On Saturday, I got into a stupid little spat with Wendy. We tentatively planned she would meet me at my place, and from there we would head to a 5:45 dinner reservation together. By 5:35 I was walking out my door and wondering where she was.

I wouldn't normally care, knowing at least she would be on her way... In this specific case, however, I was going to pay at least $500 for omakase at Shinbay. It was my birthday and hers passed only 5 days prior, so this would be our shared celebration. Wendy was late, and I was not happy about it.

I knew it would be disrespectful* to arrive late. We probably walked through the door by 5:48pm, but it would have been 5:55 or 6 had I not taken any corrective actions. Indeed, we were the last party to arrive of the 3 dining together that evening.

To Wendy, it is permissible "for any dinner reservation" to be a few minutes late. She felt indignant at my perceived impatience calling her a couple times (to coordinate that I was leaving my place to head over, then again that we could meet at a midpoint a few blocks away). She had a very busy day, she was in the process of moving, she literally had to dig through boxes of stuff to get her shower and makeup supplies, I called while she was putting on shoes further delaying things... 

I was grateful to see her. She was taking the time to meet with me, even though our reservation didn't fit organically into her schedule that day, and she was taking the time to look good for our outing. But I didn't communicate appreciation at all after hearing what she saw as her "apology" upon greeting...I only heard excuses for a pattern of misaligned scheduling and how our time together was not as much of a priority for her. In fairness, I probably have a bit of tism in my ears.

I'll spare you the rest of the details because they aren't important. Zooming out, I call our disagreement stupid because I failed in a couple obvious ways here. And the resultant friction generated some tears before we entered the restaurant, as well as colored the rest of our birthday evening and post-dinner walk together. Pretty sad tbh...

First of all, I didn't have any sleep the night before. I was playing poker for 17 hours, literally from 4pm the previous day until around 9am day-of-sushi, including a few different cash game sessions and a tournament. It was glorious and cathartic and I'll have more to say about poker in a subsequent post.

Failing on my end to be minimally rested led directly to my emotional unpreparedness for a nice evening together. I couldn't give Wendy good vibes without an extra bit of effort. I defaulted to some lazy thought patterns and communicated poorly. I didn't express gratitude or warmth towards my sister when she needed it most.

While we walked and bickered, despite neither of us wanting to bicker, the only thing we could immediately articulate and jointly agree upon was how I had unreasonably high expectations. In a sense, I frustrated myself as much or more than Wendy did.

If arriving early to dinner was so important to me, why hadn't I taken 2 seconds to make that super clear to Wendy earlier? 

If I held slightly lower expectations or relaxed my being anal about timeliness by 10 minutes, couldn't I have avoided all the disappointment and reactivity?
 
Beyond the interpersonal, I see similar thought patterns playing out across human existence writ large. It's very close to the fundamental premise of Buddhism, correcting for our human desire to strive. For type-A neurotics like myself, especially with my cognitive bias to optimism, I'm especially susceptible.

A simple example in the workplace is all of my hiring mistakes. At this point, I've hired and fired dozens of people in various companies and roles. I've written about some of this before, but it's worth highlighting here that expectation misalignment is at the root of things.

Just as we might presume a skillset, or think someone else has the same concept of arriving to meetings early as we do... isn't it better to presume nothing and build in checks for thorough screening and onboarding? That's how miracles like Greyston Bakery and their open hiring practices lead to Ben and Jerry's ice cream getting their delicious brownies. As Ben Horowitz tells us, "What You Do Is Who You Are."

I guess with Wendy, we're getting reacquainted—painfully fast as we cohabitate—getting to know each other on a more day-to-day friend level. As adults who have grown and changed significantly in the past year or two...let alone our early 20s, or even earlier teens, when we last lived under the same roof. So it's almost that we need to treat our interactions, or at least I do, like meeting someone new.

I don't think we've had this level of criticality or interest with each other in the past, at least in part since it's so easy to ignore. We are siblings, so we have a relationship and always will, whether we like and nurture it, or not. We both naturally focus on our own lives and worlds and survival and progress and stability. Especially since we both came of age independently, in different households, under tumultuous conditions and without solid family safety nets or government social support programs past age 18.

Expectation misalignment pervades the world too, for example with the tragic fires in LA. The recent All-in Podcast episode discussing this was particularly interesting to me. They go into detail on a lot of aspects, such as the insurance industry and the role of governments at various levels, as well as social phenomena. My sister independently observed to me last night, "isn't it weird how everyone suddenly becomes an activist online in the wake of these disasters and events? Like, my feed is filled with these random people 'compiling resources' to 'help' and many are pretty similar." Huh.

Aside from Friedberg's parents getting heartbreakingly live-evacuated in the middle of the episode, they brought on Cyan Banister and she made some interesting observations about the tech community's "apolitical" historic choices and trends. They also discussed Zuck and Meta's transformation. That section had some juicy debates with hot takes and Elon comparisons, which ultimately is relevant to all of us as users (products) of these social platforms and their leaders.

It's commonly said that people become more conservative over the span of their lives. I would articulate it a different way: as people age, maybe we gather more data and come to realize governance of our society does not just happen on its own, by other people, for us. We are all agents of change, one way or another. Our actions and words ripple. We are the "other people" ourselves.

We are best served in life, every day, by proactively lowering our expectations. Being skeptical, not taking things for granted, anticipating** the worst. We should take corrective steps when needed, but ideally with enough lead time for things to be done gracefully.

"There are no real-quicks." We create the slack in our systems and lives. We cannot let ourselves be lazy because it comes back to hurt others and ultimately, ourselves. We have to take time to get the important things right. 

Therefore, we should think that those important things will take away all our time and more, so we must say no to everything else that's actually frivolous! Like playing poker degenerately for many more hours than necessary, tiring ourselves out, selfishly setting up future interactions for failure...

We can never*** get our birthdays back.

* During the meal, we observed the master chef correcting one of his clearly experienced assistants on how to more properly ladle the soup. When I later told the chef "yoku yatta" he chuckled and admonished me, "that's something I say to him." He gestured at the assistant. Thoroughly chastened, I missed the opportunity to double down on my Baka Yankee routine and say "sumimasen" :(

It was an amazing experience overall, and although I'm not yet sure how I feel about the price point for value versus something 1/3 the cost like Shiro's, I will still likely leave a rare google review. Those maki rolls were crazy huge (mine was the big one) and good, probably the best I've ever eaten anywhere.


** Perhaps Jewish people have those extra IQ points from biasing more in this direction? For various reasons, including culture, history, and genetics... ultimately thinking twice more often, Kahneman style.


*** You can always have another birthday, 'Til You Can't. 
(Thanks Tiger, listened to this song every day in 2025 so far.)