I was surprised that a few of you took the time to write a thoughtful response to Entry #1 and this is my attempt to repay you with an introduction. Bear with me. Sometimes I get carried away and my imagination throws me over a cliff. I generally avoid putting my personal details online. Thank Edward Snowden's book 'Permanent Record' for that. I now see the computer screen as a two-way mirror with shadowy figures on the other side of the glass.
About me: I am single and barely into my forties. Located in the Pacific Northwestern corner of the USA. I would consider myself a world weary optimist. A Christian mystic. Creative thinker. A born Libertarian.
Really I think all labels, while useful, are lazy.
I come from a long-line of late bloomers. Which means I didn't really get serious about life until much later than many of my friends. I partied through my thirties picking up a few bad habits along the way. Dating bartenders being one.
Lately I've really been getting my sh--tuff together. I started taking cold showers everyday. I quit smoking cigarettes. I gave up dating bartenders. I started jogging. Indulged my book collecting habit and started reading and writing often. My depression is a lot less depressing now. I own a successful seasonal business and am hoping to own a few more successful businesses. I laugh as often as possible and love to make other people laugh. And feel good about themselves. And life. And being alive. If my life were an element it would be water.
I might be crazy. But in my world, crazy is good. I am a world traveler. I've traveled using planes, trains, and automobiles. Occasionally, I travel on DMT or Ketamine. A traveler of worlds.
The Asian world is one of my favorites, especially the western reaches of Sichuan province and all the way down to Vientiane. I hope to visit that world again, soon. Presently, my financial security is anchored to my physical location so I am learning how to earn income remotely. Growing a bigger "guanxi." Which is what brought me to THIS world or "sphere of interest," the crypto-verse... Or whatever you want to call it.
I glimpsed this world while reading Ready Player One a few years ago. At the time, it seemed like a real nerdy world. A work of fiction. Shortly after, while exploring Acapulco, I hung out with a motley crew of crypto-rich types, able to move sovereignly around the globe using the blockchain like a magic carpet. I liked those people. Then, not long ago, while working one of my several jobs, I stumbled into episode #506 of The Tim Ferriss Show with Balaji Srinivasan. That guy blew my mind. It was like a bolt of lightening crawled up my pant leg and zapped me. That was the tipping point.
What I had glimpsed briefly in the fiction of Ready Player One I could now see a little clearer in the two-way mirror. A way for people to move past the old ways of governance. A way to move past the old ways of everything.
What had sounded like tech-wizards divining the future from a tangle of nerd entrails now appeared like a well-ordered labyrinth. A walled garden. The entrance being the here and now, the exit being the world of the future. A sovereign world untethered from our known systems of power and voluntarily knitted back together with smart contracts. I had to find my way through this maze.
So, I took (almost) all of the slowly evaporating fiat I had been hoarding away, condensed it in to smart money and began my journey. Blockchains. Cold wallets. KYC nightmares. Alt coins and stable coins. Limit orders. Slippage. Discord servers. Metamasks. Ethereum 'mainnets.' Binance Smart Chains. Hive engines. Non-fungible tokens. Wax. Sharding. Murky Shibaswap liquidity pools. Hard forks. Secret keys. Public keys. So many f-ing keys! Gas fees. Have I been here a week or a year? And I know I've barely tickled the iceberg.
My left eyelid has a twitch now.
Really, I am enjoying this strange new world. One of my friends is a visual artist that has been creating future themed art for decades. I am working with him now on a mission to transform his art in to NFT's. We don't know what will happen and that's part of the fun. I have attached one of his pieces, with his permission, to this post for your viewing pleasure.
If you have any suggestions that might help me on my journey I'd gladly listen then shortly after forget all but the best ones. Thanks.
