Fixpoint

Continued from part 4.

My hesitation at this point came from three causes as far as I'm presently aware. For the first, there were my strongly independent tendencies that resisted the idea of taking up a harness to join someone else's team. I did not take these lightly, as I believed they had done well enough for me in many ways, from de-prioritizing the largely dull schoolwork of my late childhood years in favor of my own technical pursuits, to taking an interest in free-market economic theories over the objections of my family and undergraduate community, to getting out of the proverbial Mom's basement as soon as practical, to stepping down from a comfortable-enough suburban IT job to pursue my deeper interests in programming as well as Bitcoin, which I saw as one of those rare truly disruptive innovations, while trying out life in a foreign country. While I didn't manage to express or perhaps even quite understand this at the time, it was anticipated well enough:

diana_coman: if this is of the sort "I think I'm better off on my own" then it's quite easy to sort out too - set yourself a big goal and a deadline for it - e.g. "I'll make it to lordship on my own steam by April 2021 or I'll go on 1st of May 2021 on my knees to whoever will take me and do something useful with me"

It became clear to me that the "try my best and see what happens, on my own" approach was not going to get very far, at least given how far behind I was starting.

For the second cause, there was the question of Robinson. A day came where he definitively stated he'd be joining that evening. As darkness fell, I didn't see a join, and a phone call failed to connect, my imagination tended toward worst-case possibilities and I fired off some impassioned pleas by IRC. Sure enough he joined, and I had a prime situation to exercise that openness thing:

jfw: dorion: though we know it's but the first step, I'm proud of you for showing up here.
jfw: We've been stuck in some kind of a mutual encouragement yet avoidance-enablement pact.
jfw: I'd be witholding information not to say that I was crying like a little girl earlier, telling him over irc why he needs to join, and Now.
jfw: The neighbors are probably wondering who died; as far as I could tell it was gonna be either my 5-year best friends relationship with him, my potential relationships with ~everyone here, or a particularly stubborn bit of our own stupidity.

For the third, there was:

diana_coman: jfw: fwiw you seem to want rock-solid under your foot (and preferably a few hundred meters of it downwards too) before you even step anywhere; assuming that's true, it's like everything else, it comes with its own set of advantages and disadvantages, not a "wrong" or a "right" thing.
jfw: yes I am very much of a 'look before you leap' tendency.

On this count, remembering the imperative of asking any necessary questions, I had attempted to inquire into the philosophical foundations and nature of the Republic, but found I lacked the language or background to get very far with this; still, some pertinent principles had come out, including:

diana_coman: jfw: realise that there is no right/wrong thing by itself; it's only about doing whatever you do well or not.
diana_coman: jfw: for a core principle of mine (and I'd say not only mine but I don't really talk for others): focus on figuring things out for what they are rather than for what you'd want them to be/ find convenient to be
diana_coman: jfw: and at every juncture, choose the thing that needs to be done rather than your comfort

~ To be concluded ~