12/184 Days of Lock In

No social media, no YouTube, deep reading every day, exercise 7-10 times per week, and work on 1 of several significant side projects daily.

It's been good.

I don't miss Twitter much anymore. It's still kind of hard to stay up-to-date on a lot of things, technologically, since Twitter is kinda where most of that chat happens, but I haven't missed that much either.

Books

I've read/finished 3 books in the last 10 days. For those that are curious, I've started and finished:

• The Martian by Andy Weir**

• The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels

and I finished TechGnosis by Erik Davis.

I just started a translation of The Gospel of Thomas by Marvin Meyer and re-started (because I couldn't make myself finish it the last couple times) Statism and Anarchy by Mikahil Bakunin.

I have... a ton of books I want to read over the next 172 days. Some of them are quick, namely a few anthropological/political books. Then there's Stephen King's The Shining and Book of the 5 Rings, which will take much longer.

Projects

I've pivoted a bit with my projects since I started.

When I started, The Goal was to get some projects up to revenue generating status. That would still be nice, because some day I do want to be able to quit my 9-to-5 job and work on my own. That's the ultimate goal, to be able to work on what I want to work on, to have financial and time freedom.

That said, I am letting myself explore more during this period. Like, really explore. I'm playing around with learning Godot for a couple projects. I'm trying to deep dive into Rust for a couple projects, and really get a strong grasp on cyber security research.

There are philosophical reasons I'll go into below, but there are also technical reasons.

The ideas that I have that I think could produce an interesting, important business are going to require a builder that is far more capable than I am now. I'm a good developer, but the things I want to build are going to require a great developer. I'm good at business, but the things I want to build are going to require someone who is great at business. I don't have the skill level required to build what I want, so I'd rather upskill now so I can get there than spend the next six months kinda half-assing what I want to do.

There are a lot of different ways to explore. You can focus down in a niche and really explore the boundaries of that niche. You can do as many things in as many different domains as possible to find something you really want to dive into. There are a billion ways to apply those two modes as well.

For me, my exploration plan is letting myself kinda wander. I'm going to explain this in another post today because I think it's important.

Philosophy

I've gotten very into my studies of the Gnostic Christians, as you've seen from other posts.

The Gnostics were an eclectic esoteric group in the beginnings of the Christian church. They're very often maligned by the Catholic church, both of that era and the modern era, but probably the best way to describe them is a collection of mystic and esoteric philosophers, theologians and mostly-Christians who believed, contrary to the young Catholic church, that salvation comes from inner enlightenment, not from a relationship with the church.

This enlightenment they called gnosis, which was the Greek word for revelatory knowledge. It could only come from intensive self-study, meditation, focus, inner works. Many Gnostics had extreme views on asceticism, becoming voluntary celibates who rejected riches, comforts and stability to further their relationship with God and their inner self.

Whether or not you are a Christian, you have to admit that someone who is willing and able to go to such extremes to reach enlightenment deserves at least some level of praise, especially over those whose "religion" is mostly just showing up to church 1 hour a week and using the rest of the week to live a life counter to what they're called to be.

Hermeticism and many Eastern philosophies and religions have similar focuses on inner revelation and enlightenment, meditation and self-improvement, so the Gnostics weren't alone in this. In fact, many people think that much of Gnosticism and Hermeticism is best thought of as a fusion of Egyptian, Greek and Jewish philosophy and theology with Buddhism and other Eastern philosophies.

It is this focus on self-enlightenment that I have started focusing on. I have my own personal religious reasons, but I think this philosophy has shown me that chasing the wrong path can lead one into more trouble than anything. I feel as though in chasing knowledge for the sake of money and a business, I've neglected really finding knowledge. In chasing art for the sake of having a visual skill to make content, I've neglected really finding an artistic ability. In chasing music for the sake of having a background song to play in a video or an EP to make me famous, I've neglected really finding a musical ability.

Perhaps a more gnostic approach to self-improvement, as well as to the skills I want to develop, is what I truly need. Finding the path to self-enlightenment, both for myself and for the development of my skillset, is what I'm on now.

slight note

I have been calling this "Project Detox" but with this heavier focus on skills-development, exploration, research, philosophy, etc., I think Project Detox doesn't fully capture what I'm trying to do anymore. So I'm not really calling it that anymore. Tis just the Locking In.