Feeling reflective this week.
What do you anticipate defining your year next year?
Personally, 2024 is going to be all about refinement for me. The past couple of years I've been focused on building a foundation to work for myself. Now that I'm reaching a point where I've established a base, in 2024 I want to hone in on the additional skills that I've been putting off, and set a higher standard for my services and for myself in general.
Through the process of skill building and creating a living for myself, I've found that prioritization is paramount.
Before you even begin learning something new, you need to understand the why behind what you're doing.
If you aimlessly try to "learn" without a destination in mind, then you'll be all the more likely to take every little detour and hidden path along the trail that there is. It may feel productive since you're "learning" and acquiring new information, but in reality, it seems to be either a case of procrastination, excitement, fear, confusion, doubt -- any one of those, or all of them together -- that's pushing your end goal further down the trail. And if you keep wandering, you may never find it.
In the past couple of years, I feel that I've spent too much time wandering. But now that I have a better understanding of my end goal, I have a much more clearly defined path in front of me. No more detours or rabbit holes. I understand what chapter comes next. I have the core essentials down, now it's time to refine the supplementary skills that will broaden my scope to accommodate all new kinds of clients.
Perhaps this involves bitcoin ~ o.0 ~
What are you focused on for your 2024? How will you characterize it? Is that subject to change?
I think the most I’ve used the Lightning is for zaps on nostr and boosts on Fountain. Surprisingly, I’ve never had to use the 2k sats I sent into Stacker News, and is able to generate positive sats flow from comments and posts; either you guys tip very well or I’m not tipping enough, or probably both.
In real life, I try to seek out merchant that support bitcoin, especially Lightning, but they are few and rare in my city. Otherwise, I use it mostly when trying to on board / orange pill family and friends. I would get them to download Phoenix and send them 30k or 40k sats to show them how easy it is to use bitcoin on Lightning.
The last time I paid with Lightning was donating to my local BitDevs meetup for the venue rental. The experience was quick and easy, as they run their own BTC Pay Server. It definitely was a faster process than it would have been without bitcoin, and I would like to also add that it was more private as I always donate anonymously.
Finally, I think education and training will help merchants accept Lightning. But one most important thing for them to adopt is people actually using bitcoin and Lightning at their businesses. When merchants see a clear and considerable amount of demand for Lightning payments, they will not want to miss out and will make an effort to adopt.