Tag: Me

The Homeschooling Book – Part 1

>> March 23, 2020

>> Blog Post #44

The COVID-19 induced confinement period has been an opportunity for me so far. Of course, there are many problems because of it, and I’ve ranted enough about how afraid I am that governments are just going to seize this fine opportunity to grab more power and screw us more. But, overall, the mood has been very positive, and I’ve seen it as a chance to do more and to do things differently. Having the kids 24/7 and the weather being pretty nice have also been an underlying reason for this all.

This will probably turn into some big experiment for me and I decided to take a blank notebook and start writing down all my ideas around it and I will also probably take a journal of what I do to keep track of it all.

Being in confinement means spending all your time together. It means you have to reorganize both your time and your interactions. No more school, work, week-end rhythm punctuated by set alarm clocks and meals.

As I’ve said, I’ve taken this positively. I know I have more time to enjoy – and completely loose it – my kids, and I also know that they need to keep busy.

Mens sana in corpore sano – a healthy mind in a healthy body.

I actually like the Latin version better as it includes that notion of saneness, which for a ton of people is paramount when they are faced with spending their entire days locked up with their kids.

I am still figuring out my exact setup here, but so far, I try to have my kids work every morning and then spend some time outside in the afternoon on outdoor games or yardwork.

I am guessing that physical activity would be a better way to start the day, but thee reason I am keeping this for the afternoon is that it is still too chilly in the morning these days.

Here are some of the things we have done over the past week:

  • We’ve cleaned out an area on our lawn to grow a vegetable garden
  • We’ve recycled old wooden pallets in making a compost
  • I’ve trimmed the hedges and the kids helped me pick up the branches so that the garden is clean
  • We’ve trained the dog outside – or at least we’ve attempted too, but he’s so young the distractions are too frequent for much progress
  • We started discussing how we should proceed for the planting of the vegetables, when to do it, what to plant, where to plant seeds, etc.…
  • We’ve cut off the butt of one of the leaks we ate the other day and left it in water, as it is supposed to grow back, and we should be able to repot it in a few days’ time.
  • We’ve set aside some potatoes to sprout
  • We’ve cleared out an area to grow some fruit trees
  • We’ve played a board game every single day
  • We’ve introduced more frequent movie nights
  • We’ve let the kids “camp” in each other’s’ rooms
  • We’ve started to do half of the homework on the computer in order to start teaching them how computers work. Our hunch is it might be useful someday 🙂 We’ve maintained handwriting for the other half because I don’t want them not to know how to write with a pen properly.
  • But the most exciting, or at least the one which I was the most proud of was the 10 min race between my kids to see who would gather the most worms in the yard so that we could settle into our new compost. That was a hit and got them really excited.

What I’ve wanted to do but haven’t incorporated in the schedule yet:

All of this has taken more time than it should, as being all on top of each other does create organizational “problems”. Especially when the adults are also supposed to be working etc. So, we’ve taken it one step at a time, guessing that we will probably have a lot more time in confinement anyways. At least that’s my bet.

I want my children to read every day and to learn how to enjoy it. Reading at least 30 min a day is paramount in my opinion and this hasn’t been done every day. My plan is that it should be.

I also would like to incorporate some kind of muscular wake up routine, just to get some of the kids’ energy out in the morning or during our homeschooling breaks.

I’d like to add some elements to the school program that are more philosophical or geared towards building confidence in my children that we are all capable of pretty much anything that we set our sights on if we work hard and persevere.

And finally, I would like to have them do so internet searches on whatever we plan on doing together so that they bring ideas, get creative, start dreaming and maybe provide me with some guidance on what there is to do. This should tie in nicely with the goal above.

All in all, this should be seen as an overarching goal to develop the mind, the body, the personality of each kid in their own way.

I’ll follow up on this post regularly in the coming weeks.

Easy & Hard at the Same Time

>> March 10, 2020

>> Blog Post #38

I just spend the past 48 hours taking care of our new puppy.

Haven’t had a dog in years. Too long to remember much, and definitely too long to say that I know anything about dog training.

But I do know I want a well-trained dog and I fully intend to do everything I can to train it well and to do so myself.

So, I did whatever anyone else does in this day and age, that is to try to find good videos on YouTube that show you what should be done. I’ve watched a bunch over the past few weeks to get ready. I was happy to see that there were quite a few very popular ones (at least by views and likes) that seemed to preach the same method of training. You can probably tell I’m not the best student as I could not, if my life depended on it, tell you what that method is called. In a nutshell, it is all about reinforcing the positives in your dog’s behavior and establishing a good personal relationship between owner and dog.

