Investing in Self / Business

Today I realized—it hit me—that I've invested nearly 10% of my net worth in a principle. Worded another way, I've spent thousands of dollars—10% of NW, half a year of split rent—for the privilege of writing an article expressing the point I'm trying to make. Like, damn, geez, that's kind of crazy to think about.

For context, it was the TX in the Rahim reply to the Stellar interleaving chat, although calling it an interleaving discussion is almost facetious. Granted, I had to pump the thing out in five days. Fast publishing deadlines work well for static work like news, documentation, or fiction (probably on that last one—lol, idk).

But for long-term arguments that have material, long-term implications, I think it's childish to rush the preparation and such. Like, if I'm going to draft something that requires the entire U.S. government legislature to approve, you'd think that shit would be airtight after extensive review. In bringing up that argument, I think of the EDGAR and OCC comments alongside the looming imminent collapse of Cede.

Self-Defined Deadlines

These are deadlines that have no shared social commitment. As told in many course modules, that's a great strategy to do things fast, push yourself, and grow as a person. But for work you are very adeptly prepared for, I believe this might fall short in the self-organizing route.

There is, of course, the argument that "work expands to fill the time given to it." IDK—maybe, sure, fine (?) in the case of reasonable timeframes. But I believe this thinking falters, crumbles, or doesn't really work when it comes to decade-long goals.

For instance, I've assigned certain large tasks I want done for each of the past three years on the pink calendar behind my desk. But I only realized years after the fact that I actually achieved these objectives, even though I didn't really understand how at the time. And no, this isn't gaslighting myself—lol. It's just the explicit reality that the unknown path to an ambitious goal involves twists and turns you can't plan for years in advance. (If you can, you might be aiming too low.)

Based on External Deadlines

With these past SEC comments, there've been material stressors limiting my submission window because I learned about them so late in the game. Indeed, I submitted the OCC one a day late intentionally and had to fix a typo in note XYZ¹ when quickly referencing a page for a Discord chat the next day. And of course, aside from other typos later in the doc, I fucking spelled TAD wrong—the way I always misspell "transfer."

Gosh, that one was funny, but it wasn't professional. Albeit, I had no choice given the time constraints. But this is kind of my point with external deadlines. I found that they worked really well with my "assigned" classmates whom I asked to edit a book chapter or two—since this was an actionable, direct TODO with a set number of labor hours implied in a single pass.

But that's not really the case for creative work. I wonder if I would still need a deadline to find the motivation to write a new book. I doubt it. It's just time now because I'm finally doing fucking meaningful work. Man, the education system is horribly centralized with all the implications that entails. This kind of deadline can sometimes feel arbitrary and totalitarian, as if some magic man inside my head can somehow tell me when work needs to get finished by.²

Based on Internal Deadlines

Internal deadlines are cool, and I've had a few recent experiences with them based on telling people I'll get something to them by a certain date. In one instance, I said I needed a week to find a document, but that legal firm didn't get it to me. It ended up taking an extra day to get it myself, and the person on Discord couldn’t have cared less; in fact, it spurred a lively discussion that night in VC.

Another time was getting 1558 written based on a commitment in the FxDAO server. That was a really fucking hard deadline that drove me to live off donuts and sugary shit the whole week so I could stay alert enough to write so damn much. Needless to say, I had to make major humanitarian redactions for the sake of time that would've materially strengthened my argument.

And the third time was the GNU Affero post regarding the first WhyDRS org item, as communicated in the community server. That one took a lot of preparative research over the months preceding, which helped configure things properly—but 1558 took years of work to articulate, so I don’t think that's very different. Anyway, I went back to the junk food fuel for that one too, and I'm happy with how it turned out. So I guess it just depends on your ability to judge exactly how much time you'd need for something.

Based on Unknown Deadlines

And of course, here we sit today with the looming threats of The Great Taking as the market hits record highs. God, I know exactly how this story plays out, and I'm so inexplicably frightened that it's going to happen before we get TAR in. It literally chills me to the bone and led me to cancel upcoming trips to visit family.

These guys have ruined it all, and here I am unable to parse through the terse sourcing material that doesn’t even have material elaborations yet. Seriously, it'll probably take me a solid week just to get through the California case items and another to adequately outline a response FN items outline for EDGAR's final rule. Maybe we'll get lucky, and the Rothschilds won’t pull out before then.

Seeing all the inflows to centralized services lately has me excited since people are learning more about the tech. I just wonder what more than 2021 it will take for them to open their eyes and realize the vast challenges deeply rooted in all the financial infrastructure. And again, I just sincerely pray we can get policymakers a working solution that doesn’t leave all the money, infrastructure, and power in the hands of these same assholes.