BeverlyHoweTE3

Outdoors

In my previous [post](https://stacker.news/items/174401/r/At), I suggested that more services software should be built with lightning as the incentive system. 
@nerd2ninja suggested that I start building myself, after thinking about it I've decided that I should at least attempt to learn how to do it.

### so what's the purpose of this post?

#### 1.suggestions:
- I want to ask for suggested resources and advice, Rust was suggested as many lightning projects use it; do you think its the best for this purpose? Or do you have a different suggestion? (And I understand I can google myself, but if there are some suggestions from experienced people it may save me some time).


#### 2. To see what your thoughts are on:
- what decentralised services might have the best impact (search, compute, storage, something else?).

#### 3. As a sanity check, to answer: 
- would any of this actually be helpful? Or am I just beating a dead horse? 
- I'm really a noob, I've only built basic web apps and super dumb bots before, am I going in over my head?
- These have already been built but you haven't heard of them OP.

#### 4. As a log:
- I want to give a weekly or bi-weekly log of what I'm learning and the small programs I build along the way, this might be useful for someone later on if I do manage to actually build something.

#### 5. Any other criticisms, eg:
- you shouldn't post about this stuff here!
- you are too dumb clearly.
- `insert useful criticism`
- you don't have the write attitude, etc...

Thanks for reading, now give me some of your thoughts!


An attempt at learning how to build something with⚡️Lightning

bitcoin

Don’t Care About Others

LindaMcmillanZ3Q

Examples of decentralized social structures in nature?

MakaylaJosephFL3

Quality content, have 1k sats from someone less likely to make it to that destination. Embarrassed to see the post hasn't earned more yet.

Love the paragraph ending in "douchebags", made me chuckle.

By all accounts, SN should have failed. I should know because I speak from experience. I spent too much time shitposting on r/cryptocurrency to farm their in-house currency called Moons.

Banter was fun and sometimes, I even picked up knowledge. But it kinda felt like a dog-eat-dog world there. You have to gauge the sentiment on the sub. Post at the wrong time, and you will be greeted by downvotes. It seems that some people rampantly downvote others in order to get a bigger share of the Moons pie for themselves. Trample on others to benefit yourself.

Toxic much, huh?

I took the downvotes like a pro, but on hindsight, I think it might have poisoned my mind a little and given me a tainted understanding of human nature. I thought the world is consumed by greed because of inflation and depreciation. And who am I to judge, because I’m just looking out for myself too. Self-preservation mode.

This explains why I was baffled for the longest time. Stackers write freakishly long essays to expound on their experiences and opinions. How do you guys find the time and energy? Why do you guys care so much? It cannot just be the promise of sats. Even if you get a thousand sats for your post - which I think is above the median sats for a post here, it still doesn’t pay enough for a cup of coffee in many countries.

I got fresh insights on my question recently. It began when someone gave me a huge zap and encouraged me to zap Stackers more. So I did. I set my default zap to 168 and realised something I didn’t expect. When I zap others more sats, it just seems natural for me to flesh out my thoughts. I take myself more seriously. Suddenly, I have so much to say! To share!

And I think these thorough insights and lived experiences are the greatest strength of Stacker News. Stackers may not be purely driven by the promise of sats even. I write longer comments these days because I trust that when I put myself out here, my words will resonate with a Stacker or two and prompt them to respond. That what I give out is proportional to what I will receive. That I will gain either different perspectives or validation of my opinions - either way honours the time and energy I spend typing out my comments. 

SN is a Proof of Work system, isn’t it?  That we work hard to ensure the smooth operation of this circular economy instead of writing cheap comments like wen lambo and siphoning off all the sats, thus depriving others of oxygen.

Feels as fresh as a terrarium and I hope it stays this way.

Have a good day, lads. I’m off to zap some posts!

SN: Elevating Shitposting To Cathartic Connections

Let's play some **forecasting**!

Simply **predict something that will happen in August 2024.**
The forecast can can be quite generic ("_bitcoin will go up_")
or quite specific ("Elon Musk will withdraw from his support for Trump")

----
all zaps from this post will go to the best prediction made (judged by me)


🔮 Stackers Predict: August 2024

When I started following bitcoin culture every once and a while I'd hear someone say "zoom out". It would usually be in response to someone else talking about a dip in fiat price. You can take this simple comment and apply it many other places. Of course it can be applied to investments, or anything long term. The old phrase "Rome wasn't built in a day". Or if you go to the economics side of things you often hear about "time preference" from the Austrians(which is a deep thought provoking topic btw). 