Thinking about how to train my dog made me think about how to educate my kids, myself, how to teach people something you know etc. It’s funny how hard it is sometimes to teach something you know, to make it easily understandable when it’s so natural or habitual to you. And yet, sometimes it just seems impossible to get certain things through.

Watching the dog videos seems so easy, and yet, most dogs I encounter seem to respond fairly randomly to a set of standard commands. Do these people never watch YouTube? Do they not want their dog to be trained properly? Do they give up too easily? Or do I really think that I’ll be able to do better?

I’m very curious about how well I’ll do training my dog, and what it will tell me about myself. Training a dog probably compares well to other forms of teaching or training, and with the turn my life is taking, it should be a valuable measuring stick.

Bitcoin Training – Purpose

>> March 4, 2020

>> Blog Post #35

I have decided to start building training material about bitcoin and to slowly develop my training offering. If you have any questions or comments about this, please reach out to me at: elledub@tuta.io

Purpose

Too many people around me still have a problem understanding what bitcoin is.

  • Some don’t know;
  • some think they know things that just aren’t true;
  • some blindly repeat the worst fallacies ever;
  • most people seem to want to understand it better if you listen to them and are at least a little curious.

What people say they want and what they actually want is different.

People ask how they could learn more

  • I don’t necessarily know where to send them;
  • I very much doubt they are going to read all of the Nakamoto Institute resources by themselves;
  • what they are really asking for is for someone to talk them through it at least to get started;
  • people are often afraid of asking too precise questions, for fear of looking bad;
  • many are not used to conducting researching by themselves. A large majority of people – not all of course – have become too accustomed to having their hands held while learning, or worse, being told what to think. Please consider what I just said very carefully as it is one of my strongest beliefs;
  • Bitcoin seems so complicated it is scary;
  • we are still early enough in the game, that we do have to concede that we lack widely available, easy to understand resources.

Why I decided to do this

  • I feel like I can help since I’ve been involved in bitcoin for a few years;
  • I want more people to know about it and understand it;
  • it really makes me angry when I hear stupid comments and I feel like it is a personal responsibility to react – I’m looking at you flat earther types;
  • it is a good test for me to see if I can explain it myself – clearly, and in a way people will find interesting and worthwhile;
  • it is a great way of bringing more people into the bitcoin world – evangelize;
  • it is a great way of meeting people and growing your own network. Always happy to meet people who have a very different background and set of skills than mine.

What I think I know and what I actually know is different.

via GIPHY

  • only by talking to real people, with real questions, and real needs / use cases, can you better understand what people actually know, need, want;
  • I run a bitcoin-only business and having a clear and precise understanding of how people interact / want to interact with bitcoin is extremely valuable – this could lead to new products or services that can be discussed or tested during those real-life interactions

and obviously you knew about this one:

  • the last item is money, I hope to be able to monetize parts of this: more info in the last paragraph of this section.

What “training” am I developing

As of today, the only thing I have is what is in the few lines above, so at this stage it’s all a work in progress, but this is the vision I have and the way I wish to approach all of this. Everything will be iterated anyways, as iterating is really a great mix of getting stuff out through the door while always keeping a strong focus on quality through peer / outside feedback.

training material / content:

  • articles, posts
  • slide presentations
  • longer text material
  • videos
  • infographics

training time / events:

  • in-person bitcoin training
  • classroom bitcoin training
  • hands-on product training
  • remote consulting

How it should work

The bitcoin ecosystem is a wonderful space to work in. I came into bitcoin after reading about the lives of the people who created the internet, their dreams, their ethos. A lot of the principles that they held dear to their hearts are fundamental to bitcoin. Knowledge wants to be free. Decentralization is a goal to tend towards. Open source is extremely powerful. These are just a few examples, but hopefully you get the overall gist and I’ll detail some of these and more in the training itself.

What I listed under training material and content should consist mainly of knowledge, that I will be formatting one way or another. As such, it will be freely available to all as long as there is no specific design element to things such as infographics etc. I should have a lot of this content on the website and it will be available to download for free. I do not own bitcoin or ideas or concepts.

The items I list under training time or events work the other way around. My time is precious, and I own it. You should therefore expect most of the items falling under this category to be tailor made by me and represent a time commitment on my side. They will therefore come at a cost and that will be a way for me to monetize my work. As in the above paragraph, there might be a few caveats / exceptions. Speaking opportunities for example, under certain circumstances – community-focused nonprofit events for example – might actually be free.

