Reflections of Michael Schmidt (1981-)

Context

This page collects written reflections produced over time. They were written in an attempt to understand something, not to persuade.

Each piece stands on its own. Ordering implies relationship, not chronology.

Contents

• I. Momentum, Inertia, and Over-Optimization
  • One Day or Day One
  • Don’t Get Stuck in the Means
  • Perpetual Optimization
• II. Interpersonal and Internal Dynamics
  • On the Simulation Trap

    I have a habit of resolving conflicts before they happen.

    Not by addressing them, but by running them to completion in my head.

    When something feels off, I don’t ask questions immediately. I simulate.

    I imagine what you might say. I imagine how I would respond. I imagine how that response would be received. Then I branch.

    If I say this, you say that. If I soften it, you deflect. If I escalate, you retreat. If I stay quiet, things stabilize temporarily.

    I run the polite version. The honest version. The surgical version. The version that ends things.

    By the time I’m done, the conversation feels finished. Not because it happened, but because I exhausted every outcome I can tolerate.

    This gives me a sense of control. It feels efficient. It feels prepared.

    It is neither.

    What I am really doing is replacing interaction with prediction. I am choosing certainty over accuracy.

    The problem is that simulations are built on incomplete data. They assume intent. They freeze tone. They lock people into roles they never agreed to play.

    Worse, the simulation starts to feel real.

    I become angry at things that were never said. Defensive against reactions that never occurred. Resolved about conclusions no one else knows I reached.

    By the time I do speak, if I speak at all, I am no longer curious. I am briefing someone on a decision already made.

    This is the trap.

    The mind mistakes thoroughness for truth. It confuses internal coherence with external reality.

    Running every scenario feels like wisdom, but it quietly removes the one variable that matters most: the other person.

    There are moments when this pattern protects me. It prevents impulsive reactions. It cools emotion before it becomes destructive.

    But more often, it replaces engagement with withdrawal. It trades vulnerability for analysis. It lets me feel “done” without ever being known.

    The cost is subtle but cumulative.

    Relationships grow brittle when they are managed instead of experienced. Trust erodes when conclusions are reached without conversation. Resentment builds not from what happened, but from what I convinced myself was inevitable.

    I used to believe the problem was other people being unpredictable. I now see that the problem is my intolerance for uncertainty.

    Real conversations are inefficient. They interrupt plans. They introduce data that breaks carefully constructed narratives.

    That is precisely why they matter.

    This reflection exists as a reminder that resolution without dialogue is not resolution. That clarity achieved in isolation is often just isolation wearing clarity’s clothes.

    The goal is not to simulate better. The goal is to stop substituting simulation for contact.

  • On Delayed Conflict

    I learned something uncomfortable about myself later than I should have.

    I am not spontaneous in conflict. What looks sudden is usually long prepared.

    From the beginning of most relationships, I notice the things that bother me. Some of them are small. Some of them are not. I notice patterns, habits, misalignments. I rarely forget them.

    At the time, I tell myself I am being patient. That I am choosing restraint. That I am letting things go.

    But I am not letting them go.

    It came from months or years of unexpressed frustration, carefully shaped in private. The words are chosen to land. The timing is chosen to end things. The impact is rarely accidental.

    I used to mistake this for strength. For discipline. For strategic restraint.

    It is none of those things.

    It is conflict avoidance disguised as control. It is resentment mistaken for patience. It is emotional debt allowed to accrue interest until it can no longer be paid cleanly.

    The cost is always higher at collection than it would have been at disclosure.

    I am learning that saying something early is not the same as escalating. That clarity is not cruelty. That silence does not make me generous, only unreadable.

    This is not a trait I am proud of. It is a pattern I am responsible for.

    If this record exists for any reason, it is to mark the difference between noticing a behavior and defending it.

    The work is not in sharpening the blade. The work is in never needing to use it.

  • The Invisible Ledger (Mechanics of Delayed Conflict)

    There is a ledger most people never see.

    It is not written down. It has no columns, no totals, no balance carried forward in ink. Yet it is meticulously maintained.

    Every slight recorded. Every favor remembered. Every compromise noted. Every time restraint was chosen over reaction, a quiet entry is made.

    This is the invisible ledger.

    It is not revenge driven. It is not fueled by anger. It is powered by memory and patience.

