Transcendental Sith Lord's UH / MLS Journal

[DarthXedonias]

Glad to see all the headway you're experiencing!  

What are you doing for fun, now that you're clearing away addictive behaviors?  Is there anything you're doing to relax (or for enjoyment) that you find is healthier/better for you, or that you didn't realize you'd enjoy so much?

Its funny that you bring that up as I did think of this and what I wanted to do last night actually. Before I mention that though I would first say life in general have just become a lot more enjoyable. I think there is a reason for this in that a lot of addictive behaviors can be similar to drug addiction. As some people know in drug addiction it can be that you get such a "high" from the chemical that anything else in comparison is boring, barely stimulating or enjoyable in comparison. So people only keep on chasing the thing (could be a drug, video games, porn, watching online videos, etc) that keeps on giving them that dopamine hit and they have to keep on engaging in that more and more to be effected by it. I think since I've cut out those things that has kind of reset my brain as I said and now I have a lower base line. So I can just find life itself more enjoyable. 

As to what happened last night which was pertinent to your question I was laying in bed last night and I started thinking and for whatever reason I started getting this feeling that I just wanted to increase my skill set more but not only that. I wanted to master the skills that are important to me. As this feeling kept on increasing I then remembered suddenly that Robert Greene (of 48 laws of power fame) did have a book called mastery. I got up real quick to to see if maybe there would be a free audio version online or something. Unfortunately, and I think this part was a minor attempt at self sabotage, I got distracted for a few minutes then couldn't remember why I got online to begin with. Luckily, like 2 hours later as I was driving at work I remembered instantly in my mind about the book. Found an audio of the book on youtube and started listening. I had a few revelations while listening to it (regarding you wanting to master something in which you have had impulses or a feeling compulsion towards) and realized I did actually have enjoyment towards programming whenever in the past when I had to deal with it all in an academic study. 

I remember being in highschool and utterly enjoying the problem solving and creative process in web development. Later on in community college I remember spending time being engrossed in learning C++ to the point that hours would pass but it didn't feel like hours. I then had to reason with myself why I hadn't pursued it all those years ago. One reason I found out was that I didn't want to do all the math. It wasn't that I was horrible with math but I didn't like it and some of that stimmed from what I said in other posts about my faulty beliefs because what a math teacher in elementary school did to me as I was trying to move up the math ranks. The second reason I found out is because quite frankly I had this faulty belief system that I didn't deserve to be happy or hell I started to wonder if I was even cursed given how badly I was treated in my younger years.

Part of this stimmed from the fact that my mother had feminist learnings at times and quite frankly though this is personal information (not sure if I shared this before) she was "R" when she was younger. Now not everyone reacts to trauma the same way but despite that everyone should deal with it instead of running away from it. Its not your fault that said trauma happened to you but it is your "responsibility" to deal with it. More so because if you don't its going to negatively affect everyone around you, not just you. This might have the affect of you going on and traumatizing someone else. In this case its obvious she decide not to deal with it and this spilled over into how she dealt with her male children. Spoiler alert.. it didn't end up going so well. For full disclosure though I do have to admit I'm not sure if I fully believe her when she says such an event happened when she was younger. The reason being is that I have found out in the past she has lied about "major" things from the past from before I was born. One in particular to this day she has not come clean about (she doesn't know I know the truth about this certain situation she has lied about before) despite watching all these videos recently about spirituality, etc. 

Regardless I realized if it wasn't for these major factors scaring me off from the field and even thinking I didn't deserve to be happy I'm pretty sure I would have recognized my affinity for the field and gotten started in it a long time ago. Had that happened honestly I would probably be very well off financially and not worry for anything. However, its not too late really for me and I do feel like I need to make up for lost time. So at this point I just plan on eating, breathing and sleeping programming for a while. I want complete mastery of not only a particular language but also the fundamentals. Btw, this was partly to answer your question (RTBoss) but also a kind of update to my recent thought processes. 

In other news the subliminal results are still there. Was presented with a coding Challenge to learn certain skills I was just taught. Literally stared at the screen thinking for about 2 minutes and had already constructed in my mind how to solve the problem. I didn't do the challenge because after that I decide to go to sleep (needed to rest before work) but the fact that I actually figured that all out within 2 minutes really did surprise me. Its still going on even with math. Like I'm learning concepts and I instantly understand them and am able to connect them wit previous concepts I learned before. 

Lastly, in keeping with my commitment to only watch/listen to videos related to programming, etc I have come across some information that does have me excited. So I recently found out that some companies have actually moved from a 4 year vesting period for the stock in the country they give you as part of your pay to just having it fully vest at the end of the year. To give you an example, usually how it works is say company A that you work for, as part of you pay, gives you 100k worth in stock per year as part of your employment. So for that first year with the company at the end of the first year 25% of it vests (which means you are allowed to take ownership of that stock to either keep it or sell it if you want). This continues for the next 3 years at 25% until basically at that fourth year you are able to fully sell all that initial stock from your first year of work if you wanted. This does make it so that what you get after you sell it can fluctuate up or down over the year. So lets say they get you 100k worth of stock and that equals 100 shares. Since the price can go up or down during that time it could be more or less than 100k. What some companies are doing now is making it totally based on how much it is. So if they say you get 100k that means when it vests they give you 100k worth in stock that you can sell. So there isn't any potential upside but your also protected against any downside swing and on top of that they give you the full amount at the end of each year instead of having to wait over 4 years. 

To be honest I prefer this as at the beginning I do need to put a down payment on a house in Europe so I can qualify for a Golden Visa program there and then get citizenship after 5 years. So having the option to sell at the end of the year so I can use that to buy property full on out, use as a down-payment, or help pay off current owned property would be great. However I do wonder later on which option I would prefer for tax purposes. To give an example at higher levels you can get paid 600k USD in stock per year. For clarification, for the 4 year vesting option during years 2 through 3 they will break it up so that you get 6.5% of the stock every 3 months. So at that point I wonder which would be better for tax purposes I wonder: getting a lump sum of 600k at the end of the year or perhaps getting about 28k every 3 months? I will probably do more research about this and figure it out soon enough. Its just an interesting option I have been thinking about lately. 

Anyway, that about it for now. Will update again soon once there is more to report.