Today started off well. I had a quite interesting dream, involving a top secret lab, vaccines, a replica passport, and being an enemy of the state. Then my wife woke me up about midday by lifting her leg overtop of mine (a much harder job for her than me), after which we had sex and I helped her cum twice.
I got up and made some eggs and coffee, then went back to bed.
Then my best friend who had been staying with us knocked on the door to say he's leaving for his AirBnB. Said goodbye, then had sex with my wife again before lazing in bed til around 3pm.
Finally I've gotten up, showered, made a new “Super Coffee” (maybe not the best idea... having it this late in the day'll keep me going til 11pm), and have sat down at my desk to do my main job for today – getting some good writing in.
I haven't wrote for quite a long time. I did the “Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal” for a while but couldn't stick the habit of doing them in the mornings.
One of my work goals for this year is getting really good at written communication. But my subject matter isn't too interesting – it's all complying with regulations, taxes, numbers, formatting one type of data into another.
I used to love working in crypto. But I don't anymore. For so many reasons it feels impossible to pick one.
I am searching for a new meaning. A new responsibility, a new mission, something that feels exciting and unique and a little scary, but very important and useful. I want to feel part of a small tribe doing things differently to the crowd.
I don't want to scam people. I don't want to sell hopium. I don't want to deal with dumbasses. I want to avoid internal politics.
A part of me wants to change industry. Get into coffee or agriculture or shipping/logistics or sewage treatment or dairy or solar panels or airbeds or lighting or whatever the fuck else sounds boring to most but is surely ripe for innovation on the inside.
A part of me wants to coast along and collect a paycheck and stack cash, or better, crypto, no-KYC, under the radar, until I have a nice nest egg no one knows about.
I suppose the wonderful thing about privacy coins like Monero, or even semi-private ways of using Bitcoin and Ethereum (like Lightning Network and Tornado.cash), is that even if the government/exchanges know how much you bought and sold, they don't know the steps in between. You can buy 1 XMR, send to a loan service, collect 0.1 XMR as interest, and sell back only the 1 XMR you bought with no one knowing about it.
I also like the idea of being donated or earning crypto – especially from someone in a different country. If you sell crypto, and the exchange doesn't have a perfect track record of the original purchase, then they can't know for sure how much you have.
But even with this long-standing admiration for crypto – and decent knowledge about it – I'm jaded. I'm bored. I'm burned out. I don't even know or care what crypto I have left or how much it's worth.
I am by default pessimistic on all new crypto projects. And pessimistic about the market as a whole. I want to see a new bear market. I want to see all the grifters and hypemen and daytraders get washed out. Maybe then some of my passion will come back.
I like strong people. Maybe that's why I like hard situations so much. I don't like hanging around weak, soft, fluffy people. When you grow up or live in a safe, happy environment, you get soft. That's maybe a partial reason I don't work so hard to be ultra rich. I don't want to get soft. I want to stay hard.
Despite saying that, I could be a lot harder. I think I'm pretty aware how unprepared for a crisis I am. I can't hold a gun or shoot properly. I can't cook well or provide good medical assistance. I can't drive. And I have a persistent pinching pain in my chest due to this goddamn jab that I took due to social pressure and fear of being excluded from normal life.
If I die from injection-related heart issues, then I only have myself to blame. My gut said no. My heart said no. My mind said no. And I did it regardless. Despite never having had symptoms of Tom Hank's disease. I got the jab due to my own weakness, my own choice to do something I knew was wrong.
I want to get more radical about these things. Ever since getting my jab, I've felt how wrong it was to take it. I am scared, and angry. I want to take off my mask more often. I want to stand up and lead an example, against the propaganda, against the marketing campaigns, against the fear and dehumanization.
But then I take the time to slowly breathe and doubt my anger, as I know there's plenty of fear and propaganda on the conspiracy theorist / anti-government / anti-mandate community too. Who knows – my anger, my fear, my revulsion at all the measures the world is taking against Tom Hanks Disease – these could all be feelings someone wants me to have, to make me hate my fellow people, to distract me, to make me ignore something important.
I told my family last night that I want to do ayahuasca again. I believe I've done it 4 times now – 2 times Santo Daime in 2019, 1 time ayahuasca in 2019, and 1 time ayahuasca in 2020. Ayahuasca has always been kind to me before, I've always had warm and nurturing experiences – but I think next time might be hard. Who knows... maybe I could have a heart attack in my next ceremony, as my body tries desperately to rid myself of the jab.
But I need to do it. I need to prepare myself for possible death. Yes, my life is going well but it's rapidly losing meaning. I need to be prepared to sacrifice everything – a loving wife, a loving family that misses me, my career opportunities, my friends. Only by being completely prepared to die can I live.
I feel like this is the most precious blessing of not having a kid. I get the sense that if/when I have a kid, I will become “the custodian of my life” for them. I will no longer have the same risk tolerance.
