Should I continue on this long journey to a Network State?

This is Part 5/5 of my essays on the Network State for the Tech Progressives Writing Challenge, also join build_ to connect.

I never did something like this. I never wrote about things. I thought it was silly. Also writing is not a “natural” gift for me, like for others. In fact, my texts are really bad. Nevertheless, there is one main reason why I write. I am forced to engage with the topic. I am forced to think about it from the ground up in order to understand it. After every post, things are much clearer and more structured in my head. For me a big question has always been, why haven't I seized the opportunity of crypto, or of other side projects around the “quantified self” more, even though I was fascinated by them.

I actually thought long and hard about this question and finally came up with two main reasons:

1. I never fully emerged in it. I always did these things as a hobby, thus I never took on bigger projects that required a substantial time effort (20h+ per week).
2. I was not surrounded by the right community. When you do not have the privilege of engaging with a community that thinks deeply about a certain topic, you tend to be rather cautious. Especially in crypto it is difficult to understand what is wrong or right, as media opinions polarize. Moreover, I come from a pro tennis background, so the topics I talked about with my friends were more about girls, tennis & building muscle rather than crypto, privacy & building a new financial system for the world. Thus, it is difficult to see a path, when no one around you is even talking about these things. Sometimes you just need to see that people in real life are also fascinated about this and are seriously working on it.

I re-read the post about “The Bus Ticket Theory” by Paul Graham many times over the last few years. I always wondered what my obsession was. What can I talk about for hours?

I really wanted to find my passion, after quitting tennis. So, I tried a lot of jobs on the more conventional ambitious path as Paul Graham would say. I served in the military, worked as a tennis coach, as a model, as an accountant, as a business designer in an accelerator, as business developer for a vc fund and even consulted the Austrian government on innovation.

However, all these jobs were not about truth (watch this iconic scene with subtitles to understand why truth is the most important virtue). Truth lies with the builders, creators and developers. This strong urge for truth actually made me quit the dark side of money and completely start over from scratch to become a decent coder. Let me tell you, that is not an easy desicion when your sourroundings do not share your beliefs.

Only by writing this article did I actually understand that the only consistent part in my life were the topics I was engaging in by myself, in my free time. The topics funnily revolved around the motto of 1729: truth, health, wealth. Also, I just realized that I have been writing posts for 1729 since April. April was 8 months ago and maybe only 2 friends in real life know that I am doing this. Perhaps these topics are actually my “Bus Ticket Obsession”? Why else, would I stay up until 3AM every day to finish one post per day and have fun doing it?

Also, if you would ask me what I would do if I could take a year off to work on something that probably wouldn't be important but would be really interesting?

I think I would fully engage with the 1729 community and just work out a lot. But why exactly these two things? I cant explain, but I just feel the urge to do them and I have a good gut feeling about them. Perhaps these words of Paul Graham would make more sense. For me, the Network State fully represents the quote below:

“If I had to put the recipe for genius into one sentence, that might be it: to have a disinterested obsession with something that matters.”

So, what is my plan moving forward? Will I quit everything else and just focus on 1729?

No, but I will dedicate more and more time to it. I believe this time I have a different, more mature view on the topic of pursuing something new and unknown. This writing series actually helped me to clearly think about why I think the Network State is a special topic. It helped me to understand my positive gut feeling about this difficult topic. Finally, it helped rationalize why I should stick with this weird topic until 2040.

To make the final part even more dramatic, I need to finish with a grand quote and a metaphoric icon. This icon shows Mando (me) and the Child (network state). It should represent my way as a lone ₿ounty hunter to the outer reaches of the Metaverse, far from the authority of the Normal State while taking care of my Network State.

This is the way.