Anyone here living completely by your own rules? I'm deliberately not giving examples in order to not influence the course of discussion. Just interested in knowing what your rules are and how you're living by them
It's not very exciting but i guess it fits the description of your post of living by your rules. My wife found it very odd, tried to correct my routine a lot because I don't generally sleep on time with her but she has given up after 5 years.
I did work very hard after college when I created some SaaS sites that are paying for this lifestyle which includes lots of vacation and travel. I'm not very rich though (if I were in America I'd be poor i guess).
One of the downsides of this is that I find it very hard to do routine chores like going to the bank, or catching a flight. I also have never seen the inside of an office (i mean i have but i mean i've never worked in one or had a boss).
I sometimes feel that this is very bad and I should be more normal and then I try to force myself to sleep on time and do 8 hour work like normal people but it has never lasted more than a week. So now I've given up on that as I believe that it's just my center of gravity and it's unfixable.
I refused to obey to those social norms, which has caused several social connections to fade (especially in my original home country), as well as "disappointment" in my family, despite being successful in my career and many other areas of my life. However, I’m lucky enough that I found, for the moment at least, a woman as a partner who thinks the same as me, namely that love and companionship is enough to fuel life without having to “waste” it away raising kids or paying mortgages.
" You embody the death of our civilization. Have you ever felt gratitude for the systems which you count on to sustain you? "
This is exactly the kind of reaction that I am facing from social connections and family for living a "non-normal" life, where everybody tries to make me feel incredibly guilty for taking a decision of not having kids and pursue other activities in the incredibly limited amount of time I have on this planet.
IMHO, the best we can do with people is ignore them. This becomes difficult if they are close relatives like parents or siblings, should be relatively easy with others.
It's affordable. I live in Manhattan. And I'm working to be professionally published by a NYC Publishing House within the next three years, hence reason for wanting to be on scene. I'm 32
I know there are more conventional / logical ways to go about a thing, but you know.
And again, not by my own rules; everything outside how it seems is ordinary + demand law
I wish you the best of luck. I am friends with several published literary personalities and I can tell you it is not easy and took a lot longer than three years.
Thanks for the wishes. I don't doubt it may take longer than three years. But I've been @ it for 10+ already & have written / self-published what I believe is a great novel (like everyone;) But am without marketing. (What I need's discovery)
And if nothing happens, I'll just self-publish over and again
I wake most days around 8 but sometimes sleep in. One morning, I woke up to a Jack-Hammer going off about 10 feet from my head. Once up, I get going.
Drop my sleeping pack @ the Storage Unit, hop a Citi Bike, ride to gym, shower, meditate in the Tanning Booth. Sometimes I run. Staying fit / eating healthy (for the most part) is critical. From there I go to Tea or Coffee and write, write, write, check Hacker News, write, write, write, write.
Day-Job.
Once finished, go back to storage unit, grab pack. If it's raining, will head for scaffolding. If not, will go to one of my favorite spots. And from there I'll look up to the skyscraper windows, flashing w/ TV or Christmas Trees or people having dinner and wonder how the heck they got up there ;)
Had this discussion with an artist recently . He said to me that he’s not interested in a plan B, nor my thoughts about how to hedge the obvious risks in his life.
He said, he’ll make it, or he’ll pick up the pieces wherever he finds them at the end, and do something else.
It’s in a way embarrassing that what I find interesting about your story is the risk element and resilience. At the same time I know that risk is by far the least interesting perspective to it; yet the one that resonates most to comfortable sensibilities.
From your talk with the artist, it sounds he's essentially content with working on a portfolio as great & grand as he can to the end.
I think that's what we're all working on, albeit in our own way, whether it's through building a portfolio of Coding Languages to implement, or gathering a palette of experience to fuel our creativity. We all want those lightning-thoughts & Eureka Moments & to keep learning around the clock.
The "risk and resilience" elements may strike one's interest initially because they're at once, the most readily accessible to the imagination.
Without knowing any details or story-moments, the volatility element is obvious, and does sustain that thread of: 'What's next?"
However, imo, the most stellar instances so far have come from interactions with people along the way. (From mutually reaching out)
Talk to people - at random. If you wish to say something or participate, go for it. Be frank. Don't even think twice - just speak. That's what I'm really working on these days. It seems a default that we're all so guarded or shy or just don't want to enter 'uncharted territory of exchange'. But I sense there's worlds (multiverses;) of character in individuals that remain unexplored because we get stuck in the default for a lifetime.