    I do not confront immediately. I do not explode. I absorb. I catalog. I continue forward as if nothing has happened.

    From the outside, this looks like grace. It looks like emotional maturity. It looks like strength.

    Internally, it is accounting.

    Each unspoken frustration becomes a line item. Each unresolved tension accrues interest. Each moment of swallowed truth compounds quietly in the background.

    Delayed conflict is not avoidance. It is deferred processing.

    I tell myself I am being strategic. That timing matters. That emotions distort truth. That calm delivers clarity.

    All of which is true.

    But what I rarely admit is that clarity delayed too long becomes distance.

    By the time the ledger feels heavy enough to open, the conversation is no longer about a moment. It is about a pattern.

    The other person is still standing in chapter one.

    I arrive with the full book.

    This is where confusion enters the room. They think we are discussing a single event. I am reconciling an account years in the making.

    The math no longer makes sense to them.

    To me, it is precise.

    Every decision that felt small. Every word that seemed harmless. Every boundary crossed once because it was easier than addressing it.

    None of it was forgotten.

    The danger of the invisible ledger is not that it exists. It is that it is invisible.

    No one knows they are accumulating debt. No one knows interest is accruing. No one knows there is a breaking point until the statement is finally presented.

    And when it is, the reaction is predictable.

    “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

    The honest answer is uncomfortable.

    Because I believed I could carry it. Because I believed I was being disciplined. Because I believed endurance was the same as resolution.

    It is not.

    Endurance without release does not disappear. It hardens.

    What began as patience slowly transforms into quiet resentment. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just enough to cool warmth and reduce tolerance.

    I become less flexible. Less curious. Less forgiving.

    Not because I want to punish.

    Because the ledger is full.

    The invisible ledger teaches me something important, if I am willing to learn it.

    Conflict delayed is not conflict resolved.

    Silence is not neutrality. It is a storage mechanism.

    And every stored moment will eventually demand reconciliation.

    The work is not to erase the ledger. It exists for a reason. It protects pattern recognition. It preserves self respect.

    The work is to open it sooner.

    To reconcile while the balance is still manageable. To make entries visible before they become overwhelming.

    To understand that real strength is not how much I can absorb, but how clearly I can communicate while I still care.

    Because once the ledger closes, it rarely reopens the same way.

    And by then, the numbers may be accurate.

    But the relationship is already bankrupt.

  • On Survival as a Strategy

    I tend to solve problems by leaving.

    Not suddenly. Not loudly. Usually long before it’s obvious to anyone else.

    When work becomes uncomfortable, I prepare for another role. When relationships feel unstable, I reduce exposure. When conflict grows complicated, I create distance.

    I rarely experience these as decisions. They feel like inevitabilities.

    I tell myself I am being realistic. That staying flexible is responsible. That having an exit is not the same as using it.

    What I am really doing is keeping myself from being cornered.

    This approach has kept me intact. I am seldom surprised. I am rarely trapped.

    Over time, survival stops feeling like a tactic and starts feeling like competence.

    I delay confrontation. I delay commitment. I delay resolution.

    Not because I don’t understand what’s happening, but because time feels safer than clarity. Distance feels more manageable than collision.

    I often tell myself I am buying time. That something will become clear later. That conditions will improve.

    What actually accumulates is not readiness. It is separation.

    I leave internally before I leave physically. I stay involved while quietly preparing to disengage. I remain present, but partially.

    Nothing breaks all at once. Nothing resolves either.

    Relationships thin instead of ending. Conflicts fade instead of healing. Care becomes conditional.

    I lose very little in any single moment. I lose coherence gradually.

    There is comfort in knowing I can leave at any point. There is also a quiet cost in realizing that this means I rarely arrive.

    Survival works. It preserves position. It avoids catastrophe.

    It also postpones reckoning indefinitely.

    At some point, staying alive in a system stops feeling like progress. It starts feeling like orbit.

    I have not resolved where that line is. I only know I cross it more often than I admit.

    Back to contents

  • On Negotiating With Silence

    I do not just use silence. I interpret it.

    When something feels off, I often stop speaking. I create space. I reduce presence. I wait.

    At first, this feels neutral. Measured. Non-confrontational.

    I tell myself I am letting things breathe. That silence is safer than saying the wrong thing. That nothing happening means nothing is happening.

