After two years of working predominantly from home, I am very slowly setting up my home office, although it has a lot to be desired. One of the problems I have had is lighting, as I am pretty much near constantly in remote meetings and the camera is always on, so I ended up buying a cheap ring light from Amazon, so that I don't look like Darth Vader in the calls. It has been pretty good considering the price and has the added benefit of acting as a normal light in the evenings that I can dim down, so I don't have to use the overhead lights, nor be blinded.
I don't like working from home that much, but there are benefits of not needing to commute or wear pants, but I do feel the sense of "always on", as I am almost literally sitting in front of a screen from when I wake up, to when I go to bed. I am pretty much always within reach, as most people who discord with me might realize too. It is not ideal in many respects, but hey, it is only for a few years, right?
Looking at Bitcoin the last few days has been "encouraging" in the sense that it is not dead, but it is also likely heavily tied to what is going on in Ukraine, so that is volatility based on a very volatile situation, which means the swings could be more severe than normal. Opportunity and risk always go hand in hand, do they not?
In that little corner of my imagination I like to call "crypto dreamland", as someone who doesn't hold much BTC, I am hoping that when that dream run does happen, it will pull the Alts along with it and focus the largest volume on usecase tokens that already have utilization. A bit more into HIVE would be nice, for example a 2B market capitalization would put the price around $5, which is significant enough that I could consider working from home permanently, since I might not need to go to work at all - even without selling.
I get about 30 HIVE a day in curation, so if I could get debt free with some of the capital, I would be able to cover living expenses with the rest, after tax. Though, I suspect that even if HIVE made it to 5 dollars, it isn't going to stay there long enough for full retirement - at least not for me in this country. I guess the goal would be to be able to cover my IRL incomes with crypto earnings so that work wasn't compulsory, even though I will keep working. Retirement for me is more psychological, as the "retirement" is of the need to work, not the work itself. I would like to retire from needing.
Still, while crypto dreamland keeps dreaming and my fingers are crossed, there is always that voice in the head that undermines my belief system, saying that while "dreams coming true" is possible, it isn't possible for me. I am guessing I am not the only one who hears this voice, but I am not sure how many people are willing to admit to it. And then, what happens if it does come true, where does that voice go, or does it just change its approach and instead of saying it can't happen, it moves to *"it can't last".
I suspect this is part of a scarcity mindset and why there may never be the sense of "enough", as the voice encourages the continual building of buffer, no matter how much is already in reserve. Perhaps this is part of being human however, where our pathology compels us to collect, to store, to build reserves - like our craving for sugar. Even if we are surrounded by carbohydrate, our body has evolved to hoard it, so we can keep eating until we are ill, in the moment or over a prolonged period of time. Sugar in nature is scarce for a hunter gatherer society, plentiful for a society filled with candy factories and fridges.
Is "money" plentiful? Is there really abundance available when resources are finite? This is something that is going to increasingly enter into the conversation about crypto, as while we can generate all the tokens we want, for them to have value, they have to be tied to something we value, something we need. This can come in many forms including NFTs to game with like for Splinterlands, but at the end of the day, we still need rooves over our head and food in our belly, as well as various other goods and services that all require supply chains to enable them.
Money fails as a tool, no matter how much is held, if it doesn't buy what is needed.
It reminds me of a scene from The Pianist.
The cost of the candy isn't the thing to focus on, it is the question "What do you think you are going to do with the money?" No matter what the boy gets for the caramel, the money is worthless to him, yet he is insistent on the 20 złoty, which is about 2 dollars today, so 70 years ago, was a massive amount. He can charge all he wants, but he has nowhere to spend it, it will not buy his freedom.
"Freedom" - it is what we all want, isn't it? Yet, whenever we get a slight taste of it on the air, we will get scared of the risk that freedom offers and look to enslave ourselves again, one way or another. Financial freedom is not actually being free, it comes packaged with responsibility, risk and fears. Free from relationships comes burdened with needs and desires. The only way we can be free is to need nothing, want nothing, own nothing and have no attachments whatsoever, yet what does that life look like? Is it still human?
Somewhere there must be a balance point, yet it is much like the light ring, in the center, there is darkness, a void that doesn't get filled, because the eyes are blinded by the light.
In my own experience, there is no such thing as freedom in the human experience, it is an illusion. However, we can improve our own experience from detaching ourselves from the irrelevant, but that doesn't necessarily mean the material.
We all collect something.
Its value is determined by us.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]