It’s been a chilly, but beautiful week here in Stockholm. The conditions have been alternating between Fall and Spring, and that weather is something I haven’t experienced in a while. Coming from a daily 90 degrees in Puerto Rico it’s amazing to wear a light jacket. I’m staying in the hipster area of the city, Sodermalm, and it’s pleasantly peaceful. I do enjoy the loud and celebratory culture of Puerto Rico, but it’s nice to have some quiet time too.
This past week feels like one of those weeks that not much happened, but the ideas that I dreamed up could be life-changing. I had the opposite week the week before where some bad financial things happened, but I’m working to hard to make sure that it will be just an interesting memory someday. I’m not sure why I need the equivalent of near-death experiences to motivate me sometimes, but I honestly can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much energy and excitement for the work that I’m doing.
I’ve been coding and researching 7-days a week, even putting in an hour last night while having a drink at my girlfriend’s sisters’ condo, as well as all day today (Sunday). I go to bed and wake up with new questions, potential solutions, and more grandiose plans for my trading. I’ve also been working on my organization, in particular breaking up some of my bigger ideas up into distinct projects, and being mindful to create a logical order of work so that I’m not just daydreaming about something that is far down on my practicality list.
I was journaling today trying to question myself about what it is that got me so excited? Of course I want to make money, especially after a terrible past month, but it goes beyond that. I’ve been doing this for a while now, and my motivation usually ebbs and flows, but this is something far beyond my past ambitions. I think what has gotten me really excited is the prospect of building out truly creative systems (which itself will require a lot of creativity) with the potential of going beyond just the cryptocurrency world. It feels more like writing a novel with the assistance of AI to help me come up with exciting plots, than it does doing math/programming/traditional work. It’s so much more exciting having a target that requires things that are just beyond the edge of my current abilities, but knowing I have the skills to learn/create everything I need if I continue to apply myself. I guess the bottom line is the past few years I’ve been in a tiny niche that I got good at, but didn’t see much room for growth, and didn’t feel that I could do much better than I was. Now I’m going to still work hard on improving that niche, but begin to use that as the building blocks to see how far I can go.
I believe that’s beyond my quota of gushing about vague ideas and fantasies I have for the day. I’ve also finished a few books that I thought I would recommend.
For my spiritual readers I can strongly recommend “Falling into Grace” by Adyashanti. I had no clue who this guy was before, but I was blown away by how much this spoke to me. Meditation/enlightenment has been something I’ve been very interested in over the past year (and as typical I find myself reading about it just as much/more so than working towards it) and have read a fair amount of people trying to put words to the experience. The previous books I read I thought did as good of a job as possible, but something was off for me. “Falling into Grace” finally felt like the first time I read something that wasn’t trying to use fake science/potentially bring me into a cult/not overly flowery style. It’s still a bit of a mystical/faith thing to talk about, but Adyashanti’s style really worked for me. I bought his short book “The Way of Liberation” that has the purpose of being a purely practical book towards enlightenment, but I need to stay in the Matrix just a little longer… Once I get some of these major trading projects further along I plan to shut my brain off more. In the meantime I’m still doing my normal meditations, and working towards trying to be more conscious instead of going into weird daydreams about dumb things like Michigan Football.
In the fiction world, I finished “Recursion” by Blake Crouch. I had previously read his book “Dark Matter”, which was very enjoyable, and I’d recommend first. With “Recursion” I enjoyed the genre and theme more so than the last quarter of the book. The book went through different levels of excitement for me, but the fact that I finished it must mean it was pretty entertaining. The book is about time travel, a genre that I often enjoy, but it’s done in a different way than I’ve read about before. Without saying anything about the plot it definitely made me stop a few times and consider different philosophical ideas, as well as question if my life is what I want it to be. That’s always a good thing.
Since I’ve been busy nerding out on the computer I haven’t taken many photos, but I just snapped a photo of my current view in Stockholm for you.
Andrew Manser 