Letter from the Editor

Today marks a relaunch, a rebirth for me in a way. It's been 18 months since I lost my last job, and I've spent that time trying my hand at various things and dreaming up ideas for what I am going to do with the rest of my life. I've social isolated myself and tested the limits of my marriage and family bonds, and basically cut myself off from most social interactions.

I've been blogging for over twenty years now. Ten of that with some regularity, but I went offline about two years ago while I was at my last job, for confidentiality reasons. One piece of advice that I read so many years ago was from a blogger who suggested just writing without anyone knowing who you were, so that you could be your true self without fear. I've taken that advice, although I'm not sure it was the correct choice. Pseudo-anonymity has gotten me pretty far, but then again I am a gen X white male, so maybe I'm a fail son and have just been getting along. What can I say, I married well.

Kidding aside, I got a good start in school with an engineering father and a mother who was into way too many hobbies over the years, but the thing that changed my life was a 4th Grade computer class with a man named Bill Moore, where we programmed BASIC on Apple IIe (two-E) computers. That changed my life trajectory in so many ways.

Know that saying "do what you love and you'll never work another day in your life"? My first real job was doing tech support for an internet service provider, troubleshooting modem connections over the phone. That led to a stint at Gateway, doing the same thing but for the entire computer. Walking grandma through reseating her video card if we had to. There were dark ages for a while, but then one day I walked into a computer sale and repair store as a customer and walked out an employee. Four years later one of the managers and I owned the place. We ran it into the ground slowly, over the next four or five years. It took years for the two of us to pay off the debt after.

I did a stint in corporate, for a Fortune 500 company. Started at tier III tech support, moved over to business analyst and application admin. Started investing money in stocks, forgoing managed mutual funds for a Motley Fool approach to self-management. Netflix was one of the first, Amazon, Google, this was before Blockbuster folded and FAANG was even a thing. I did well.

In 2008, when bitcoin was invented, I was working for the first of two managed services companies that I worked for. IT support as a service for small businesses. I'm not sure when I first heard about bitcoin, I'm sure I heard about the Silk Road back in those days, probably 2012 when it first started getting big. I've always had my nose to the grindstone when it comes to weird, cutting edge tech like that, but it wasn't until later, circa 2014, that I really started getting into blockchain. I had access to GPUs so I started mining shitcoins, as bitcoin was already ASIC by then. I managed to roll those up into something called Ethereum, which I got into when it was still thirty cents. By January 2018 ETH was $1500, and crypto had my full attention. I saw the power of Number Go Up technology, and held on all the way down the following crash. I was not dissuaded, as I understood the tech and the ramifications. I was a true believer. I started accumulating Bitcoin and Ethereum paycheck by paycheck. DeFi was just getting started.

By the time 2021 came around I was ready for it. I studied risk management and made a plan to take profits this time around, and started blogging about reFIREment, which is financial independence via crypto. I had implemented ways of purchasing crypto through tax-advantaged accounts, and was doing very well. I told my boss of 8 years that I couldn't afford to work for him anymore. The opportunity cost of not doing crypto was too great. Three months later I was unemployed and free to do what I wanted. I started learning Solana.

Eight months later I was hired by a web3 project as a blockchain developer. I quadrupled my salary. My wife and I were well versed in the FIRE methodology by this time and I put all of our extra money in BTC, ETH, SOL. I actually wound up working as the PM in charge of the DAO project, and that lasted for eighteen months before the 2021 crash forced me out of a job.

GPT had just come out and I'd taken to working on genAI, so I kept doing that, researching and playing with everything related, looking for business ideas. About six months ago all that died, and it's been rough. I'm fine, financially, but it's been hard waiting for the arrival of the 2024-2025 bull. Bitcoin gives you a long-term mindset, and anyone who's been around as long as I have will tell you that you DO NOT sell your bitcoin ever, especially not more than you have to survive. I've been testing those limits and have been such the miser, as my wife and kids will tell you. I was raised poor, I've been homeless, and you don't sell your lifeline. Bitcoin is generational wealth, mark my words. The rest of it, not so much, so I've been liquidating everything that was left over from 2012, various projects that did well in 2021 but weren't core tokens like BTC, ETH, or SOL.

This has all put a strain on my wife, who's been holding a civil service job for 18 years. I basically fuck off all day, take the kids where they need to go, cook and clean. I go wherever my ADHD brain takes me, which recently has been exploring the used car market for late-model Subaru. I've been going to the salvage yard, thinking about opening a garage. Part of me thinks I'm thinking too small, but my mindset is that the bull is gonna come, and I need to be ready to roll. Last cycle I set myself up with a year's salary, I want to come out of this one where I won't have to worry for four years. Let's just say I know what my FIRE number is, and I'm very close.

About two months ago I settled on an income plan, selling about $150 of SOL a day to cover bills. Less recently I'd been selling off chunks of tokens, trying to figure out what my spend was and keep our budget under control. It put me under immense stress, as the thought of spending money on frivolous things is anathema to me. I'd say a good deal of energy was spent checking the price of crypto and figuring out how many weeks I can go before I actually start selling off my corn. Of course you would say, get a job, you bum, but my last job has completely spoiled me from actually looking for a job. One must come to me. Unfortunately I haven't been any of the places where a job would find me.

I signed off Facebook years ago, and gave up Twitter early this year. I've taken digital minimalism to its extremes. I'll admit that besides my wife I probably have 4 people that I talk to on a regular basis, and that's fairly sporadic. I'd probably have gone off on a retreat if I didn't have kids, so I try to talk to people at the gym and pretty much keep to myself. But you know what they say about all work and no play. It's been rough, let's just say I need to get out more.

I took my old blog offline the other day. I've been doing it for over twenty years now, but most of it is dead hyperlinks and old memes. I wrote a lot about crypto and how I was doing what I was doing, and I journaled throughout COVID about what was going on. I pulled the stats the other day, and we're talking about hundreds of thousands of words a year. I took it all down and have archived it with the journals I've been doing since March. I've also been writing a draft of my first novel, a space opera. I haven't published anything during these last months, I've fretted about it, felt like a failure.

I need to start again.

We knew the catalyst for this bull would be the election. It's been a week now, and bitcoin and the crypto markets have taken off like even I can't believe. The reckoning of America has begun, AI is nascent, and I think we're headed straight into the crisis described in the Forth Turning. I don't know if this is helpful advice, but there's a phrase I've heard repeated this last week, "pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will," which I am taking to heart.

I spent several years in politics. I think I was advocating for marijuana legalization before Bernie came around, but in 2016 I wound up being a delegate for Bernie at the DNC, and ran for state office after on a push to expand Medicaid here. I lost, but Medicaid passed, and I took another stab at it two years later before losing in a primary the following year. I turned with my tail between my legs after that, and sat out after 2020 so that I could focus on making some money. That seemed to work out, but as last Tuesday has made painfully clear, I am obviously out of touch with your average American.

Something must be done though. I am now in my mid 40s, my parents are well into retirement, and I see the age of people in local leadership around me, and I know it's time for me to step up. I'm not sure I've been setting a great example for my kids, as they just think daddy needs to get a job. I'm trying to show them the way, independence through asset ownership and business entrepreneurship, but I don't have anything to show them for the fruits of my labor. Neither of them have inherited my love of computers and programming. My hobbies change every six months, and lately it seems like I can't finish anything.

So I need to focus. I need some touch with the outside world on my own terms. I need a blank space to redefine things and serve as a catch all for whatever the hell it is I'm doing. I'm not really doing a good job defining it, so I guess I'd better show you instead.