In reality we are still super-super early, but already not super-super-super early. Some would say this is sweetspot for action in terms of risk/reward ratio, right?

Most — if not all — of my biggest mistakes and regrets over the last 20+ years come down to not doing stuff earlier. Not getting first sats 5-7 years earlier (obvious). Not taking psychedelics to improve my biochemistry and mood 10 years earlier. Not moving from Windows to Mac OS 5 years earlier. Not getting rid of toxic and/or idiotic acquaintances 10 years earlier. Not reading powerful classics by Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Lao Tzu, James Allen 10-15 years earlier. Looking at all these things I was postponing for 5, 10, 15 years I'm a little puzzled. It seems brain's autopilot is to postpone everything vitally important. But as Niccolo Machiavelli's quote used in «Revolver» by Guy Ritchie says: «There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy»

Work and commerce are like a video game, but with real money and for that reason more interesting. By remind yourself of this view (which I personally had adopted from the start of my working life in 2005) you get tired much less and gain energy from work much more often.

The two books I recommend and gift to people the most right now are «As a man thinketh» by James Allen and «Tao Te Ching» by Lao Tzu. Both I read shamefully late. Both have the rare effect similar to injecting your brain with nootropic drug (like NZT from movie «Limitless»). Both stood the test of time (first is 100+ years old, second — 2000+ years old) Both should be re-read multiple times.

I have first read about importance of social circle in forming one's personality and reality in self-help books as a teenager — and even without reading understood it just by looking around. Yet I have excluded the last two toxic, radioactive people from my own social circle only 9 months ago — less than a year! Why so late? As I understand now, it seems that I used to have major problem with co-dependence (and probably still do to an extent) and also was used to and, honestly, addicted to frustration and arguing. But accumulation of positive factors (better sleep, eating, intellectual diet, management of resources in all forms) caused me to at last break it off with my last two radioactive acquaintances. As title of one of the manuscripts I'm working on right now says «Everything influences everything».

Alby (https://getalby.com) lets you choose a permanent lightning address (similar to e-mail address) — which Wallet of Satoshi generates for you randomly. Such wallet generated in Alby can be then imported into Blue Wallet and Zeus (as of now). It works and it’s a good promise of things to come on Lightning protocol.

Beating procrastination is tricky - even for a person very conscious of it, who read and even wrote a lot on the subject, like me. As I mentioned before I was procrastinating starting to use and understand Bitcoin for 12 years - and might have been procrastinating it still if Putin didn't invade Ukraine and bury Russia in western sanctions (and the reasons my brain generated for procrastination were absurd - like for a couple of years I stopped process of buying first sats at the step of choosing the address type - which is a good argument to have only one address type in a mass market wallet, by the way). How long I was procrastinating learning to play poker is harder to tell, but at least the last couple of years I did it. A year ago in January I downloaded and watched some courses on Poker and borrowed a poker playing set from a friend - but haven't played ONE game for a year after that! Right now I'm happy to say I have beat this process of procrastination by finding the lightning poker site https://lightning-poker.com/ It is kind of dead and unpopulated for a lot of hours of the day right now, but it has a cool minimalist interface and has tables with very small buy ins (200 and 400 sats) which is very convenient for a beginner (I think it is better for fun and learning process to play this game for real money from the beginning, and sats are perfect currency for this right now). I think it will get more popular and maybe even this post will help this. By the way, if you know and can recommend either other similar poker sites or clients, or just some resources on poker you think are valuable, write them in replies to this post.

Pondering the reasons I didn't get into Bitcoin - of which I knew from the very beginning from libertarian podcasters - much earlier, I find these key reasons, which, in my opinion, are quite typical: 1. There were no Michael Saylor and Saifedean Ammous to explain to me the unique value proposition of Bitcoin as improved digital gold (sadly most gold bug libertarians I was listening to couldn't clearly articulate it - and many do not understand it to this day). 2. My brain extremely exaggerated how complicated it is to use. For some reason I thought I would lose my private key even though I rarely lost info in the past. Also I let myself become confused by 3 types of addresses - for a couple of years, no joke, I was always interrupting my first attempt of buying sats at the point of choosing address type in the wallet (even though in reality any of the address types would work and there would be very little difference). By the way, this is a good reason to recommend newbies wallets with only one address type and minimal element of choice in general. 3. I was spoiled by convenience of relatively stable, mature and plugged in Russian financial system which existed before 24.02.22 (if not for the invasion and following sanctions I might have been still finding an excuse to postpone my first steps). Paradoxically as a libertarian dreaming of the day money will become private it took me 14 years to realize that honest private money had already been created in 2008! Funny to think about how even those actively looking for something can be mentally blind to it for long periods of time. P.S.: Will greatly appreciate zaps to help me meet my weekly BTC accumulation goals (and maybe also to play some poker with). Thanks.

A little ashamed to admit it, but after knowing of Bitcoin since 2008-2009 from libertarian podcasters like Tom Woods (even though I didn’t understand it’s unique value proposition as an improved digital gold until very recently), I only got into stacking sats after Putin invaded Ukraine and Russia was kicked off from Visa, MasterCard, WU and PayPal. Right now my goal is to deposit 250’000 sats a week (which would add up to 1% of BTC a month) — which was no problem at $16’000 per Bitcoin but is a little more challenging now. So I will appreciate zaps helping me with this modest goal and will try to write something useful here, maybe share knowledge and experience in practical areas like online selling, time management, financial psychology, self-motivation etc (I mostly create content on these topics in my native Russian language, but maybe Nostr is a chance to practice writing in English).

At last watched «One Hour Photo» by Mark Romanek with Robin Williams in the lead role from 2002 (only took me 20 years to get to this one, which might be for the best, at least I watched it in 1080p, widescreen and English language, not on VHS from a video rental with a cropped 4:3 picture and Russian dubbing). Was really surprised and impressed by it’s modern Kubrickian style in the vein of Jonathan Glazer and Sean Ellis. Williams was brilliant and reminded me of young DeNiro in «Taxi Driver» and «King of Comedy», but even more realistic and understated (the film itself is in the same subgenre as these two — character study of a disturbed loner).

Watched «M3gan». A very cool b movie in the vein of «Upgrade» (also by Blumhouse) and «Black Mirror». A rare example of humor and absurdity not detracting from tension. Written by the same crazy woman who wrote «Malignant» by James Wan.

In my first Nostr post I will name my 5 favorite films of 2022. Because why not. 1. «Watcher» by Chloe Okuno. A masterpiece of Hitchcockian hyper-minimalism. Can’t wait to see what Okuno directs next. 2. «Execution» by Lado Kvataniya. An encyclopedia of serial killer genre with enough plot twists for a couple of seasons of a TV show. 3. «The Banshees of Inisherin». Undeniable even if cryptic and perplexing. 4.«The Batman» by Matt Reeves. A very impressive exercise in grounding the reality of Gotham. First Batman film that works on psychological level for me. Brilliant acting from Dano, Farrell and Turturro. 5. «Kimi» by Stephen Soderbergh. Not as minimalist as «Watcher» (although close and quite similar in many aspects) or as encyclopedic as «Execution», but still very enjoyable and fully self-aware and mature modern Hitchcockian thriller.