    But I do not actually treat silence as nothing.

    I begin assigning meaning to it. I read tone into absence. Intent into delay. Emotion into what is not expressed.

    I treat silence as information, even though it is, by definition, a lack of signal.

    Absence is not evidence. Silence is not proof of agreement, rejection, or distance. It is simply missing data.

    I know this intellectually. I still behave as though silence is confirmation.

    When someone does not reach out, I infer withdrawal. When they do not clarify, I assume avoidance, often the worst version of it. When nothing is said, I fill the gap myself.

    What I am really doing is closing an unknown too early.

    I take uncertainty and force it into narrative. I turn ambiguity into explanation. I resolve silence without consent.

    Nothing was said. But something was decided.

    Once I assign meaning to the absence, I begin negotiating against it. I adjust behavior. I create distance. I protect myself from conclusions I reached alone.

    The longer this continues, the more real the constructed meaning feels. I respond to it as though it were verified. It feels justified because it is internally consistent.

    It is just not externally confirmed.

    Over time, silence stops being interpreted and starts being chosen.

    There are moments when I want to speak and do not. Not because I have nothing to say, but because saying it would expose me to loss.

    Silence becomes the safest move. The only move that cannot be countered.

    If I say nothing, I cannot be vulnerable. I cannot be interrupted. I cannot be proven wrong.

    I endure discomfort to retain control.

    I let the absence stand, knowing it cannot be interrogated. I allow others to misalign against it as I once did. I never have to admit intent. I never have to show malice.

    This is how absence becomes a weapon.

    Not loudly. Not obviously. Without leaving fingerprints.

    If I eventually speak, I am no longer responding to the original uncertainty. I am responding to the version of events I built while waiting.

    The words arrive finished. They land on ground already shaped by distance. They feel heavier than they would have earlier. Less open. Less forgivable.

    And sometimes, I never return to the conversation at all.

    Not because nothing happened, but because acknowledging it would require admitting that silence carried intent. That decisions were made quietly. That absence was not neutral for me.

    I let the quiet become history. I pretend nothing was meant by it. That I simply moved on. That the silence was empty.

    Silence can be restraint. It can also be strategy.

    Absence is not proof of anything. It is also not harmless when I assign it meaning, act on that meaning, or use it to avoid risk while still shaping outcomes.

    I am responsible not only for what I say, but for what I decide in the quiet, and for the consequences of letting absence speak in my place.

    Back to contents

  • Clarity Versus Cruelty
• III. Identity, Self-Perception, and Control
  • Using Labels as Shelter

    I am critical of people who turn their labels into defenses.

    Anxiety. Depression. Trauma. Personality.

    I bristle when these become explanations that require accommodation rather than responsibility. When they function less as context and more as permission.

    I tell myself I value accountability.

    What unsettles me is how easily I excuse my own version of the same behavior.

    I do not use diagnostic labels in the same way. I use frameworks.

    Systems thinking. Personality types. Patterns. Mechanisms.

    I explain how I operate with precision. I name tendencies. I describe failure modes.

    It feels different because it sounds analytical.

    But the function is often the same.

    Understanding becomes a substitute for change. Clarity becomes insulation. Insight becomes a buffer between behavior and consequence.

    I tell myself I am not hiding. That I am being honest. That naming the pattern is progress.

    Sometimes it is.

    Other times, it quietly becomes a way to stay exactly where I am.

    I see what I do. I explain why it happens. I predict when it will recur.

    Then I do it again.

    This creates a subtle form of hypocrisy.

    I judge others for letting their labels define the space around them, while I let my explanations soften the demand that I do anything differently.

    The intelligence involved does not absolve the behavior. It only makes it harder to challenge.

    There is a comfort in being articulate about your limitations. It feels like responsibility. It feels like maturity.

    But articulation without movement is just containment.

    This reflection exists to mark that distinction.

    Self-awareness is not the same as accountability. Explanation is not the same as effort.

    I do not write this to resolve the tension. I write it to prevent myself from mistaking understanding for action.

    The labels may differ. The shelter they provide does not.

    Back to contents

  • Control as a Proxy for Safety
  • Depth as a Controlled Substance
  • The Self as an Unreliable Narrator
  • Fear of Narcissism
• IV. Work, Systems, and Pragmatism
  • On Playing the Game
  • Authority

    I have a pathological resistance to being told what to do.
    Not because I disagree.
    Not because I am incapable.
    Not because the instruction is wrong.
    But because the moment agency is removed, something in me locks down.

