Kortina: Immersing in craft silences overthinking and existential despair
Andrew Kortina · Andrew Kortina of Venmo and Fin on Technological Determinism and Work's Relationship to Dignity · Y Combinator · Nov 20, 2018 · at 32:04
Venmo and Fin co-founder Andrew Kortina explains how deep absorption in craft functions as a psychological escape from existential anxiety.
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“It's very meditative to like, one of the things that's awesome about writing software is you can just like go into this, you know, state where you're just, you spend 10 hours and you're like, whoa, that was so fun. It's like playing a video game, right? Or, I mean, I think I'm not like a great drawer, but like, I've done some drawing, like when you're like, just, you know, drawing that cup of water right there and like looking at all the different like shadows and contours and just focused on that, you kind of throw out all this verbal analytical parts of your brain. And that is probably the type of stuff that leads you to existential despair. And It can be nice to escape that for a while, and I think, like, craft has that sort of, you know, like, cooking is like that, or, you know, writing software is like that, working with your hands, I think is like that doing Excel, I think is like that. Like, there's a lot of things that are like that, where you can kind of like, just focus in, go into that, you know, all the, everything else dims, and you're just like, in the zone. And it's a good escape from a lot of other things, I think.”
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