TRST_Blog

To my left, the last waves of evening sun danced through the downtown haze. I'm lucky enough to be just standing on a train platform soaking it in. It's one of a paltry few cloudless days in the city: one of those that make London feel liveable and humane.

Admittedly, the dusty yellow skyline doesn't have my full attention but I do consciously receive its generous wash of gentle warmth. This small moment of reflection is a reward that's been hard won. You see, I've chosen to be less present in my native land—the expansive digital plains of the Internet—so I could afford more time here, among the grimey brick and corporeal forms.

I talked about this earlier and better than that I kept my promise. I've barely used social media in months. I still check the news and have tweeted here and there, but my mindset has been more measured when doing so.

It's easy to get stuck on a hedonic treadmill and sometimes that feels like the right call. However, the habit of checking your follows/replies/likes/whatever is a pretty ugly one. It's insidious because it feels innocent, normal even. Check your phone when your partner goes to the bathroom. Check when you're stuck in a queue. Check when your phone buzzes on the table.

Each time your attention splits. Like a seeding dandelion, tiny fuzzy fragments of yourself in that moment drift away; you are still present, true, but how present is that? Are you comfortable giving three-quarters of your attention to your colleagues, or half to your friends, while those other parts whirl around your various feeds?

I'm no spiritual guide to model yourself after (giant metaphysical eye, remember?) but try focusing for an entire conversation. Just one.^[1] Give that moment to the people you're with, or, just as important, back to yourself. Enjoy a sunset or afford yourself a quiet moment of solitude at the robo-checkout you're so fond of.

It's a choice you have to make for yourself. I've made it a few times and hopefully will a few more times. Who knows when I'll run out of sunsets.

Reading through the headlines last week, I came across an interesting piece about how an economists believes that bitcoin may not be a massive bubble waiting to burst after all. Not of much interest to me, yet I kept on. Then, the wheels in my memory began to whir...

When I was a bright young thing, I had managed to acquire a Visa Debit card, which was, in those days, a very uncommon thing indeed. It was my first opportunity to buy goods online and with little sense of fiscal responsibility, I loaded the last $20 out of my bank account and onto this shady bit of plastic. There was but one slight problem: I couldn't afford anything interesting.

What's a floating eye to do? Well, discouraged, I loaded up all of my feeds and went in search of a quick dopamine hit. That's when it happened, I landed on Hacker News, and the price of something called bitcoin was emblazoned across the top entry. It was trading at $0.02, which seemed exciting to all of the anonymous commenters on HN.

I didn't have a sense of where bitcoin would go, let alone a firm grasp of what it was, nor what it could be used for—have I mentioned my fiscal irresponsibility? I found somewhere to purchase my first bitcoins and carefully typed my Visa Debit details into the purchase form. Now for the hard question: how many of these little doodles should I buy? All $20 worth was where I ended up.

Purchase. Purchase. Purchase. Nothing.

The form wouldn't process. And in a brilliant show of resiliance, I closed my laptop and forgot about the whole ordeal. Until now that is.

If you're having trouble with the math, I would have ended up with roughly 1,000 bitcoin from that transaction had it processed correctly. Last I checked, one single bitcoin was trading at $1191.14 USD (taken on 2017-03-12 11:44am). That equates to well above $1,000,000 USD. Queue the sound of a tiny violin.

Now, there's a fair chance I wouldn't have held on to those precious digital gems until today. I probably would have panicked and sold them all during the first boom. If I hadn't, I more than likely would have lost it during the Mt. Geox catastrophe. Heck, even if I did escape with them, what foolish things would I have ended up wasting that money on? Jet-skis anyone? What about cloud insurance?

The comparison between my situation and the, “If only you had bought Apple stock instead of that original iPod/iPhone/Apple II FX/whatever, you'd be rich” camp is apt, but I can't help but feel a deeper pit in my stomach because this was a financial decision I actually tried to make. Not a thought experiment to show catalyse an understanding of a company's tremendous growth.

It is a funny thing in hindsight, to imagine myself a young millionaire, an undeserving lottery winner. Party guests, enjoy the story and I get an opportunity to kick the tires on a reality that never was. How's that for a quick dopamine kick?