The Start of Something Beautiful

I have been thinking of starting a journal for quite some time now, but the idea that I was any good at writing was laughable to me. It is only recently that I realized that I do not have to be good at it—not from the very beginning, at least. Nobody is born a good writer, just like nobody is born a good businessman.

The second issue at hand was: what topics will I cover in my journal? Once again, it is only required to start writing to discover where it will lead me. One thing I know for sure is that I am not scarce for thoughts. The only challenge is to select the ones that may be appealing to other people and learn to put them into words.

Is this a personal journal then? Quite so. I will write about issues that interest me the most, but to get a glimpse of what is coming, perhaps, it is better to share a bit about myself.

I was born in Russia at the end of the USSR era, just when its inevitable collapse started to unfold. By the Russian standards, our family was below the middle-class level. However, having traveled the world a fair bit, I can say that it was not extremely poor either, even though my mother had to work three jobs to feed her three children. The father was not present in the family, which played a significant role in how all three children developed psychologically. I followed the standard template program of growing up into becoming a good citizen: pre-school, school, university. It is at the last stage, higher education, that I started feeling off. What I was studying (linguistics) was not a passion of mine at all. The only reason I chose the university was because friends of friends went there. As a high-school graduate, I had no idea what I wanted to be or do with my life. During my third year of studies, I was lucky to visit another country for the first time: the USA. Impressed and excited after my two-month stay, I resolved to move out of Russia, preferably to America, as soon as I graduated. My resolution was strong enough for it to materialize quite painlessly. In autumn 2010, just a couple of months after graduation, I flew to Vancouver, Canada, where I would spend the next nine years of my life.

Moving to a place with no friends, family, and money to support me initially was what I needed to break free of my old conceptions of the world and truly start over. Exposed to the world, I quickly realized that now everything depended on my actions. Discovering life again was fantastic!

And then Bitcoin happened to me. It was at that time that my parabolic climb in self-development began. Funnily, the progress correlated highly with the price of bitcoin, which I still like to refer to for non-monetary reasons.

As Gigi correctly pointed out in his Twitter thread:

"I believe that falling down the Bitcoin rabbit hole is a deeply personal experience."

And so it was for me. By asking myself a straightforward question about money ("Why do I need this bitcoin thing anyway?"), I started peeling the onion of knowledge. I have been doing it ever since.

Along the way, I made friends, met some of the smartest people on the planet, started businesses, and acquired useful skills that help me deal with daily responsibilities more efficiently. Most importantly, I learned to undo the damage inflicted upon my mind by the status quo and broken family during the childhood and teenage years. Yet, there remains an infinite amount of work to do. And that is a good thing.

I am no longer in Canada full-time. Considering myself a "global citizen," I often travel for family and business needs. At the same time, there is no desire to lead a nomadic lifestyle. The task of settling down is in progress. Perhaps, two or three homes simultaneously, but homes they will be.

I want to share with you what I have learned and will learn as I keep peeling away the layers of the onion of knowledge. Sometimes it adds a zesty flavor to my life, and sometimes it makes me want to cry. But its benefits cannot be overstated.

Sharpen your knife—the onion is ripe!