Knowledge is free, my time is not.

Please let me know in the comments section below if there is anything specific that you are interested in or would like to see developed or contact me by email. I’m always happy to discuss.

Consistency

>> February 6, 2020

>> Blog Post #25

Consistency. The art of regularity.

One of the first things that came to my mind yesterday was that I had totally forgotten to write and publish a post.

I had set myself up this year to write every day and publish every day. I didn’t quite know what to expect or how it would work out, but that was the overall plan. I had chosen to do that because I had heard how some people commit to doing one thing every day until it becomes routine and then second nature to them. This constant practice, according to them, yields great results.

The first time I paid attention to such a strategy, was probably when my wife told me she had read that Seinfeld used a calendar to mark off every single day where he did whatever he was trying to do in order, I guessed, to visualize success. I just looked it up again and it’s described succinctly and clearly right here. Anyways, I learned about this technique a few years ago and while I found it interesting and had a natural inclination to believe it probably works, I never really tried to put it into practice.

Then about a year ago, I met someone whose newsletter I read every day now. It’s the only one I read, as I’ve never been much of a follower for anything or anyone.  The newsletter is called Marty’s Bent. If you like it, consider subscribing to it on the website and you’ll have it delivered to your mailbox every day.

We were having beers with Marty when he said that a couple years ago, he had decided that he wanted to write and had committed to writing every day and that the next thing you knew, he had published over 300 posts in his first year working that way. The figures here are approximate as I don’t remember exactly what the number of posts or the duration we were discussing were, but it gives a good ballpark figure. However, I remember how the discussion made me feel, with several intuitions, thoughts, conclusions converging into an overarching “I could do that too” feeling.

Applying yourself daily seemed accessible to anyone, with a lot of results in a fairly short time frame. People you enjoy beers with do it, have a lot to show for (Marty just hit post #666) within a period of time that is long enough that it is representative, you’re not doing this for only a week, but that is nothing when compared to most of your experiences in life. Meaningful yet accessible, that was the feeling. The other part that was intriguing was that you really only had to focus on the process and not on the results. That was not lost on me and is probably conducive to better results in the long run as you most definitely avoid too strong emotional up and downs in the process.

Back to my own experience with it. I started off January posting every day. I hadn’t planned anything ahead. I knew of some themes that I would be interested in writing about, but I hadn’t taken any time to think about style, calendar, the length of posts, how much time it would take me every day, when I would do it, etc. I believe I wrote and published during 9 straight days and then missed two in a row. Actually no, I just checked, and I missed 4 straight days. I realized immediately that writing every single day would be too hard of a challenge for me for two reasons. One, it wasn’t necessarily compatible with my personal schedule and two, it would make the negative pressure of missing my target too strong. It was obvious to me that my schedule on weekends was too irregular to commit to writing daily. It didn’t mean that I couldn’t write at all on weekends, as I can and I have, but that my output from one weekend to another would vary greatly, much more so than the output from one weekday to another. Armed with that conclusion, which seemed obvious to me, I did not despair at all, but immediately decided that my target had to change and that I should settle on writing and publishing daily on week days, with weekends giving me the opportunity to prepare some drafts or organize my notes in advance. It also gave me the comfort of thinking that over time I could have a handful of posts prepared in advance during weekends for when something impromptu happens. I could then publish something in under 5 minutes any day of the week if my schedule somehow got railroaded. Because one thing is clear, as writing has become one of my objectives, I normally have some time set aside every single weekday for it.

I was happy with how all of this was going and at the end of the month of January, was satisfied to see that I had produced 22 posts in 31 days. 31 published posts would have been an impossible target and publishing every single weekday, had I achieved that would have meant posting 24 articles – I wasn’t that far off at all! Maybe more importantly, I was taking pleasure in doing all of this and finished off January hitting each day for the last two weeks. I had my rhythm.

Back to yesterday and how I missed a weekday writing and posting session.

I didn’t feel bad about It this morning. I know these might happen from time to time because of life and it just shows that it just hasn’t set into my habits yet. Twenty some days of writing don’t make you a writer, no illusions here. Missing yesterday’s post actually made me come up with the idea for this one and I was happy to get an opportunity to share my experience with the whole writing process. A few years ago, the failure of missing a day would have been a real thorn in my side, as I would have given too much importance to that failure. Today, it’s not about missing a day, it’s about giving myself the opportunity to organize myself to do what I want, because I have decided to. It means focusing on my priorities and giving myself time to succeed. The outlook is much different.

