RoamingFrancis' Journal

[jacob]

I was happy and surprised to see Bruce Lee and Bill Plotkin at levels 9 and 10 of the Wheaton Table.

I wasn't too sure it was such a good idea to put them up there. It risks a TL;DR of I saw that miniseries about Bruce Lee, so now I grok WL9. In both cases, I meant that as examples of the depth being considered at WL9 and WL10 respectively, not the specifics of Lee's and Plotkin's personal lives or even the content of the books linked there.

[Western Red Cedar]

I picked up John Steinbeck's Travels With Charley in Search of America and Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent, both of which are quite reminiscent of my own journey across the country.
As always, please give feedback!

Two of my favorite US road trip books. Have you read Kerouac? On the Road and the Dharma Bums were a couple of my favorite travel books as well in my early 20's. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance would make my list as well.

[theanimal]

Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon is another good US travel book.

[RoamingFrancis]

Figured I'd write a quick update. Not much is new, but I'm making progress in the areas I've set out for myself.

Contemplative

I'm taking an Integral Dharma course with Buddhist Geeks, and signed up for my second Vipassana course in February. I expect it to be challenging. I have heard that second courses tend to be harder than the first, as you get into practice much more quickly. No energy is spent orienting oneself in a strange environment.

I am struggling to understand A Brief History of Everything. I get the basics of Wilber (quadrants, levels, lines, states, types), but a lot of this book is going over my head.

Income

I'm taking a PDC. It was a bit pricey but overall a good decision. I am preparing to have side hustles in landscaping and home herbalism, and working part time at the gym. The idea is to spend a year in one spot, building skills and putting away coin, and move forward with my plans in the Amazon come 2023.

The goal is to cultivate an ecosystem of skills that allows for the engagement of multiple side hustles. @AxelHeyst is sort of my role model at this point - FIRE is not a huge priority; in fact, I think the social interaction brought by various forms of work will be good for me. I do want autonomy, mastery, purpose, and the ability to work outside of a stifling corporate environment.

I'm currently not working as much as I would like - I need to be putting away more coin. I am looking for gigs I could work full-time during February and March.

Martial Arts

I finally found a place to train. Went to an intro class and really liked it. I am really drawn to capoeira, but I will likely train BJJ first.

[RoamingFrancis]

It's been a while since I posted, mainly because not all that much has changed in my life in the past few months. I have just been slowly chipping away at what I set out to do a year ago. Mostly, I have made progress, and learned some new things along the way.

ADHD

After talking with a therapist I realized that a large portion of my suffering in high school could be explained by undiagnosed ADHD. This is something I suspected several years ago, but shelved because my parents weren't supportive of me getting treatment. Now that I'm a grown-ass man I get to make my own health care decisions and am going to be pursuing a diagnosis and management plan. I'd be willing to go on medication if I found it helpful; I think meds are unfairly stigmatized and have really helped a lot of people.

I have learned to focus in my meditation practice, and I have fairly deep interests because of my Plotkin-esque soul encounters, but I really struggle with time management, calendars, administrative life/adult stuff, etc. It's like there are 4-6 slots in my working memory and I have to constantly be focusing all of them on my Soul Work puzzle pieces. Difficulty in attention regulation is better wording than attention deficit. In the past couple years, for example, I have read dozens of books on the topics that interest me but I have not scheduled a dentist appointment.

It has honestly come as a huge relief to have external confirmation I was right a couple years ago. This just explains so much...

Dating and Social Life

It's taken me a long time to get here (and I'm still learning), but I feel like I'm finally in a place where I can be in a healthy relationship. I'm going to give online dating a try. Frankly, one of the barriers was that taking pictures and filling out a detailed profile was tedious labor (<-- ADHD brain).

I have found myself in a great group of friends - most of us are contemplative practitioners, or some sort of zany artist. We've been meeting about once a month over the past year to drum around a bonfire, and a handful of us have started a men's circle where we support each other through whatever's going on in our lives. I'm looking forward to deepening these friendships, and am curious to hear if any forumites have good ideas for building these sorts of communities - I am thinking of stealing @mountainfrugal's Epicurean dinners.

Movement and BJJ

I trained Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu January through June, and am taking a month off in July. For this month I'll just be going on walks. I have had quite a bit of cognitive dissonance with my martial arts practice - I really do not want to harm anyone, so there is a part of me asking myself why the hell I'm spending so much time learning how to choke people. There's also a lot of raw physical discomfort in the training which has been a hindrance for me.

I've been drawn to exploring some softer movement practices like salsa, cumbia, etc, and it would probably be good for me to learn some of the basics of a striking art. Jiu-jitsu can be kind of grunty sometimes.

Spiritual Practices

I'm never quite sure how much of this I should include in the journal. This is by far the most important category in my life, but it's also one that has led to anomalous experiences that tend to turn me into the weirdo at the dinner table if I bring them up in mixed company. For the most part I'm operating under the assumption that these experiences are ontologically real, but I don't know what the hell reality is so that's not saying much.

Finances

I had a lot of internal blocks around work due to bad experiences in the past, but I think that this will become a lot easier in the next couple months, especially as I start to figure out how to work with the ADHD more skillfully.

I've always been naturally frugal, but I've had a lot of difficulty in figuring out how to create a healthy relationship with income. I think I'm approaching an inflection point with this though.

[AnalyticalEngine]

I'd be interested in hearing more of your spiritual practices if you're comfortable sharing them. I know that can be intimidating or personal, so no pressure.

[ertyu]

Seconded, I'd also be interested in knowing more

[RoamingFrancis]

Some quotes from Wade Davis' Shadows in the Sun, the book I'm currently reading.

In your culture, the goal is to excel and stand out, flaunting your excellence in public. Here, the greater your skills, the more you want to fade into the background... The only time you can reveal your stories is when you no longer have power. In old age.

