video chat and ended up talking for two hours. That made me feel a lot better. The next day and spent an entire afternoon with my friend Nik who’s leaving SF, and that completely restored my mood for the week. I love my friends.

Thing on my mind:

Like I said, before I got on video chat with Richard and Jun, I was feeling down and didn’t feel like I had anyone to talk to, so I went to write in my journal. Journaling is something I’ve been doing for about seven years. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was to get in the habit of journaling. I told myself that no one was gonna read it. The thoughts didn’t have to make sense. The grammar and spelling didn’t matter. The point was to just build the habit to reflect and create a healthy distance between me and my thoughts.

But on Monday journaling didn’t make me feel any better, so I decided to write my journal like I write this newsletter and pretend like I’m going to share it with people. That forced me to actually contend with my thoughts and give them structure and context to really make them make sense. That was super helpful and I’ll probably be doing that more in the future. Maybe I’ll even share a journal entry with a few people. I’m nervous about doing that but I’m curious about what I’d learn.

Piece of content I recommend:

The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet by Yancey Strickler (h/t Matt Douglass)

I had just published a blog post about social media two weeks ago and then I read this and wondered why I even bother trying to write publicly when people like Yancey Strickler exist. Anyway, reading his essay inspired the tweets below. Highly recommend.

Ricky Yean @rickyyean

I've been writing a weekly personal newsletter for the last three months and unsurprisingly I share more than I otherwise would on social media. Not 100% vulnerable/authentic but probably 80%, whereas on social media I share like 5%. 80% feels really good.

Ricky Yean @rickyyean

I only go 100% with my best friends sometimes, but other times they probably only get 90-95%. It's not easy to be so vulnerable. I can also get to 100% sometimes with anonymous or ephemeral connections in apps like @gofriended and @7cup

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As always, you can find out what I’m thinking in more real-time on Twitter and my essays are on my website. My latest essay is called “The arc of social”