Very interesting! You’ve captured a big reason why I do not myself participate much in the EA/Rationalist community, despite being a SSC addict. Much of the meetups seem to be around conversation, and I grow anxious in conversation-only settings. I want to *do*, and yes, sometimes that means I *do* the non-optimal thing, because I simply must express my doing energy somehow. If more meetups had promises of actions (as major as hackathons or as minor as results documentation), I might find myself participating more in the community.
Alternatively, I could learn to be comfortable with the lack of action in settings. It would be a useful skill to allow me more time to reflect before taking action. I would like to grow that skill, but at the same time, my orientation towards action is very much a part of me, so I appreciate settings where that orientation can be utilized and beneficial.
I went on a 4-month Buddhist retreat, and one week covered “Self-images”. We received homework that week to journal our self-images—all of them. Every time I felt some sense of self, like “The self that prides itself on being clean” or “The self that’s playful and giggly”, I’d write it down in my journal. I ended up filling 20 pages over a month period, and learning so much about the many selves my mind/body were trying to convey to the world. I also discovered how often two self-images would compete with each other. Observing the self-images helped them to be less strongly attached.
It sounds like you discovered that yourself this week. You might find such an exercise useful for discovering more of that.