One of the best nights of sleep of all time… Eating a pound of beef liver, cooked perfectly medium rare, a bunch of why you ground beef from Costco, 70/30, I think hitting the socket around 7:30 PM, waking up at 7:30 AM, wow, that 12 hours of sleep? Anyways I feel reborn.
January 31, 2025… My 37th birthday! Wow, seeing it in type looks really big. Maybe I’ll be stuck at age 36, or 26, or 16 forever.
Anyways, towards my Zen training, I think a very very simple way to start life is when you wake up first thing in the morning, take your shower your bath whether hot cold or both whatever… And then when you start drinking your morning coffee tea, or maybe both, to just resist the distractions of profits loss, gains or whatever… To essentially have a practice of not exposing yourself to any information in the morning first thing in the morning, whether good or bad. This also includes checking Twitter, any news or social media, your financial accounts, your stock your bitcoin etc. 
If anything, the true ideal way to start the day is with your iPhone totally off, perhaps charging in the living room outside, off. And on top of that, if you need an alarm to wake up, just buy a standalone alarm on Amazon or something, to wake you up.
The worst way to start the day is checking your iPhone for email and notifications text messages etc.… The best mind is a fallow mind, the best mind is an empty mind. 
Why?
My thought is that with an empty mind, anything and everything can come in. With an empty mind, you let the vibrations of your own mind your own life experiences be the stimuli to strike new ideas within you.
Considering that we are all philosophers, yes you too, even Seneca at the age of four, he is already asking me a lot of questions on why things are the way it is in Korean, “weh?” The most beautiful three letter word in the English language! Why?
I think it’s hard because even now… Making it big, I’m starting to even rethink some thoughts about wealth. Practically and metaphorically I retired in 2017, when we are paying $320 a month in rent in Vietnam, and essentially Cindy and I were in a position in which I realize, we would never run out of money. Even though we ate out every single night, we’re at coffee shops all day… Our income even our “passive income”, far outstripped our expenses.
certainly things changed a lot since moving to LA, in which living expenses have gone up by a factor of 10 X, now our rent is $3200 a month, and also the cost of food due to inflation has gone up by at least 2X, beef ribs at Costco are now $5.50 a pound, whereas at the Costco business center even maybe three years ago it was only $1.99!
Anyways, certainly it is difficult to 10 X your income, leverage is difficult. But perhaps if you put your family on a bitcoin standard, you can get there.
Why 10x
My personal thought is let us say that bitcoin is like roughly $100,000 a bitcoin, what that then means is if you think ahead enough, when bitcoin hits $10 million a bitcoin, assuming that you are spartan with your money and not foolish, that means that easily, you could 10 X and 100 X your money from here. 
So let us say that you’re being paid $20 an hour, that means that actually you’re being paid $200 an hour, or better yet, $2000 an hour assuming you know how to save in bitcoin.
I had this thought maybe about three or four years ago, thinking about my friends who worked at Amazon etc., if you took your good tech salary, and just converted all your currency into bitcoin, you would have been able to retire at least five or six lifetime ago.
Now what
So it looks like the great shakedown is starting. But that then means is real life has hit the pan, and moving forward, life will only continue to become more extreme, more of volatile, more crazy.
And I actually had a thought… The reason why we new Spartans, we new Stoics, we new bitcoiners are doing so well is that actually, I think there is almost like kind of a natural selection bias which is happening here;
Those who can tolerate the most volatility, shall thrive the most.
Bitcoin will continue to be volatile, forever. And I think that’s the whole idea; those who cannot tolerate harness or even love volatility, cannot thrive. 
Living in a more extreme volatile world
Let us fast forward a bit, four years from now, 2029, when Trump is out of office. Don’t be shortsighted; no no no, there will not miraculously be some sort of savior liberal Democrat who comes in, “fixes“, or reverses everything. I think time and reality is like a one-way ratchet; when you crank up the volatility of real life and time in one direction, you cannot reverse it. 
For example, no no no, bitcoin will not drop down to $10,000 again. Or $6000, or $1000 or $100 of bitcoin. This is not how physics or thermodynamics works. 
For example, you cannot have water flow upstream, no matter how hard you may believe in it.
Bitcoin is physics
I think the hard thing for people to understand is the reason why bitcoin is such a paradigm shift is that it is the first bridge between the virtual the cyber and the real.
For example the whole notion of proof of work, the whole idea that you actually have to use real life and energy in the real world to produce, create, and mint a bitcoin, or even secure it, is a feature not a bug.
It’s kind of like producing another human life, having a child. The truth of the matter is if you want to birth a child, you need a “proof of work” in the real world, in real reality.
For example, you need a female mother, you need a male sperm, and you need the incubation phase, you cannot rush it, the mother must consume deep nutrition, you must birth the child.
And when the child is born, obviously you must nurse the child, feed the child, raise and care for the child.