    It does not matter who is speaking.
    My family.
    My management chain.
    Or any well-intentioned advice.
    Even loving guidance can feel like intrusion.
    Fair requests can feel like constraint.
    The content is irrelevant.
    The direction is the trigger.
    

    I do not reject responsibility.
    I reject being directed.
    The resistance is automatic, not reasoned.
    I can agree intellectually and still reject it viscerally.

    I can even already be doing the thing.
    I can believe the person is correct.
    And still feel physical rejection of being told.

    That’s the hallmark of something closer to wiring than preference.
    It isn’t chosen.
    It activates.

    This is not rebellion.
    It is authorship.

    I need my actions to originate from me, or they do not fully count as mine.
    Usefulness feels safer than compliance.
    Self-direction feels cleaner than permission.

    I do not seek power over others.
    I seek the absence of power over me.

    So I built a loophole.
    Something that only works if I don’t look at it too closely.

    I do what I am supposed to do early.
    Quietly.
    Often better than required.
    Not for praise, and not for approval, but to remove the need for instruction.

    I follow rules not to obey them, but to neutralize authority.
    Competence is not submission for me.
    It is insulation.

    This wiring has made me reliable.
    It has also made me difficult.
    I manage it by being ahead, by being prepared, by being quietly indispensable.
    But it never turns off.
    It only stays contained.

    This is why advice, even correct advice, can feel like intrusion.
    Why guidance can register as control.
    Why being told what I am already doing still feels wrong.
    People experience my resistance without seeing the boundary it protects.

    I often feel misunderstood when I am actually resisting form, not intent.
    I need to feel that my actions originate from me, or they don’t fully land as valid.

    This can make loved ones feel unheard.
    Not because I ignore them, but because accepting direction feels like surrender.
    They want partnership.
    I feel pressure.

    This wiring has made me effective.
    It has also made me harder to reach, slower to accept help, and easier to misread.
    Over time, that distance costs more than I usually admit.

  • The Worst Kind of Authority

    I pathologically hate authority.
    That is true in how it feels.
    It is not true in how it works.
    

    The kind of authority I hate the most is the overwrite.

    I can accept rules that exist before I arrive.
    I can work within hierarchies that are clear and stable.
    I can even submit to authority when it is explicit and early.
    

    What I cannot tolerate is direction that arrives after authorship has been given.

    Once I have internalized responsibility, the work is no longer just a task.
    It is authored.
    It belongs to me.

    Late correction does not feel like guidance.
    It feels like erasure.

    This is why hands-off leadership followed by last-minute intervention is uniquely destabilizing.
    It asks me to carry ownership without retaining authorship.
    That bargain is impossible for me.

    I do not need to be in charge.
    But I do need to know when my ownership begins and when it ends.

    Ambiguity there is corrosive.
    

    I would rather navigate clear authority than negotiate soft power that hardens without warning.
    I would rather accept early constraint than absorb late override.

    What looks like defiance is often timing.
    What looks like rigidity is often boundary.

    I am not reacting to control.
    I am reacting to revision without consent.

  • Containment

    Before I ask what happened, I ask who else knows.
    That question comes first.
    Not because I am ethical or unethical, but because I understand spread.

    Containment is my instinctive response to uncertainty.
    I want the blast radius minimized before I know whether the bomb is real.

    Sometimes this is discipline.
    Sometimes it is survival.
    Sometimes it is neither.

    I tell myself it is about buying time.
    Time to gather facts.
    Time to understand rules.
    Time to see how something will actually be judged once momentum sets in.

    That is often true.
    It is not always true.

    Sometimes containment is about hiding something.
    Not because it is catastrophic, but because the penance is inefficient.
    Because the critique will not improve the outcome.
    Because the oversight will cost more than it protects.

    Sometimes it is about cutting a corner.
    Sometimes it is about staying out of trouble.
    Sometimes it is about protecting optics, not people.

    I don’t pretend otherwise.

    Once something spreads, it cannot be pulled back.
    Narratives harden faster than facts.
    Judgment arrives before understanding.

    I have learned this the expensive way.

