I suspect there’s a significant difference between many people’s publicly portrayed #bitcoin  journeys and the private journeys they actually experience.

I think the journey is fairly commonly described as either a linear one of increasing knowledge turning into increasing conviction..

Or as a kind of hero’s journey where there’s an initial overconfidence, a subsequent crisis, and a redemptive triumph.

For me, personally, it’s really been neither.

My journey with #bitcoin  began almost exactly 6 years ago.

It’s been more like a volatile bell curve meme.

In the very beginning it was I’m a genius, this is the greatest idea ever, I’ve found it, and that’s that.

But the volatile, extended, mid-curve period was sneakily long and almost devious in the ways its emissaries of doubt would creep up on me. Usually at the moments of highest conviction.

I’m honestly not certain if it’s ever over. But I’ve mostly kept to myself for about a year, after I spent the previous years writing, going on podcasts, etc., and I can feel a real calm emerging.

The truth is that if you believe everything you hear on Twitter, if you allow yourself to be thoroughly influenced, thoroughly marooned in the echo chamber, your views will be more fragile than you realize, because they will never sustain a real, existential challenge.

I would also argue another truth is that too much “signal” can end up being no “signal” at all. You end up not guided, but instead scripted.

Like the Buddha, you have to scale the temple walls, you have to get outside your comfort zone, you have to question everything (including your heroes and those telling you to question everything,), and, most importantly, you have to wander a little bit.

Kind of like the Amish Rumspringa, too. (Which is also why I think when nostr:npub1rtlqca8r6auyaw5n5h3l5422dm4sry5dzfee4696fqe8s6qgudks7djtfs jokes about bitcoiners being like the Amish, there’s more than a grain of truth to that)

If you find yourself coming back, it’s a zen feeling.

6 years in, I’m more zen than I’ve ever been and, perhaps surprisingly, at a time when I’ve been saying less than I ever have.

And the journey is not over…