You cannot digitally clone a child, or digitally birth a child, which is kind of like the whole idea behind “proof of stake”. 
Even life if you think about it, a human life, the reason it has any worth is that it is finite. Even if you had all the money and power in the world, you cannot as a man live more than probably around 122 years, certainly you cannot live 130, 150, or 1000 years. Even from a philosophical perspective — I don’t even like the idea of living that long.
Even if magically somehow we did invent something that allowed us to live to be 1000 year old, with a 26 year old body and a six pack… I think there’s a certain point in which you would just want to pull the plug. And not have to do it yourself.
Anyways, why is the mind so valuable?
First, I think raising Seneca, has been one of the most valuable and most precious things of all time. And, it has taught me more about philosophy and human nature more so than reading thousands of pages of philosophy.
For example, a simple observation; typically children never have to carry a backpack, a side pouch, anything in their pockets. Or their hands. As a consequence, they’re always running around! A child is never still and this is a good thing.
Also, a practical one; most children assuming that they’re under the age of four, do not carry an iPhone in their front pocket.
Let us see that the downside of having an iPhone or a phone in general is that once you pull it up and use it, typically it stops your movement. If you have an iPhone in your hand and you’re looking at it or working on it or checking something or reading something or listening to something, you’re not also doing a backflip.
As a consequence, a child has the ultimate mind; 100% free, present in the present moment.
If you think about it, what that that means is that a child is actually an ultimate zen master; a child is fully experiencing reality in the present moment, not thinking about the past or the future.
Certainly a child has memories; for example Seneca still remembers our experiences in Hong Kong, and that the 973 bus from Tsim Tsa Tsui (TST) takes us back to our hotel in Sai Ying Pun. And he remembers the colors of the metro lines, the blue one and the red one.
yet he doesn’t really “dwell” on the past. He is fully in the present moment, taking our Amazon boxes, asking me for tape, and creating trains of his own, connecting it to his cart, and training his constructed train all around the house.
Or he will take the expo dry erase marker marker eraser, and fly around the house like an airplane, not thinking of “utility“, or other things like that.
Even when you observe a child playing, climbing structures they’re not thinking about anything else, they’re just enjoying the climb!
How and when and why do adults get corrupted? 
They not like us!
I think one of the things which is the most shocking to me as a father having a firstborn son is that if you think about it… As a man, assuming that you have a child your first child is your son is a boy is a man, the heir to the throne, you should consider yourself blessed 1 trillion X.
Whenever you see families with three girls, no boys, you know what they were shooting for.
So this whole notion of a absentee father to his son is a very very bizarre thing. Once again, to me, even if you could take all the trillions of dollars on the planet, nothing in the whole universe is more valuable than my son. Or my relationship to him.
And this is where I think it is wise to hedge your influences from philosophers thinkers, or even zen monks who have never had a child, they may theoretically understand child’s mind, but until you have actually raised your own child, you shall never know. 
Not only that but until a man has had a son, man shall never know.
Why does this matter?
On the flight from LA to Asia, I finally had the privilege of finishing the Odyssey by Emily Wilson, excellent. In fact I’m starting to read all of her translations, even including the tragedies of Seneca.
One of the biggest ideas is Odysseus, his relationship to his son. Also what’s interesting to me is I just came to discover that actually, even though I had no idea, I guess Achilles also had a son?
Anyways, how then this becomes interesting to be is that in America at least, and in the west, we are trying to think that this whole notion of a nuclear family, husband and wife, at least two kids, white picket fence, etc. But if you think an ancient Greek times, Kings had like 10 to 20 children, I think even one of the funniest stories of Hercules is that he was somehow able to impregnate like 50 daughters of this one king?
Anyways, I say don’t stop trying. If you’re a man, try to birth at least one son. And even if you cannot, that’s OK, most likely your daughters will one day birth a son and you’re fine. A grandson having a grandson is like the same as having a son. 
Goals
So then, proceeding in our life, what is our goals?
First, certainly philosophy is a noble goal. To spend your life pioneering thoughts, ideas concepts etc., that will benefit you your wife your kids, the future of the human race is a noble impetus to life.
Even now that I think about it, I feel like I have lived at least 10 lifetimes, and I am so grateful.
In moving forward, certainly everything in life is an ululation, and that is great!
Some current thoughts:
- How to inject more of volatility in your life, assuming that the more volatility you have in your life, the “more” better your life.
- What is better, to have $1 million of bitcoin, or $1 million of micro strategy stock?
- New thoughts on fitness exercise weightlifting, etc.?
- New modes of living thinking and being? The dynamic range of living in the states versus abroad in Asia?
Ignore politics
Simple thoughts: never read the news, the only thing that you should interrogate is bitcoin, Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy news. Because the only news which should concern you is in regards to your money nothing else.
ERIC