👁️ Seven Ways to Live Different
Defiant tactics for a fuller existence.
No news this week – just some thoughts to inspire and motivate in the New Year, with endless thanks to the now nearly 1,500 Dark Markets subscribers. This newsletter will continue to grow in 2025, with a lot of expansion on tap after I finish work on the SBF book in the next few months. Thank you all!
Seven Tactics to Build The Life You Want
It occurred to me this week that I was able to spend most of 2024 focused on probably the thing I both enjoy the most, and that I am (I hope) most singularly skilled at: writing a deeply-researched book. I’ll be finishing the first draft of the SBF book in about a month, and one of my commitments for 2025 is to start another book by the end of the year.
The thing about writing books, which may have always been true but became indisputably true right around the time I reached adulthood, is that you essentially can’t make a living doing it. This is particularly true of the strange kind of writing that I have always wanted to do – rigorous and philosophically-grounded, but also exploratory and aesthetically adventurous nonfiction, as well as weird creepy fiction. In fact, a lot of personally and socially important tasks won’t make you rich – but they might make you happy, so doing them is very important.
I finally have a lot of time to devote to my own writing, and almost total creative freedom, because I’ve figured out the money side of things. At the same time, I’m able to Do The Work because of many years of working my way closer, bit by bit, to becoming whatever weird mix of tech reporter and philosopher I now am. Those decisions were in many cases pretty unconventional or daring, starting with quitting academia and becoming a journalist in my early thirties (a choice that I am only happier with as the years roll by).
I’m not incredibly famous, nor spectacularly wealthy (though I am a tiny bit famous and doing very well, which are both pretty neat). But what matters is I’m genuinely free to do what I want.
Seven decision-making heuristics have helped me get there. I’m tentatively calling them The Seven Defiances.
Be Optimistic
Be Angry
Go Slow
Read a Lot
Seize the Main Chance
Work with People You Like
Don’t Wait for Permission.
Read on for more depth on each of these. I wish you inspiration and motivation for the New Year.
Be Optimistic
It might not square with my image as a meticulous analyst and crusading rectifier, but I’ve been described as pathologically optimistic, and it might be the most important secret to my self-fulfillment. I’ve taken crazy chances in my life and career because I have a baseline faith that I can accomplish what I set out to do.
I can’t offer much insight into how to become more optimistic if it’s something you struggle with: I’ve always been this way, and frankly I suspect a lot of it is a baked-in character trait. But at the very least, attune yourself to your inner monologue – and if you find you’re talking yourself out of taking chances on things you care about, tell that voice to shut the fuck up.
Be Angry
Okay, yeah, they don’t immediately seem like they match up. But in addition to dreaming big and acting as if all things are possible, I have always been deeply fucking pissed off. Not in some tempestuous emotional way, because that’s a distraction and a waste. My anger is quiet, magmic, and aimed at the many absurd and disgusting ways that society is structured to rob humans of happiness.
I’m incredibly, continually pissed off, in short, at injustice, and it has been a sustaining and motivating force in my life. As Johnny Rotten sang, anger is an energy. Cultivate that fire, and it will fuel you.
Go Slow
One fundamental element of sustained optimism that I can speak to is accepting a kind of corollary – that doing things that matter is genuinely really difficult, and also takes a long time.
This is particularly true if you, like me, were born a million miles away from what you want to do. My parents and family have always been unflinchingly supportive, but I didn’t grow up around writers, or anyone who understood much about how that world worked. It has taken time to figure that out, and all the steps along the way have built up my skills.
It can seem like you have a deadline to make an impact, but that thinking doesn’t just add to stress and depression – it can lead to disaster. To cite the example that is never far from my mind, Sam Bankman-Fried purportedly believed he only had a ten-year window to make a meaningful impact on the world.
And look where that got him.
Read a Lot
Since my mid-2023 lament that I had lost my ability to read deeply, I’ve rebuilt that practice with a vengeance, thanks to shedding stress and having a very focused project.
Reading more has renewed me as a person: reading expands your being in ways that are hard to even explain. It lets you live other lives, intimately. It makes you a better judge of character. It gives you the tools to move through the world with confidence. Not reading, by contrast, leaves you not just less richly fulfilled, but less sophisticated in your real-world decision making.
Don’t try and rationalize television or movies or podcasts or anything else as a substitute. Read, or you are handicapping your entire life. Period.