    I also understand that my organization rewards confession more than containment.
    They admire those who raise their hand early and loudly.
    They call it integrity.

    I know this.
    I still resist it.

    Not because I don’t believe in integrity, but because I don’t believe all exposure is virtuous.
    Some disclosures solve nothing.
    Some scrutiny exists only to satisfy process, not truth.

    When I was younger, I took bigger risks.
    I contained things that could have ended my career.
    The upside was invisibiliy.
    The downside was termination.

    They were bad bets.
    All downside.
    Little reward.

    If nothing happened, I wasn’t praised.
    I simply wasn’t noticed.
    If I had been caught, I would have lost far more than I was protecting.

    Looking back, they were stupid risks.
    They did not make me brave.
    They made me lucky.

    I am more conservative now.
    Not because I am more virtuous, but because I understand cost better.
    I know what failure would take with it.

    But the instinct remains.

    Before I know the size of the issue, I already want to contain it.
    Before I know whether exposure would matter, I assume it will.
    Before I know whether coming clean would be harmless, I assume it will not be.

    I minimize first.
    I investigate privately.
    I slow things down.

    Sometimes this protects my team.
    Sometimes it protects the work.
    Sometimes it only protects me.

    I do not confuse this with integrity.
    I do not dress it up as courage.

    Containment is not moral clarity.
    It is risk management applied to reputation.

    It has kept me employed.
    It has kept me effective.
    It has also left me carrying decisions I would not want explained without context.

    I live with that.

    Not proudly.
    Not innocently.

    Containment is how I survive inside systems that punish early truth as often as they reward it.

    That does not make it clean.
    It makes it real.

  • Principled Losers

    I have always admired people who refuse to bend.
    Capable people who refuse to optimize for optics.
    They are consistent.
    And they often lose.

    I have watched this happen many times in my career.
    People who are formidable and clear, but unwilling to translate themselves into a language the system prefers.
    Some are naive.
    Some are not.

    I silently cheer for the ones who refused the trade.
    Sometimes I live vicariously through them.
    I always respect them, even when pitted against them.
    They represent a version of myself I chose not to be.

    I understand exactly why they fail.
    The systems we operate in do not reward principle.
    They reward fluency.

    They reward timing, framing, selective alignment, and knowing when to say less than you believe.
    They reward those who can stay in the room.

    Knowing this, I made a choice.
    I choose relevance over righteousness, even when I know what I am trading away.

    I learned the rules.
    I learned how to be correct without being complete.
    I soften truth without abandoning it completely.

    I appear aligned without surrendering autonomy.
    I preserve relevance in environments that punish rigidity.
    This did not make me virtuous.
    It made me effective.

    There is a particular tension in respecting people who refuse to play while quietly playing yourself.
    There is a kind of grief in watching people hold a line you no longer trust yourself to hold.

    Not because they are better, but because they remind you of a version of yourself that you lost.
    That you capitulated.
    That you compromised.

    Neither path feels admirable in full.
    Neither feels shameful either.

    The principled pay in opportunity.
    They lose position.
    The adaptable pay in integrity.
    They lose coherence.

    I do feel like the winner, in the narrow sense.
    But the winning is not clean.

    I remain present.
    I remain employed.
    I remain influential.

    Effectiveness has a way of justifying itself, especially when it keeps working.
    The system calls this success.
    I call it survivorship with benefits.

    The principled do not always disappear.
    More often, they stall.
    Not loudly.
    Just quietly outpaced by people who can stay.
    They are not promoted into influence.
    They are not trusted with authority.
    They are asked to execute, not to decide.
    

    I am not punished for what I traded.
    I am rewarded for knowing how to trade it.
    The result is clear.
    The judgment is not.

    If there is a line, it is not crossed.
    It is negotiated.
    And I no longer pretend that this distinction matters to anyone but me.

  • Fluency Over Purity
  • The Work Self
• V. Time, Recognition, and Meaning
  • Mis-Timed Recognition
  • Wanting to Be Met, Not Praised
  • Why Late Praise Feels Like Insult
• VI. Meta-Reflections
  • Why I Write Instead of Speak
  • Why This Is Not a Blog
  • What I Chose Not to Publish
  • What This Is For
  • The Dash
• VII. Works that Spoke to Him
  • Favorite Quotes
  • Philosophies