When she mentions Borneo, a place I know well, I ask what she did there. After a confused moment, she says, "I don't really remember. But it was all very interesting... Ecotourism has become a cover for a form of tourism that simply increases the penetration of the hinterland. But have any of us earned the right to be there?

Whatever the shortcomings of the early explorers, they gave something of themselves and paid a real price for their experiences.

The priest is concerned with integrating the individual into a firmly ordered and well-established social context, and the shaman seeks the release of his or her own wild genius.

Health is a state of harmony, and, for the shaman, it is something holy.

Today the people of Iowa, good and decent folk, live contentedly in a landscape of cornfields that is claustrophobic in its monotony. The era of the tall grass prairie, like the time of the buffalos, is as distant from their lives as the fall of Rome or the siege of Troy. Yet the destruction occurred but a century ago, well within the lifetime of their grandparents.

There is a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it plants and animals, cultures, languages, ancient skills, and visionary wisdom. Quelling this flame and reinventing the poetry of diversity is the most important challenge of our times.

[RoamingFrancis]

Playing the Career Game

I'm beginning to figure out how to find work that is both fulfilling, meaningful, and remunerative. My ADHD means I have a very low tolerance for bullshit work, and basically never do anything unless it is intrinsically motivated. Salary and accolades mean nothing if the work is not interesting.

I am reading Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke. Glad to find a resource aimed at young people. She argues that establishing yourself when you are still young and broke is crucial, even if that field doesn't pay very much immediately. And she recommends using credit cards to fill in gaps in expenses if the pay is low. That's how important it is to get into the right field.

I want to be an ethnobotanist, so I'm going to start out as a translator while I work on my other skills.

I have read the Gervais Principle. Does anyone have other recommendations for this phase of the journey?

[Western Red Cedar]

ADHD

After talking with a therapist I realized that a large portion of my suffering in high school could be explained by undiagnosed ADHD. This is something I suspected several years ago, but shelved because my parents weren't supportive of me getting treatment. Now that I'm a grown-ass man I get to make my own health care decisions and am going to be pursuing a diagnosis and management plan. I'd be willing to go on medication if I found it helpful; I think meds are unfairly stigmatized and have really helped a lot of people.

I'd encourage you to check out Gabor Mate's work on ADHD. I haven't read his book on the subject (Scattered Minds), but recently read In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and it provoked a lot of important introspection. His views on ADHD are somewhat controversial in the field of psychology, but IMO the man knows his stuff.

You can just check out some of his lectures or interviews on YouTube if you don't want to commit to the full book right away. I linked to one last month on another thread (not related to ADHD though): viewtopic.php?p=258683#p258683

[RoamingFrancis]

@Western Red Cedar Thank you; I'm aware of Gabor Mate. I'm not going to read the book though - at least not yet.

Saying no to books has been important for me recently

[RoamingFrancis]

“Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”

- Shunryu Suzuki

[RoamingFrancis]

Beat back the creeping mediocrity!

[RoamingFrancis]

My growth is being limited by the size of my fishbowl.

[RoamingFrancis]

How do I do ERE? Needing a beginner's mind.

[grundomatic]

Playing the Career Game

I'm beginning to figure out how to find work that is both fulfilling, meaningful, and remunerative. My ADHD means I have a very low tolerance for bullshit work, and basically never do anything unless it is intrinsically motivated. Salary and accolades mean nothing if the work is not interesting.

I am reading Suze Orman's The Money Book for the Young, Fabulous, and Broke. Glad to find a resource aimed at young people. She argues that establishing yourself when you are still young and broke is crucial, even if that field doesn't pay very much immediately. And she recommends using credit cards to fill in gaps in expenses if the pay is low. That's how important it is to get into the right field.

I want to be an ethnobotanist, so I'm going to start out as a translator while I work on my other skills.

I have read the Gervais Principle. Does anyone have other recommendations for this phase of the journey?

Orman is targeting the mainstream, where the unspoken assumption is that the "right" field is one that is very lucrative, and also that if you don't make a lot of money you will be miserable. This is ERE, though, so while the mainstream is going to tell you to pay for a middle class lifestyle with credit cards until you make the salary you "deserve", I don't think you are going to find anyone around here endorsing that. In fact, if you can embrace the full ERE experience better than those of us that have already suffered the effects of lifestyle inflation, your pay is almost irrelevant--especially if you manage to find something fulfilling and meaningful for you.

I would agree that you need to get your foot in the door doing whatever you can in the field that interests you. I don't know anything about being an ethnobotanist, but if you wanted to be a chef, for example, I'd say get a job washing dishes and learn everything you can. If you are talking about being the translator for ethnobotany field work of some sort, that seems perfect. If the translating is just to pay the bills, then find a way to get involved with people doing work in your desired field.

How do I do ERE? Needing a beginner's mind.

Get a job, only spend 25% of your paycheck. Then do whatever you think makes you a complete human. If you can't spend that little, figure out how to fix that.

[RoamingFrancis]

"You will overestimate what you can do in a year, and underestimate what you can do in ten years."

This is about accurate when describing the past year. I made solid progress in a lot of areas, but I'm not nearly as far as I thought I would be

Good news! I got a couple job offers. None are exactly what I want to be doing, but they're headed in the right direction. And I'll get paid. So that's good. I feel kind of stuck geographically - might have to spend another year in my hometown. Trying to make the best decisions...

[RoamingFrancis]

I don't actually want money; I just want to learn how to live outside of the Matrix.

[sky]

Me too, but I don't think it will happen in my lifetime. So I eat ice cream and commune with the chickadees in my garden.

[fiby41]

Congrats on the job offers! Excited to know about the one you select and why.