Microdosing Day 9: Epiphany

The best thing about this microdosing adventure is that it makes you feel absolutely terrible about all the shit that's wrong with your life. Instead of turning to escapism in the form of [recreational] drugs, food, and stupid TV shows, it shoves your shortcomings in your face so violently that you have no choice but to intensely suffer OR take action and start changing your life.

It's not "fun" like a roller coaster is fun. It's more like an intense workout.

In fact, it's hard for me to believe that I only started this little experiment just over a week ago. It feels like much longer and I can't help but feel that I've accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.

Another thing that I've noticed about myself is that I'm actually.. an extrovert? Strange to think about that being the case because the way I lived my life was generally to spend a lot of time by myself.

But yesterday when I was at one of these Jewish events, someone asked me where I was from and what I was doing in New York. I'm still the New Kid here, so I have this conversation a lot. I don't think I've met a single person here who has their own business who works from home. Not a single digital nomad in the three months I've been here. Which makes sense, because NYC doesn't seem like the type of place where they'd go.

So as I was going through the motions of having these surface level introductory conversations, I found myself telling these people that I had no idea what the fuck I was still doing in New York. Seriously, what am I doing here? I don't have a job here, I don't know anyone here other than Billy and the people I meet through him. I hate the cold weather. It's expensive. Too many fucking Jews everywhere.

Why am I still here?

The only thing that I could come up with is that here I actually have some semblance of a social life. But wait a minute, I thought I was an introvert? I thought I was the type of person who likes to stay at home and play video games and smoke weed?

When I think about it though, I actually fucking hate that shit. Why do you think I sold hair straighteners for so many years? Yes, the money was good. But the real reason I did it for so long was because I had the chance to talk to real live human beings for 8-12 hours a day, six days a week.

And when I was out last night chatting up random strangers, I realized that I actually have more fun out talking to people than I do sitting at home and doing nothing. Interesting.

See all these cool little realizations that happen on this LSD shit? Granted, I've been focused on self-development for a while now. But it's been in a more passive way, the type of way where you just watch videos and read articles and live your normal boring life. The type where you talk or think about wanting to change your life but don't actually do it.

And let me be real with you for a second: I fucking hate this city sometimes. It's cold, full of weirdo posers, expensive and most importantly... fucking cold as fuck. God I hate the cold.

When I was in the army, there were extended periods of time where we would be outside in the rain, freezing our asses off and unable to do anything about it. I remember one time we were doing some bullshit house-to-house combat exercise and it starts pouring rain in the middle of winter. Of course our officers wanted to look like tough guys so they made us finish the damn thing. And then we had to wait an hour for the bus to come and pick us up.

And don't even get me started on Matzpash...

Matspash is a base built into the side of Mount Hermon, the tallest mountain in Israel and conveniently located in the corner of Israel in between Syria and Lebanon. The first day we were there we all tripped out on the fact that from the entrance of the base we were actually above the cloud cover. We looked DOWN and saw clouds. Fucking insane.

This base looked like some fucking straight up James Bond shit. Literally carved out of a mountain, the thing was huge, full of tunnels and passages and lookout spots where young Israeli soldiers would waste hours of our lives at a time waiting to get killed by a Syrian attack helicopter.

To make matters worse, every day we'd have to get up an hour before dawn and stand by the exits to the base with the fucking door open and literally stare outside in case a Syrian regiment decided to come kill us. Apparently the hour before dawn is when the human body is weakest, and traditionally that's the best time to launch an attack.

So not only did THAT fuck up our sleep schedule, but a good chunk of our activity on the base was guard duty. We would literally just stand and stare out into the Syrian wilderness and wait for a foreign army to come try and kill us. I guess the idea was that if something happened, we'd be able to radio someone in time and let them know shit was about to go down.

What actually ended up happening was the mass depression of a full battalion of Israeli soldiers, kicking themselves for volunteering to join a combat unit.

8 hours guarding. 8 hours rest. Fucking terrible.

Oh, and the best part was that there was no hot water. Want to take a shower? Hope you like freezing water that dribbles out of the showerhead. Water pressure? What's that?

