My last go around at attempting to contribute to ~tmsr did not go well for myself or anyone involved. I found myself working, towards the end, until about 9 many nights after having worked my normal consulting hours during the day, as well as through all of my free time on weekend mornings.
On top of that, I was unable to sleep well at all. It was fucking weird1. I’d be just about on the verge of falling asleep and then I’d get this sudden jolt of adrenaline. This happened over and over, and lasted well after having stopped working on the IRC diplomacy project. I was burned out.
Another problem I had was that when #ossasepia is most active and when diana_coman is most available and requires my full attention is during my most productive consulting hours2, and also when I’m required to be “on” and immediately available for my client. A discussion with diana_coman can go very deep very quickly, and it was hard to pull myself out of that afterwards and get back to my contract, or interrupt it for some urgent request from my consulting work.
Something else that takes a lot of my time is commuting between where I live and where my wife lives on the weekends. It’s about an hour each way and there is a lot of preparation involved in shifting between locations every weekend. I do not know how to solve this. I definitely do not want to go back to living in the same house or apartment as my wife full time.
One more activity that takes my time which I’m not willing to give up is going to the gym. That takes about 4.5 hours a week.
I do spend a lot of time doing Chinese and Spanish study. The time I spend on Chinese is divided between reading practice (about an hour a day) and conversation practice (up to several hours a day due to traveling to meet girls and time spent on WeChat). Spanish reading practice also comes out to about one hour a day. I don’t practice reading Ancient Greek these days, and I do miss that and would like to get back into it but for now I have prioritized Chinese and Spanish.
So, in order to continue, I need to figure out a way to take the pressure off myself so I can sleep and have liesure time and earn income, and still contribute meaningfully.
I have meanwhile been attempting to make some progress in that vein, by freeing myself from podcast/ideologue addiction3. Another interesting side effect of quitting podcasts (not audiobooks, btw, which are not nearly as addictive) is I don’t look forward to driving anywhere, or at least I dislike it even more, so I’m more prone to stay at home and spend less money.
I have found at least one good chef to save me the time/energy of shopping and cooking throughout the week. Last week I ate better than I have in a long time for five nights for $170. It’d almost be worth having a wife if she could actually pull that off4.
Since for now the only avenue open to me that I am aware of to contribute to #ossasepia is via software development and since I am fairly well maxed out on the hours of coding I am capable of doing every week due to consulting work just kind of draining me, I need to figure out a way to reduce the amount of time I spend doing software development consulting (which is currently from 15 to 20 hours a week).
One approach to doing this (and the one I’m leaning most heavily towards) could be to attempt to earn money through another means. My current plan with respect to this approach would be to propose to my current client (who runs his own consulting company) that I take a break from software development work after my current project ends in roughly Feb. and spend some time working on growing his client base here in California. He might be able to mentor me and increase my chances of success. This might allow me to improve my communication skills while reducing the amount of mental swapping I have to do when switching between two completely unrelated software development projects. The downside to this approach is that income would be uncertain, and I would likely have to sell Bitcoin while learning and developing clients. It’s quite possible I could fail at this and end up wasting a bunch of time and Bitcoin. An additional downside is that I would likely have to travel more, for example to meet clients in the Bay Area if none can be found in Sacramento, and this may ultimately take up more time.
Another approach could be to just take two months off of consulting (i.e. decline the next project from Livefront) and work on #ossasepia related tasks full time (about 15 - 20 hours a week) for a period of two months and then go back to consulting after that period. I did this last year for a personal project5. The downside of this is that there would be a roughly $20,000 opportunity cost depending on when the next project becomes available, and also that the trend in ~tmsr is against people dropping in and dropping out, leaving things unfinished and getting in the way of progress.
What I propose in the meantime is that I dedicate 6 hours a week to #ossasepia to be divided between software development, discussion, and reporting, and to track this time with the time tracker I usually use for independent consulting projects. What this approach gets me is a way to let myself know “Hey, you’re done for the day, you can sleep/play with your kid/read a book now.” I don’t know if this is going to be acceptable to diana_coman, and I seek feedback on this proposal. I anticipate the response to be along the lines of “You’re not going to be able to accomplish very much in that amount of time, it’s not really worth my time to work with you if that is your limit.”
- I suspect it was related to not being suited to or capable of performing the task I had undertaken [↩]
- For whatever reason, I’m a morning person, and I can get the most work done from early in the morning until early afternoon. After that I have a very hard time focusing or motivating myself to do much until a smaller second wind in the late afternoon. Part of this is that in the afternoon my daughter is home and it’s just harder to focus on anything after then. [↩]
- I don’t exactly know why but writing articles about these guys I’ve been following for years (Stefan since 2014 and Vox since 2016) has somehow freed me of them. I don’t totally disagree with them now or anything, I just don’t feel the need to listen to/read them anymore. There’s one more guy I need to deal with called Mike Cernovich, who is someone else I started following around the time leading up to the 2016 election. [↩]
- My actual wife is currently halfway through her 2nd attempt at law school, and instead of contributing to the household, she has indebted herself to an amount approaching $200,000. I tried to disuade her from this course, but for example one time we got into a heated argument about it and she was so dedicated to the cause she called the police on me for, I guess, raising my voice after drinking a glass of wine. Why not divorce her? Well for one, what sort of step “dad” is going to be perving around my soon to be teenage daughter and, for another, it’s literally cheaper to just [write the check]http://logs.ossasepia.com/log/trilema/2017-06-02#1664643) in Commiefornia. Meanwhile she fattens. And btw I do not seek pity or sympathy from anyone regarding my situation. It is my fault. [↩]
- It’s called Ploutos and is a watch-only wallet written using Electron. [↩]
The way I see it, in effect the USG is robbing you through her. So it's quite fitting that when you raised your voice protesting "her" (you) "paying" (throwing money into the fire) for "education" (continued indoctrination in usachawitz legal scripture) the arm of the state got involved.