Seize the Main Chance
While I’ve always oriented my life towards writing, that has never meant fixating on a single vision of what that means. Instead, I’ve always taken opportunities that got me closer to what I really want to do while also involving escalating responsibility and accomplishment. Bit by bit, over time, that has gotten me where I wanted to go creatively, while also growing my normie professional standing. It started with getting a PhD, which I began 22 years ago because it was the only way I knew to continue doing the kind of work I really cared about. That long-ago decision has now come back around to being a fundamental element of the current absolutely-perfect-for-me book project.
Opportunities that are tangential or partial steps towards your goal, but that let you keep body and soul together, can also become vitally rich experiences in themselves. If I’d remained fixated on only writing novels or only writing about social theory, I never would have had my amazing run as a journalist (a path that first opened up somewhat by chance). Be ready and willing to leap when a chance for progress presents itself.
Work with People You Like
You’ll spend a lot of your life working. Avoid environments that tend to attract people you don’t get along with: your motivation will disappear, you’ll fail, and you’ll hate every minute you spend failing.
For instance, I have almost never worked in the kind of “business” environments that reward bravado and politicking, because I’m no good at bullshitting, and I can’t shut up when I witness it in others. Frankly, I also left academia because while I value intellectual curiosity above all else, I found that actually wasn’t a particularly widely shared position – that a lot of academics were also performative bullshitters.
Even mainstream journalism is a little bit of a backslapping club. So I was unbelievably grateful to find my little niche at the intersection of finance, tech, and business reporting, which both rewards and attracts exactly my kind of people: relentless, loudmouthed assholes who live to eat what they kill.
Don’t Wait for Permission
I didn’t pitch the FTX book to publishers. I was going to, but instead, Repeater saw the drafts I was posting here and reached out. That’s truly insane, given the reverence in which I hold them – but it’s also more or less how I’ve always done things.
Once I’m finished with this one, I will have written five books: One traditionally published, one I declined an offer to publish (my dissertation), two I self-published, and one I’m still working on getting traditionally published (a novel). Most were written rapidly during a brief window of unemployment (2019’s Bitcoin is Magic), or over many stolen early mornings and Saturdays.
Nobody is going to roll out the red carpet and help you do exactly the thing you want to do. If you only do things that other people want you to do, you will inevitably compromise to their vision – mostly because these days, commercial considerations inevitably trump other factors. Instead, you have to do the work first, and worry later about whether anyone actually wants it.
That, like all of these tactics, may lead you down a longer path. But they’re how you stay unique, fulfilled, and happy.
Lots of people offer advice for being happier, probably supply matching demand. But sometimes it is important to go for the niche market. Particularly if you want to increase your likelihood of failure.
Seven tactics to stay stuck in the life you hate
Be pessimistic
This one's easy for me, I admit. It helps to have at least one parent who demeans you. Ideally they demean or insult you currently, but if it has to be done in the past, ideally at an age where you can't realize the person is projecting and/or has their own problems that you can't fix. Later, you may get perspective, but the feeling at the time cannot be changed. Or, at least convince yourself that, as otherwise you might consider yourself resilient, which could lead to optimism.
Parents are best for making failure seem inevitable, but it really just needs to be something omnipresent and constant. Systemic inequality and discrimination might suffice.
Being pessimistic, you'll likely be drawn to others who are pessimistic as well. After all they see things much the same as you. You'll have the commonality that you both won't think you'll achieve your goals. Which creates a helpful flywheel of not accomplishing your goals which reinforces everyone's opinions.
Be complacent
Accept that you likely can't change things. Including your outlook. Which is miserable. Meaning it's acceptance without peace. Wanting without end. You see injustice but feel powerless to do anything. You're not angry, but you're not happy either. Just an overarching feeling of despair for a dark future that seems inescapable.
Commenting on other people's work, rather than trying to promote your own, is a great way to be complacent and stay dissatisfied.
Go fast
But never to completion. This ties in with the later tactic of “Let Slip the Main Chance.” Ignorance is bliss. If you don't see the chances, and miss them, you would be happy. Better to see them and go for them. Strike fast while the iron is hot! Work hard and fast in the forge. And then toss it or leave it forgotten in a corner because you are unsatisfied.
I often think, should I try this thing? And I remember a very early Neil Diamond song called “Do It.” “Do it while your soul still burning.” But guess what? Once you get most of it done, your soul starts to go back to complacency. In writing, you can then save and close the document and show it to no one ever again.
This comment is a perfect example. I wrote a couple more paragraphs, got into the next heading, and then had to do something else. Saved my progress and today I started editing with the intention of finishing it. And, man, this is some depressing sh**. Why the hell am I doing this?