On tough days, no matter what I'm going through, it helps me to remember: (1) To supersede my drama-rama (hence meditation) & (2) Be extra-open and curious about what I'm seeing take place around me - all happening newly and changing & miraculous all the time.
And when it comes to the grind, code or writing, get your kicks line X line ;)
I'm in a somewhat similar situation but I'm scared to leave too long of a gap. Not so much worried about the resume gap as falling off on networking and the other things that lead to getting more work. It seems like I'll probably end up working mostly continuously for the next couple years while pursuing FIRE.
It was after I made the amount of money I wanted that things got weird haha
Those are not stories, that's the industry. Right now most of it is based out of Waterloo with some in upstate NY but honestly the Canadians are wild - check out https://lysergi.com/ they are selling lsd pro drugs on the clear net!
The legal jargon on one of their pages is reminiscent of things I'd see in online pharma websites that sell viagra pills, modafinil, and the like. I'm not sure how the legalese holds up in court though, but trying to pass off as a research company is one vector of approach to try pass off as legit, I suppose.
Interestingly, a lot of these pharma websites are based in Canada. Maybe there's a law I don't know about? Regardless, if I were being incredibly paranoid, a website like this on the clearnet suggests honeypot to me, even though it's most likely not. But still... on the clear net, and I'm assuming chemicals are made in house? Other drug sites buy from India/Mumbai/Sri Lanka/Thailand and ship to their destinations.
I'm impressed that they have access to NMR and LCMS stuff too - or at least they say they do. Shits expensive to buy and maintain. No doubt they are probably operating in an academic chemistry lab.... though I don't blame them. A PhD stipend isn't exactly investment banker status, nor is research funding increasing.
I'm almost positive they operate out of Waterloo's lab or have significant access to their facilities. Otherwise I'm boggled at how they can make sure pure stuff in such quantities.
Hopefully, the psychedelic legalization initiatives in CO and OR will pass and the US can catch up again ;)
I'd be interested if they had tutorials to make your own, but I'm pretty sure they'd like to keep this a trade secret.
After the business took off and the money, countries or the countless short-term friendships stopped providing enough meaning for me I started looking for the next thing.
Now, I'm back on the same path that others never ventured off of. Close to my family & a handful of very good friends, with a great partner and a lovely daughter as of a few months ago. It's simple, it's beautiful.
Does that count as living by my own rules?
So my own rules (which I am working towards) would mainly be decreasing our minimal monthly expenses. This is hard in a country where the norm is to earn a lot, spend even more, pay the highest taxes in the world and where the government wants to make everything even more homogeneous.
Then, the social world can also impose constraints (such as prison, as zunzun pointed out).
The best you can do is try to arrange things so that the external stuff you can't avoid pinches as little as possible.
If a 10 on the Yudkowsky ambition scale is “I think I know how to hack the computer that the universe is running on”, I propose 9.5: I know how to hack the computer that my perception of the universe is running on.
[0]: https://joeyh.name [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18770213
1) I am finding sports betting difficult to scale, financially it is ok but not great. 2) Bookmakers are getting better and better every year. So am I, but I can imagine a scenario where they reach a stock-market like efficiency and it will be impossible to beat them (also, there is no growth like in stocks). I feel like I need to get some work experience under my belt and become more employable so that I have something to fall back on. 3) Bookmakers limit or ban winning players so there is the hassle of obtaining new identities (typically friends or family members who let you bet in their name) all the time. 4) I no longer like the industry and I am not proud of what I do. I live in central Europe where sports betting is legal but that is not the case everywhere else in the world. I have the dream of living in an English speaking country one day and that doesn't go well with my current "career". 5) I miss social interaction.
What line of work are planning to go into, return to? How will you represent the decade of pro sports betting on your resume?
I worked as a technical documentarist in the past and also in a managerial (non-technical) role for an online bookmaker. During the first three years of my pro betting career I also launched my own online sportsbook but that project failed miserably. Maybe I can use that to partially explain the huge gap but I am still undecided.
A strong desire for maths with an ability to tolerate programming, maybe look for a path into data science or machine learning. I see on this site or reddit or lobste.rs for free online courses for both all the time.
Regardless, I wish you luck and hope things go well.
On one side I have a list of things to do everyday (eat, drink, run, make bed, bathe, get dressed, call ma, be kind) On the other side I have a list of things to do when I am feeling down (eat a piece of fruit, have some water, calisthenics, go for a run)
The middle is reserved for things I find meaningful. At the moment it is empty except for at the top it says "this is water".
No we don't, and, moreover, there is no such thing.