I will finish this one off with a few thoughts about consistency.

  1. I always thought of myself as not being very consistent. Now that I think of it, I was actually very consistent in inconsistency. The way I explain it is that I started things that sounded nice and interesting, out of curiosity, not things that I wanted to do. Focusing on what I really want has made a world of difference.
  • Also, I have been fairly “organized” in the past, with all sorts of plannings, calendars, to do lists etc. I have removed myself from doing too much of that now as it takes away the fun, and just loads up your list with nice to have items. I had a tendency to drown my real core envies in a large list of optional elements, making them indistinguishable from the rest. Noticing that has been of great significance to me and I have decided that writing was important. Exit the to do lists and enter regular time for writing daily. This time is for me and I allocate it.
  • While consistency is probably very helpful in becoming a good worker, I want to make sure that I only do it because it really is something that I enjoy and want. So, for everything that is good about consistency, and I believe it is good, I want to make sure that I also keep in mind that there are other ways to describe it. Here is what two of my favorite authors of all time say about consistency 🙂

“Consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative.”

– Oscar Wilde

“Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”

– Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will: Twelve Essays

The Art of Conversation

>> January 15, 2020

>> Blog Post #11

Went back to school tonight. They were having a small classroom type of workshop on the “Art of Conversation”.

I’m a shy person. Not the kind to break the ice effortlessly when surrounded by a crowd of unknown people. Like a lot of shy people, I’ve often looked at those who make it seem easy with envy. So, I thought the topic might be interesting and I decided to push myself a little.

#1 push yourself out of your comfort zone

Another benefit of doing this is to network. Now “networking” is a word that I have grown to hate. To me it carries, in most contexts, a negative connotation. What was once a perfectly normal word with no positive or negative connotation has become sullied by some sort of utilitarian, “let’s all pretend to be friendly to advance” kind of vibe. Get on Linkedin and network makes me want to….

But I saw just a few years ago the tremendous benefit of going out more and meeting new people with no specific plan in mind. New faces, different conversations, ideas, creativity. It really got me started on my whole research into Bitcoin. And I stayed and met people because I genuinely cared. I wasn’t playing a part or making any effort to impress. In doing so I’ve grown my network.

So, networking and networking are two different things. The difference is about how genuine and true to yourself you are in the process.

#2 be true to yourself

So I went to the event, thinking that a relatively interesting topic, surrounded by people I didn’t know but who were probably in the mindset of looking for something different from their everyday life might lead in to potentially interesting encounters.

As it turns out, it did not.

The event was pretty interesting and at least I wasn’t bored. I pushed myself to go, which is positive. I picked something that was out of my comfort zone, which I think is a good way of me kicking myself in the butt a little – never a bad thing. The last beneficial element was that I introduced some randomness in my life.

I often feel that so many of the good things in my life owe so much to luck, that one of my goals overall is to introduce more randomness in my life. You don’t do that by sitting at home. You do that by meeting people in different places at different times and engaging in conversations. Once in a while magic happens. Whether it’s creativity, a new project, something you learn, odds are it was not purposely planned beforehand.

That tonight did not turn out exceptionally well is the norm. I’m glad I went, as by doing so I feel I’m increasing my odds of good things happening to me in the future.

#3 Randomness is good for you – look for it.

I’ll finish this off by just highlighting one aspect of the event which I thought about a little on my drive home. The woman leading the workshop gave all sorts of advice on how to have better conversations. One of them was to let go of some of your fears, to reveal yourself a little more for who you are. I know I haven’t always done that, but I believe it is probably something I should try to work on a little more.

Good things probably happen more often when you put a little more of your hopes, dreams and values out there.

#4 Fear not

There’s a little swagger about me as I see myself approaching my life with this outlook.

Personal Risk Assessment

>> January 6, 2020

>> Blog Post #6

A couple of years ago I read an article that made quite an impression on me. Someone had posted a link to it on one of the bitcoin forums I read daily and the description he made of it triggered my interest.

I believe the link I had received was for the post on the ZeroHedge website, but after a little search I found the original article to be this one.

The reason why I’m posting it here is that one of the examples hit home for me. The main point in this article is that people don’t assess risk properly. I personally don’t believe the most interesting part is the financial implication of not getting rich as it is not one of the things that I give the most importance to in life. What I thought was really interesting was the downside risk and how my personal assessment of it was skewed.

