Fixpoint

I had been observing the doings of the Republic from a distance but found myself faced with uncertainty and perhaps a little fear.⁽ⁱ⁾ Meanwhile in my own affairs the "being an engineer" side of my mind, perhaps spurred on by having seen what it wanted to see in the engineering side of the Republic, was able to dig up plentiful problems to fix, supplying an arbitrarily tall pile of work with which to procrastinate while feeling productive, and at least some of the time bringing my novice management along for the ride. Thus I'd gotten myself stuck in a state of manaloning: not entirely isolated, to be sure, but missing the crucial upstream links of a network.

Eventually the dissonance of reading and talking privately yet not engaging became too great to ignore; besides, the lack of publication of my work was seen as hurting business prospects. I was vaguely aware of "the ratchet", whereby participation in the conversation was becoming increasingly difficult (not that it had ever looked easy), and I didn't know if I would make the cut, but Robinson and I resolved to give it our best shot. For my part I wasn't entirely clear how to go about this, but the general plan was: introduce myself; join in conversations as I was able; deploy the standard blogging infrastructure to have an adequate space of my own to publish things and receive feedback; make manageable commitments and keep them.

Following some welcoming words from Eric Benevides aka lobbes, a Lord who was stepping down due to his own struggles and working to rekindle his commitment against wasting away toward derealization, I began to correspond a bit through his blog comments. He soon pointed out that talking about TMSR is not enough to be part of it⁽ⁱⁱ⁾ and inquired what I was up to, so I shared that I was working on generating a properly-secured GPG key (knowing this was to be the basis of my identity and therefore required for any sort of participation or voicing in channel), blog setup (knowing this would be required for pretty much anything else⁽ⁱⁱⁱ⁾), and assorted probably over-engineered futzing with Bitcoin node synchronization.

~ To be continued ~

1. In the pages of Trilema one will find rape, killing, pillage, burning, eating of babies, slavery, beatings, torture... a wide band view of reality, much as one's head might prefer to accomodate only a narrow one. [^]
2. This advice, or more likely an incomplete recollection of it, may account for the somewhat abrupt and "doing"-oriented nature of my initial lines. [^]
3. But as a note for prospective Young Hands, you may be able to piggy-back on someone else's blog system until growing your own legs, so don't think of this as a prerequisite for saying "hello". [^]