Centralized Responsibility for Decentralized Systems

I'm at a pretty important crossroads, and I just can't get a bit of work done until I nail down a little bit of what's going on right now. Basically, my efforts are becoming extremely centralized. I am pushing everything hard to the redline, and it's producing exceptional output and comprehension at the cost of my sanity.

There is an impending light ahead with a response from the Commission next workweek. It won't be the end of things, but rather the start of significant newfound documentation efforts. But it will be the terminus ending of all my mental speculation.

I've been trying to find the time to sync up my physical notes for three straight weeks, but I just keep going head-first into the immediate life-or-death politicking work. I'm done with new relations, but I still need to wrap up the ties I've been working on all these years. We'll get the results needed for the community and jump from them as a springboard into the hardcore asynchronous (relaxing) engineering.

One thought I've had

Can I have a centralized responsibility to develop decentralized systems? Could my role be to centrally coordinate governance and operating systems designed for distribution? Distribution is such a far goal from decentralization that it sets a bar.

I want to reach that bar. I want the highest quality system configured here, because I know that the founding (centralized) efforts (among our small group) will stand as the foundation for the most important tower. I refuse to watch it lean come Armageddon (with material layering built on top by independent actors) because we refused to dig all the way to bedrock.

But man, I've never gone so deep on anything in my life. Fuck me, this is... wehvw! I recall this feeling from AP Chem in high school, and I'll remit that story for connection.

Chemistry¹

I signed up for all AP courses in junior year (and others) because obviously why not. I also ran cross-country and track for the duration of this year, which related because the chemistry teacher was the wife of my coach, who taught AP stats. Bullshit GaTech class scheduling had me taking stupid business statistics freshman year because it was the only class available to fit my schedule, so I wasted it away designing marketing microsites on ClickFunnels.

I worked really hard in AP Chem just like all my other classes, but it had the unfortunate timing of being right around when the market opened, as lamented in the INventure characterization intro. And, um... I'm sorry but the stock market came first. At least it did back then, when I would literally make phone calls for trades in the middle of class, which eventually landed me in detention and repetitive hot water.

Notwithstanding, I migrated to the back of the class and kept charts up on my school-provided laptop vis-à-vis Yahoo Finance.² It was fun, but I still did all the class things like labs and note-taking. I made up for intermediate attention through studies and homework later on to the best of my ability.

While I haven't kept my high school transcripts handy, memory serves that I wound up with a B in there. I sort of let my grades slip after junior year because it wouldn't show up on college applications, and I started realizing how ridiculous central hierarchical education was once I began writing the manuscript. And I never had a C.³

Because I tried so hard (and a lot of test corrections), the teacher gifted me an AP Exam study manual. For those not familiar, the AP Chemistry exam is notoriously challenging, with the lowest (Afaik) rate of high scores (<15% compared to 40–60% for 4+ iirc) among standardized final testing. So I studied it hard alongside class materials for everything I could muster coming up to graduation.

I did well on my other classes. I could check, but I don't really care. It was enough to get at least two college credits, but for some reason GaTech didn't take my 5 on stats, so I just took a test to get out of the class in a professor’s office there.⁴

Despite my best efforts, I got a 3 on the exam, which is supposedly pretty good (again like top 80% is the band here). But GaTech only accepted 4s or 5s, so I had the joy during COVID of taking literally the exact same class over again for the small cost of many thousands of dollars to my parents. That was such a stupid waste of time that I really checked out of school from that point forward, knowing how ridiculous this crap was to get a centralized piece of paper for what?

Often these things take time. I know we're getting over a lot of hurdles set up for the Syndicate since day one. I appreciate the progress and our chance to lead the new industry together in a form dedicated to collaboration over literal theft.

Effecting Productivity

Look, I don't know what other singular innovators do to keep themselves going. But I just feel completely overloaded with the massive recent stimulation to get more out before looming deadlines. Central deadlines effected by those unversed in async.

I don't even know whether to classify it as work, life, or teams anymore. Hell, I'm at the point that I seriously contemplated (after hours and hours of strenuous work depleting my mental energy) what it'd be like to have an office building I could put all my computer stuff in and just leave at the end of the day so that I could mentally separate myself from thinking requirements at night. Of course, that was well into the early morning.

It's too much between the coffee, loud music at the gym, and lack of food. I need to—and will—stake a material break once the dust settles on this Commission work. Consider this my OOO notice, because the small weekends we've had just aren't enough.