A lot of people, at least where I come from, tell you that quitting or losing your job is terrible, especially when you have a house and a family because you might not be able to manage. I’m keeping the argument fairly generic, and it’s actually not very well worded, but the main point here is that the argument always feels very definitive and that it’s always fairly vague.

When I look about it today, I feel that the intuitive way that a lot of people receive that argument is “You should be fucking scared, cause you risk going from 100 to 0”. And no you don’t.

Once I saw that my biggest downside risk was to stay in the professional situation I had and not to either have to:

  • flip burgers for a few weeks / months – say a 20% chance and honestly, I think that would be unfortunate
  • work the same job elsewhere for a 30% salary cut for a year or so – say a 30% chance
  • work the same job elsewhere for the same salary – that leaves 50%

I saw things more clearly and almost immediately my mind started working for the benefit of one, and only one thing: me

I could have failed to try.

Now worse thing that could happen to me is fail while trying.

Let me know in the comments what you think of that article and if you too have fallen into that assessment trap. I’ll definitely come back to this as I am convinced that it has a lot to do with how we are educated and how society is actually happy when we are trapped in that situation as some people benefit from it. Just not you.

Questionnaire de Bernard Pivot

>> January 5, 2020

>> Blog Post #5

While I’m getting all setup here and organized for a year of writing, let me take the opportunity to introduce myself a little more.

I’d like to do so by using a simple questionnaire that I personally refer to as the “Bernard Pivot Questionnaire” but that has been used in various formats by others, most notably by James Lipton during his “Inside the Actors Studio” interviews. (for those who don’t know it – here is the first example I stumbled on while looking it up).

There are a few different versions of it out there, so here’s my own mashup of it.

  1. What is my favorite word: dream
  2. What is my least favorite word: must
  3. What is my favorite drug: sugar
  4. What turns me on creatively, spiritually or emotionally: driving alone at night
  5. What turns me off: arguing
  6. What is my favorite curse word: connard
  7. What sound or noise do I love: fuzz
  8. What sound or noise do I hate: phone
  9. Who would you like to see on a new banknote: an empty portrait
  10. What profession other than my own would I like to attempt: writer (here’s my attempt)
  11. What profession would I not like to do: garbage man
  12. If you were reincarnated as some other plant or animal, what would it be: a bear
  13. If Heaven exists, what would you like God to say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates: I would like him to give me stats about my life

Feel free to chime in with your responses to this questionnaire in the comments section below.

Perspective #2

>> January 3, 2020

>> Blog Post #3

I’ve introduced a few elements in the two previous posts that might need some additional explaining. All seems very clear to me as these are topics that I have been thinking about daily for a few months, but I haven’t given a thought to how I would express them yet.

In Perspective #1, I staged a fake conversation happening in my head between two parts of me. Now tell anyone that there are several voices or people in one’s head and they’ll say you’re crazy. You couldn’t be further from the truth.

See, I’ve been reading through the excellent “Thinking, Fast and Slow” book by Daniel Kahneman recently. It’s the second time I read it. Or actually it’s the second time I read through the first half of it as I tend to read several books at the same time and some of them necessitate a lot of effort to digest. In any case, this book is extremely interesting, and I definitely recommend it strongly. It deals with how the brain works, or actually how two systems within our brains work: system 1 and system2. System 1 is the “Fast”, intuitive, automatic, unconscious system that runs your brain when no effort on your part is required. System 2 is the “Slow”, reflexive, logical, calculating system that will drive you when you have to apply yourself to a specific problem.

My staged conversation in the previous blog post was therefore system 1 sending a problem over for system 2 to ponder as it required some effort to deal with. At the end of the post I said I’d like to give more room to system 1 to drive my life while also training system 2 to reason better.

I’ll post a detailed review of some of the readings that I enjoy or love on this site. It is one of the things I want to develop and host on Satoshi Index. Thinking Fast and Slow will definitely be one of those readings.

Perspective #1

>> January 2, 2020

>> Blog Post #2

I’ve never really written before. I’ve often started a few things here and there or just thought about it, as I’ve always envisioned writing to be a pleasure, but it is not something I am experienced in.

So, here are a few quick thoughts about me writing that are as basic as they come, yet they are a clear consequence of me not thinking about things in the same way as I would have done a few months ago.

Trivial yet life changing (in my case)

My reasoning has changed within the past months. My perspective on issues or blocking points has changed. The most logical explanation I have for this is simply that I have grown to see things differently. I have seen that there are other ways than the way in which I was stuck and that resembled a set of fairly narrow possibilities.