We live in a very short term mindset culture. We want everything instantly. We have little patience. I'm not a kid anymore and I can tell you that this impatience culture has increased in my life time. My parents noticed it of course but when I was young I thought they were just old and out of touch. Now I see their vision and wisdom more clearly. Have you ever wondered why time seems to move faster the older you get? When I was a kid it seemed like I would never get to summer break. It seemed like Christmas took forever to get here. It seemed like I would never get my driver's license. Today it seems like 5 years passes by in no time. It seems like I blink and a new month is here. Time seems to function differently the more time I've have spent living.

I think this is the zoom out effect. Zooming out is a very important practice. Zooming out allows you to take a higher view. Just like climbing to the top of the mountain allows you to see things you can't see in the valley, zooming out allows you to see how the struggles and triumphs in life led you to where you are now. If you have a bad day, you make a dumb mistake, or someone is unkind. Zoom out. Is this an anomaly, or is it a pattern? With only a short time frame it is hard to see, but over time the truth reveals itself if you care to take the time to look. Do you hate your job or work? Maybe this is a rough patch. Maybe you need to take some time off and zoom out. Maybe something changed that you missed. Maybe it is an internal change and not external. It can be hard to see this without zooming out.

When we zoom out we can gain context. When we take time to reflect and ask ourselves tough questions we can see lies we may have believed. Some of us tend to battle negative self-talk. Some of us see our faults and failures and then magnify them. We zoom in on each event that is negative losing sight of the context. Zooming out helps provide context. Others fail to see their areas for improvement. They are full of self confidence to the point of being blind to warning signs. They need to zoom out as well. Sometimes even zooming out isn't enough. Sometimes you need someone else to help you with getting a new perspective.

I've been meaning to write about my recent experiences with refocusing, @siggy47 encouraged me to do it and here it is. When I started thinking about zooming out today I wasn't thinking about what I'm going to tell you, but the further into this I got the more clear the path became. I've been in a dark place mentally for some time. Most people that know me would not notice it. My wife is probably the only one that saw it. I don't feel like I'm out of the woods yet, but I can see the path forward and I'm walking it now. Back in February @elvismercury mentioned JBP's self-authoring program in a [thought provoking post](https://stacker.news/items/433828) by @Fabs. I had checked it out before and almost started it but for some reason I didn't do it. [Elivsmercury's comment](https://stacker.news/items/433828/r/kepford?commentId=433851) was the reminder I needed. About a month ago I took a weekend and did the [Future Authoring](https://www.selfauthoring.com/future-authoring) exercises. I highly recommend it to pretty much anyone. One thing it did was help me zoom out and reset my focus and thinking.

I realized that while I have been feeling burned out and down, I really needed to take time and zoom out. There have been some rough things I've experienced in past few years that really hit me hard. In many ways I'm just tired. But it is easy to let hard times lead into self-pity. In-action then leads to more in-action. This is a vicious cycle that only leads down into dark places. Taking a weekend to focus on figuring out my path forward was what I needed. The first day was not fun. There were many questions that I responded to that made me feel worse about myself. I was tempted to stop the whole process a couple times. But, I pushed through to the next day. Then a light bulb came on for me. I needed to zoom out and when I did I recalled some daily practices that I used to follow. I had let slip. I realized that I had accomplished many goals over the years but hadn't refocused on clear definable goals. I also realized that I have been trying to do to many things at once, failing to complete them, and then feeling defeated when I think about all I hadn't done. I realized that I had stop doing things that had worked for me in the past. When I saw this it was like a door opened and I could see a path out of a dark cave.

The simple way to describe what I did was that I zoomed out. I took time to turn off all distractions and focus on looking ahead and behind with a wider scope. If you are in a rough patch right now I encourage you to talk to someone. My path forward really started with talking to my wife. Maybe you should check out the Self Authoring program. Maybe just try to zoom out and realize what you have done over the last 10 years. Are you excited about where you're going? Do you know where you're going? Its always changing but every so often try to zoom out for a bit.