One day our officer called us for an impromptu inspection. The way it works is that they make you line up with all of your gear so they can check it at random. Your combat vest has 5-6 magazines, 2 canteens, a few emergency bandages and some other stuff I don't remember.

We were so depressed at the time that none of us really gave a shit if the Syrians came and killed us all. Anything would have been better than staying at Matzpash. So when our officer lined us up and found that none of us had any water in our canteens, he flipped his shit.

This guy was our second officer, a brand new guy out of the Special Forces and a real fucking asshole. New officers with no leadership experience expect people to do whatever they say without giving any reason why. "Because I said so, that's why."

And to make matters worse, this guy seemed to have forgotten that he was in the regular infantry now, not the SF. The purpose of the regular infantry is quite literally to occupy a position and point your gun in a certain direction and shoot the bad guys. SF needs to train for hardcore missions where they go behind enemy lines and do cool shit.

But this fucker rode us like a fucking donkey to the point where it was a running joke that our platoon got fucked in the ass at every opportunity, especially when compared to the other platoons. Looking back I realize that his "enthusiasm" was actually responsible for turning us into some hardcore motherfuckers, but at the time we all hated this guy's guts.

So when he saw that none of us had any water, he blew a fucking gasket and told us all to go outside. The ground was covered in FEET of snow and this dickhead goes, "Okay, everyone get into push up position. And take off your gloves."

We all kind of looked around at each other like, is this motherfucker about to punish us with frostbite? But then he yelled at us, "TAKE OFF YOUR FUCKING GLOVES."

So we obliged. But we didn't last long. After about thirty seconds our hands went numb. Then they started hurting like a bitch. All the while this asshole was yelling at us about how we were shitty soldiers who were going to get killed and wouldn't last five seconds in the Yak'sar (SF).

Some of the guys couldn't take it and actually started crying from the pain. Some stood up and basically said, "Okay, enough."

We went inside and that's when our hands REALLY started to hurt. Something about the blood flowing back into them, I don't know, but that shit really hurt like a motherfucker. Now a few guys were REALLY crying. Our Captain walked by and saw what was going on. He wasn't pleased. Even he thought it was too far, and we heard him shouting for our officer.

Nobody really approved of what he did. But you better believe that we all made sure to keep our canteens full after that.

Still, as we say in Hebrew, "yesh derech." Which basically means there's a right way to do things. Was this the right way? I don't know.

So yeah, I fucking hate the cold. But you know what? I'll put up with that shit for now I guess, even if it means I have to buy some winter clothes which I really don't want to do. I don't want to fucking live in New York man. What the fuck am I doing here? I want to be by the beach with the sun on my skin, the sound of the ocean in the background, hot girls in bikinis lounging around working on their tan.

But for some reason I'm still here. Why? The potential of this place? For what? To make money? I do all my work online anyway, I could be here or I could be somewhere else.

I really think it comes down to the social aspect of it all. No exaggeration whatsoever, but my friend Billy is literally one of the coolest and most well known young Jews in New York, which is actually saying a lot.

Oh, so today's also my birthday. 35 fucking years old.

I didn't want to make a big deal about it, but you know how Facebook will alert you when your friends' birthdays are coming up? I had a few people say, "Oh, it's your birthday next week? Let's do something?"

But I didn't want to. I even went so far as to make up some bullshit story and be like, "Oh, that's not my real birthday. I changed it on FB, that's my fake birthday." That shit didn't even make sense but they bought it. Who would lie about some shit like that?

But yesterday at the gym I had a sudden change of heart. I was like, you know what fuck this shit. It is my birthday and I'm not going to spend it in my fucking room by myself. I'm a tall, good looking white man in America with a six pack and monthly income that doesn't come in the form of government assistance. Why am I wasting time feeling sorry for myself? Like what the fuck is my actual problem?

I'll tell you what it was. A friend of mine pinged me yesterday and was like, "dog, are you okay? What the fuck is wrong with you lately? You keep writing all this depressing shit, like it's like a cry for help or something."

That stung me deep. While I do believe that there is some value in a redemption story, the redemption needs to actually take place in order for it to have any value. Nobody wants to just listen to you complain about why your life sucks all the time. Those people suck.