Let’s try to take a look at some of the reasoning that has been going on in my head this year. Obviously, I’m just illustrating what I believe is the thought process nowadays.

My spontaneous self: “I feel like writing. I could write something, a book, a blog, articles, whatever.”

My reasoning self: “Wait a second, I don’t know how to write. I have no skills there.”

My reasoning self, challenging itself: “Well actually I do. I just wrote a few sentences.”

My reasoning self: “Yeah sure, anyone can do that. But you have no style.”

My reasoning self, challenging itself: “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

My reasoning self, challenging itself: “Practice makes perfect.”

My reasoning self, challenging itself: “One step at a time, don’t try to fool me into thinking that if it is not perfect and complete within 1hr it will have to be considered a complete and unquestionable failure.”

My reasoning self: (no response)

My reasoning self, challenging itself: “I’m doing this.”

My spontaneous self: (excitement)

A few observations on the discussion here:

  • I believe that a few months ago, the “reasoning self” voice would usually win a very large majority of these discussions after a single argument.
  • Whatever actions were let pass (the minority), would be stopped further down the road at the first bump on that road accompanied with a unconscious message of “I told you so” or “you should have seen that coming” that would only reinforce its authority in future arguments.
  • Whatever was left, the minority of the minority, does not represent much.
  • See how the “reasoning self’s” arguments seem to be built like uncontestable brick walls. They are actually the exact opposite. What is “I don’t know how to write” supposed to mean. I know my alphabet. I know how to put letters together to form words. I know quite a few words, in various different languages. I know grammar, spelling etc.….  So, I most definitely know how to write.
  • Parents will marvel at their kids’ abilities to learn to walk, read, write and somehow a voice inside your one head would lead you to believe that you can’t do this or that. And you could actually fall for that.
  • The one that I call “my reasoning self, challenging itself” is whatever voice I have started to listen to more this year. It kind of kicked in naturally through reading, observing other people do inspiring things that were probably not that difficult for them, reassessing the risks I was taking or not taking.

When you look at the discussion above, I clearly see that there are two very interesting options that are offered to which I believe are equally good and very reassuring:

First, I should listen to my intuitions more. Intuitions are natural and the constant noise in today’s life sometimes mask them. Yet if I had listened to it in the example above, I wouldn’t have had to listen to the bs that what thrown at me by the “reasoning self”.

Second, I should continue training my reasoning self to actually reason better and detect the flaws where they exist. When you see how gross the fallacies are in its reasoning, I can’t help but think that it can’t be that hard to just do a little better. And that would already be a big deal.

I can’t help but wonder if maybe somehow, I had not just forgotten how to challenge my own statements, how to challenge myself. Is it possible that I had simply stopped learning?

There is pleasure in accepting challenges

There is pleasure in learning

I enjoy pleasure

What the f*** was I thinking in cutting myself from these?

So here I am.

I am not trying to be perfect

I am not trying to impress anyone – myself included

I am doing this for myself first and foremost

I am taking it one step at a time

I am doing this because I know I will find pleasure in it

Hello World

>> Hello World!

>> My name is Elledub

Today is January 1st, 2020 and I am starting something new.

This space is an adventure, a break with the past. I will use it as a working tool.

I will use this personal space, to collect my thoughts and formalize them into words. I envision this being useful in increasing clarity around my life as I will put some effort into defining what I think about a vast array of topics. This should allow me to navigate a new life trajectory that I chose for myself several months ago as I make a conscious push to align beliefs and actions. In other words, I would like to increase my skin in the game.

A direct corollary of this is that I wish to use this site as a space where I will be creating content in my name – or actually to be exact, in my pseudonym. It is not something that I have done in the past, being too focused on being a good employee and living according to the golden rules of “this is the way things are done” while knowing deep down that I didn’t agree with all this bs….

I have been thinking about how I wanted to approach of all this for a few months now and have come to believe that what I hope to create here might actually be of interest, maybe even beneficial, to others. The number of people thinking about their lives and wondering what to do is staggering. You can feel many, if not most, would like a change for the better. Yet a very little minority takes those steps. People are afraid.

I have stopped being afraid because I am convinced there is not much at risk in following a new path. I am actually 100% convinced that the risk lies in not changing. Hopefully this space will be some kind of testimony, that it is possible, not that hard and hugely beneficial to listen to that little voice in your head that keeps saying “what am I doing here?”.

We aspire to more

And I am personally set on getting more