When MP says the wife "begs for some checks" he means checks as in a check to her stupid behavior. Quite the opposite of a check as in sending her cash, lol.
I think your prediction of diana_coman's response will be right, 6 horas por semana no es nada. Maybe until you can free up time, you can focus on one language (Chinese or Spanish) and add the time you spent for the other for work in #o.
Cheers, and good luck figuring out your schedule.
Is there a question in all the above?
The core of it as it reads above is that you are quite fully owned by non-tmsr stuff of all descriptions. And even when/if you take some sort of break you go on some sort of detached man-aloning by the sounds of it, as far away as possible from meaningful involvement and commitment so I can't tell why/what you are after from #o as such.
Drop by one of those days in #o for a chat, there's no better substitute for that to figure out the whole situation really.
During my previous two breaks, I did manalone yes. One of my proposals is that I not manalone on the next break by supporting one of the projects going on in #ossasepia. What I would be after in that case would simply be the opportunity to work in a sane, meaningful environment for the cause of sound money, and to perhaps make a name for myself.
Regarding the other proposal, in which I would attempt to tackle the sales aspect of consulting, I would be after guidance in improving my communication skills.
The third proposal was a way for me to start contributing immediately, however little, without waiting until my current contract is over. What I would be after in that case is exactly the same as in the first proposal above. If it worked out, I could return to it when I needed to take up another contract.
> When MP says the wife "begs for some checks" he means checks as in a check to her stupid behavior. Quite the opposite of a check as in sending her cash, lol.
Holy shit you're right. Exegesis fail.
Thanks for the good wishes.
In your answer above as in the text itself, you left the core of it unanswered really. Until and unless that core is faced and addressed, the results will quite continue to be the same as they have been until now. No amount of mitigation can work all that well in the long term and moreover, there's very little mitigation you seem to find space/time for to start with (and in all likelihood, as time passes, even that will be increasingly squeezed out).
I had the impression you were moving to CR or somewhere else - didn't that work out or what's the idea/status with that?
> I had the impression you were moving to CR or somewhere else - didn't that work out or what's the idea/status with that?
I obtained temporary residency status, which is a step towards obtaining permanent residency, after two years. I can't yet move to CR. I need to wait until my wife gets out of law school, which will be in 1.5 years.
> and in all likelihood, as time passes, even that will be increasingly squeezed out
I hold the opposite view. As kid gets older, as wife exits law school and gets job, as the price of Bitcoin increases, I will have more time.
I am primarily owned by dependapotomus support. This will be over in 2 years. At the moment I can't think of a better approach than waiting law school out, in terms of the outcome of a divorce. Although, I should talk to a lawyer about that, which I haven't yet done.
The above says you think your current problems are really something that *happened* to you, none of your own making nor anything to do with your approach, it's just this and then that, gotta wait a few more months and a few more years and all will sort itself out.
I'll say the obvious so it's at least said clearly - nothing will really sort itself out, it rarely (if ever) does and there's a very good reason why. After all that passive wait, what you will have is less resources and otherwise simply an older -and more entrenched- version of the very same problems. Because the cause of the problems doesn't vanish and has nothing to do with either the price of Bitcoin or the age of your daughter or even the requests of your wife or whatever else you can come up with specifically at this moment.
For your option 1, you are essentially suggesting to work for your "client", which perhaps fits your existing relationship anyway since the way you say you have/had to be focused on them sounds more like being their employee rather than anything else. Why don't you actually get your own clients? I still don't get this part.
Option 2 doesn't really make any sense that I can see. At best I could see it perhaps as a sort of mitigation but it's more of a "keeping the pretense up" and as such it's not even worth a discussion.
Note though that the trouble is deeper than "the time available" and by the looks of it you are digging your way further into it, even avoiding any way out of it.
At this stage the only thing I can suggest is to go and talk to BingoBoingo, maybe see if you can write an article for Qntra in those 6 hours per week.
Six hours a week is probably enough to squeeze out a Qntra piece. Probably not enough to dig your way out of these holes, but it's probably enough to keep in communion. It may also help with the de-Guru'ing of your head.
The bigger confusion is why do you need temporary residency to not live in Costa Rica?
> The bigger confusion is why do you need temporary residency to not live in Costa Rica?
I am prepping. While I can't yet fully evacuate, I can build relationships in CR and build experience in CR so that when the time comes I am not an esltard with no contacts and a suitcase in the refugee caravan.
Additionally, while it is possible now to obtain residency relatively easily, in the future that may change.
Also curiosity - what does it take to get residency somewhere, in fact?