Also, I was watching this video where the guy talks about social media. He said that one thing you need to understand is that social media (and blogging, by extension) is not some activity that you should do to make yourself feel better. Catharsis won't get you anywhere. You are creating it for OTHER PEOPLE to be entertained, to have something to do. Social media is our new business card.

That got me thinking, because I've been using this blog (and my Instagram, sadly) as my emotional tampon for god knows how long. And that may have been fine when I was some nobody living in a hostel who was surrounded by people who would be gone in 3 days, but now that I live in a city with people that I fucking see twice a week, that's no bueno.

It's too much. I don't want to read a fucking novel by someone every goddamn day on Instagram when I'm trying to look at girls with giant asses and pictures of people's food. Get the fuck out of here with that shit. It's like when people post long ass rants on Facebook about some retarded shit that they care about. I read that shit and I'm like dude, get a fucking life.

Yet here I was, posting that exact style of content day after day, totally oblivious that I was actually doing it. And not just doing it, but doing it en masse. I was the biggest offender of shit that I actually claim to hate!

That realization, combined with the ping from my friend and the motivation to take action thanks to 10 mcg of 1P-LSD, made me think to myself, "fuck it, I'm gonna have a birthday party."

In the middle of my workout, I texted everyone I knew in the city and told them we were going out on the 25th and that they should come. To my surprise, they actually responded. Then I texted Billy and told him that we should go to this Jewish event. Then when we were at the event, I invited a bunch of random people I'd just met to come as well. And they actually said yes and seemed like they wanted to come. What the fuck?

The real problem isn't that there's anything wrong with me. Not trying to toot my own horn here but that's totally fucking delusional for me to even think that. I have so much going for me it's not even funny. My only problem is the cliched "fear of success."

But is that even true? I was watching one of the videos from SCBP 2.0 and the trainer said something incredibly profound: we spend so much time thinking about business, work and making money. We plan that shit meticulously, trying to figure out the perfect way to increase our income with the least amount of work possible.

The example that he gave, interestingly enough, was that of an internet marketer who got himself a nice little passive income stream so he could focus on practicing cold approach pickup. But the trainer (RSD Luke) said that this didn't make any sense.

In his professional life, he created a system for himself whereby he'd earn passive income, i.e. do a small amount of work for a massive result, and in his personal life he was doing things completely the opposite. He was just going around and approaching girls one by one.

This would be the equivalent of knocking on doors trying to sell something instead of selling online. Majorly inefficient.

That's the whole point of this program: it's not just teaching how to cold approach. It teaches you how to actually build the life that you want that will INCORPORATE the BENEFITS of cold approach, i.e. having hot girls and high status friends in your life.

The reason I bring all of this up is that Luke says that without actually defining what you want your life to look like, you have no chance of actually ever achieving it. To use the internet marketer example, if this guy hadn't defined the fact that he wanted passive income to come from certain methods, he never would have achieved it. That shit doesn't just happen randomly.

Yet why do none of us specifically define what we want in our personal lives? And if we do, it's done in such a vague way that it might as well not even matter?

"I want to be rich."
"I want a girlfriend."
"I want to be in shape."

No motherfucker, it doesn't work like that. You need to get down into the nitty gritty and actually fucking figure out what kind of girls you want. You want short skinny white girls with green eyes, big tits, and curly hair who do Crossfit. For example. See how much more specific that is? Then when you have that clearly defined, you can look for that exact thing. Everything else is just seen as a distraction OR someone who will help you actually get what you want.

The current module I'm doing is all about defining exactly what you want. So to continue with the example, let's say that you want your friends to be guys who are internet marketer digital nomad social media influencers who have at least 100k Instagram followers. Well guess what motherfucker, now that you have the outline of what you want, all of your future social interactions can be structured around that.

All you have to do is find out where these people go. Look for digital nomad meetups. Look for elite internet marketer groups that you can join. Look for agencies that represent Instagram influencers. You get the idea.

But without actually defining those things, there's no way you'll just magically stumble upon whatever it is that you want. BECAUSE YOU DON'T ACTUALLY EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT.

Make sense?

Sorry, but this realization just kind of hit me yesterday. Watching these videos, the ping from my friend, the event, wondering why the fuck I was still in New York. It all kind of came together yesterday thanks to a little bit of lysergic acid.