But now? Now I'm good. I can throw away all of it with fairly minimal consequences. Yes my wife, family, and friends would be sad if I died. Especially if I killed myself. But an accidental death or a death while doing something that was important to me? That's something you can get over.
The death of a parent, when you're a kid? That's got to be nearly impossible.
But even as I say that, I wonder. Isn't it worse to lose your partner? To lose your kid? Plenty of kids grow up without their parents. And almost every kid needs to bury their parents. It's the natural way of life.
Regardless, I want to be willing to die. I want to be willing to throw it all away. I want the freedom of attachments. I want the freedom of cutting everything out, surrendering everything.
Because I know. I know that when I am totally willing to throw it all away, that's where new life comes from. I have to be willing to sacrifice it all. That's the reason the symbol of the fire is so attractive to me. The burning of the deadwood. The burning of the unnecessary. I love throwing things in my environment out but more than that I love throwing things in myself out. And I need a throw out. I need a sacrifice. I need to make way for the future me.
The most disappointing thing I can imagine ayahuasca doing for me is nothing. I think I would even prefer a horrifying trip, a panic attack, the sensation of rats and spiders and cockroaches and eels and snakes eating me, or burning, or drowing — to nothing. Then again, that's easy for me to say in comfortable base-reality, in a fairly comfortable body, with stability and security.
I want a whole week off after ayahuasca to integrate its lessons. I want to be in a new environment. Somewhere close to nature. I want to be prepared before and after my ceremony. I want to fast, and I want to do rapé during the session, to help me detox and stay grounded.
I want to clear out all the junk, all the ruts. I want to finish this cycle of excess and addiction. I want to finish this cycle of work, even.
Enough about ayahuasca.
My other 2 goals for this day were... taking regular, good shits, and... I might need to check... ah yes. Keep good posture.
Well, I'm doing good at both – I think?
I might need to throw out $12 worth of meat today – more than a kilo I think. I really hope not. I hope it's still safe to eat and can be cooked safely. I hate wasting meat. It's disrespectful... a spit in the face to the animal that lived and gave its life, and the human who killed it, and the butcher who cut it up.
Wasting meat pisses me off to a far higher degree than wasting veggies, or better, processed food. Even though veggies take work to make, there is very little sacrifice and a lot of their harvest can be done automatically. And for processed food... mate. It's basically already trash, you're just helping it skip your body before it ends up in the bin.
I see the sun shining outside and I'd like to feel it for some moments. Maybe I'll write when I come back, maybe not.
Back. Made myself some rice cakes spread of peanut butter + raisin + coconut oil + banana. I have a rule these days with my eating – that I can't eat anything a sugar addict would eat to get their fix. Stuff like this is borderline, but for now I justify it by thinking (1) if I can't/won't go cold turkey, I need more time to adapt to a low-sugar diet, and (2) a sugar addict would go for other options in the house first, e.g. a sweet protein bar, something with stevia, a bunch of fruits.
I don't restrict my eating of fatty/fried foods at all yet. But I probably should, once I've whipped sugar addiction. Cut down the crispy potatoes, the batters, the chips, the pastries, the hotdogs and pizzas...
That brings me to the other thing... carbs. Generally I'm cool with eating carbs as long as what I'm eating has a lot of fat and/or protein. But carbs can be a tricky beast and if you have any vestige of sugar addiction, carbs can hook into it. Alcohol free beer, pizza, bread, pastries, yadeyah.
Alright enough talking about food. How about water.
My water filter is broken. Half the time or more it doesn't pour. My wife says it's cause we got a cheap one. Probably right, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.
Still, I drink plenty of water and I'm happy I have it on tap rather than having to constantly fill up a drip filter.
Water quality is one of the things I miss about my native country. Clean drinking water straight out the tap, good pipes, nice taste – mix of minerals and all that. Never worried about getting some parasite. Never buying plastic bottles. In some areas, you don't even get flouride. And chlorine is extremely rare.
Just looked up chlorine. Apparently it can give you cancer long-term, due to the build up of small toxins. Still, I imagine the biggest risks you can have are ingesting things that aren't water or not drinking enough water. Kind of like non-stick pans. You can get cancer from them, but swap out for ceramic/glass/cast iron when you can, and eat healthy, and you'll be fine.
We're all dying anyway. Drinking semi-shitty water or using a non-stick frying pan is a small risk to take compared to living a life that lacks the meaning it could have.
That being said. Soon as I can get some more cash, I'm going to use it to invest in my health.
It's nice having a decent chair and a laptop stand. I can't believe I spent years hunched over typing on the in-built keyboard.
Well. I'm no longer excited about writing. But I do hope I come back to write more. I am going to start a new course on school.markmanson.net, on “healthy relationships”.
Thanks for reading,
Gringo