Back to Diary

That a Perfect Entry Is Not a Complete One

On the paralysis of expression and the tension between soul and body

status: Finished

Status Indicator

The status indicator reflects the current state of the work: - Abandoned: Work that has been discontinued - Notes: Initial collections of thoughts and references - Draft: Early structured version with a central thesis - In Progress: Well-developed work actively being refined - Finished: Completed work with no planned major changes This helps readers understand the maturity and completeness of the content.

·
certainty: possible

Confidence Rating

The confidence tag expresses how well-supported the content is, or how likely its overall ideas are right. This uses a scale from "impossible" to "certain", based on the Kesselman List of Estimative Words: 1. "certain" 2. "highly likely" 3. "likely" 4. "possible" 5. "unlikely" 6. "highly unlikely" 7. "remote" 8. "impossible" Even ideas that seem unlikely may be worth exploring if their potential impact is significant enough.

·
importance: 5/10

Importance Rating

The importance rating distinguishes between trivial topics and those which might change your life. Using a scale from 0-10, content is ranked based on its potential impact on: - the reader - the intended audience - the world at large For example, topics about fundamental research or transformative technologies would rank 9-10, while personal reflections or minor experiments might rank 0-1.

It's 11:41. I had resolved to do this every day, and yet without resistance I was willing to give up on my 4th, maybe 5th day. Why? Because out of the multitude of things I want to say, and ways in which I could say them, I had myself decided that I could not, that I was simply incapable of any serious output.

Yet in all of this I am deeply aware that it is only through the practice and correction of the tangible that I can progress. For some reason it is without regard for that fact that my mind becomes paralyzed at its own thoughts flowing from my mind through my body and leaving my fingers. The feeling is that of a secret being shared in public. Something intimate being withdrawn from myself and leaving my possession. As if I no longer have control over the form.

It has become concrete and thus reality. It will show all of my flaws, which in any light is to be desired. Yet my body does not want for it. It is bizarre how the soul can yearn for something that the body all but denies, and now my meditation shifts toward the desire to understand the methods of bending of body to the obedience of soul.

Sign in with GitHub to comment

Loading comments...
Citation
Yotam, Kris · May 2026

Yotam, Kris. (May 2026). That a Perfect Entry Is Not a Complete One. krisyotam.com. https://krisyotam.com/diary/on-myself/that-a-perfect-entry-is-not-a-complete-one

@article{yotam2026that-a-perfect-entry-is-not-a-complete-one,
  title   = "That a Perfect Entry Is Not a Complete One",
  author  = "Yotam, Kris",
  journal = "krisyotam.com",
  year    = "2026",
  month   = "May",
  url     = "https://krisyotam.com/diary/on-myself/that-a-perfect-entry-is-not-a-complete-one"
}
Quote of the moment
Conceptually, Mastodon is a bunch of copies of the same webapp emailing each other. There is no realtime global aggregation across the network so it can only offer a fragmented user experience. While some people might like it, it can't directly compete with closed social products because it doesn't have a full view of the network like they do. The goal of atproto is enable real competition with closed social products for a broader set of products (e.g. Tangled is like GitHub on atproto, Leaflet is like Medium on atproto, and so on). Because it enables global aggregation, every atproto app has a consistent state of the world. There's no notion of "being on a different instance" and only seeing half the replies, or half the like counts, or other fragmentation artifacts as you have in Mastodon. I don't think they're really comparable in scope, ambition, or performance characteristics.
Dan Abramov (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021#45388881)
Kris Yotam
Kris Yotam
long-form stable essays
Updated
2026-05-08
Reading time
~1 min

in Naperville, IL
Last visitor from Mitaka, Japan