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Abstract

life.</p><h1 id="916d">Choice 2: Arrogance & Cowardice</h1><p id="59f3">Lest you come to admire me prematurely from what I’ve told you so far, I had better quickly balance out the triumphs of my courageous successes with the tragedies of my cowardly defeats!</p><p id="56fb">I can do so because it isn’t any longer a sense of shame or regret that I feel regarding my mistakes. It is more so that I strive to approach my life with the same ruthless dispassion of an analyst annotating a chess game. Black made an unforced error that weakened his pawn structure. White sacrificed the queen and gained tempo through the gambit. Which side I was playing is irrelevant.</p><p id="21a0">Buddha was right that too much attachment is the root of suffering. Instead of defending our poor decisions because they are “ours” (…or do we even really have free will at all? A fascinating question to explore another time!), you play a much better game of life if you can objectively study your play, recognize weakness, and adjust.</p><p id="518d">My failure for decades to overcome ego and to self-examine in this third-person sort of way was quite costly. As Socrates put it, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Little wonder then, that for long periods of my life I’d suffer depression and have suicidal thoughts fairly regularly (though thankfully in my case, there was no escalation to suicide attempts).</p><h2 id="29d0">Result</h2><p id="0d37">My reaction to severe acne and unhappiness with my body type was to hide from prospective mates and rejection. My reaction to loneliness was to retreat into a severely obsessive computer gaming addiction. My reaction to investing as a teen in a single penny stock on my father’s enthusiastic advice, and then losing everything, was to not invest through my 20’s and 30’s. My reaction to getting good grades without much effort was to pause skill-building and arrogantly coast through a stagnant education career on the weight of my degree and experience.</p><h2 id="2e9b">Recommendation</h2><p id="8a0b">The harder and earlier you wrestle your ego, the happier your life will be. Reiterating the lesson from the previous section, you can only change the things you accept responsibility for and ownership over.</p><p id="6bec">If you suffer suicide ideation, you can choose to process its meaning as I did, which is to see these thoughts as the unconscious part of your mind trying to communicate with the conscious part through metaphor. The message is that your current, limited identity needs to die. You have to let go of who you’ve been to make room for who you could be. Your mind is <b><i>NOT</i></b> trying to communicate that the physical body itself needs to be harmed. The deep-self merely recognizes that you’re on the wrong track and require a radical change. It’s trying to save you before your life passes you by.</p><h1 id="7e82">Choice 3: Partnership</h1><p id="8a90">The two most consequential partnerships I’ve formed are intertwined as one. Palm Beach State College is my employer of 14 years. Through it, I met my wife of 6 years — Professor Bridget Rogers (pictured above).</p><p id="f800">Long before I married the love of my life on pi day, I knew what I wanted in a wife. In my 20’s I had taken the advice of a role-model (probably Tony Robbins? Almost all my good ideas I got from him, so let’s go with it). I had written down what I wanted in my ideal mate. Not the superficial things or the wants, but the “must-haves”. What things are non-negotiable?</p><p id="96c4">The ones I remember off the top of my head are “kind”, “intelligent”, “industrious”, “loyal”, and “laughs liberally”. I got all of them, and more.</p><p id="e3a9">That’s the power of getting extremely clear about what you want.</p><p id="ee58">The funny thing is that I had completely forgotten about doing this exercise. Bridget stumbled upon it when c

Options

leaning out some old papers from my college days, which was almost 20 years ago. She thought it was adorable. I think it is a wonderful thing to talk about, especially on the days when I forget to take out the trash.</p><h2 id="c3bd">Results</h2><p id="b57f">I won’t go into a ton of detail, but my courtship of her could not have been less smooth. It began with the text “I’m kind of into you.” I blundered my way all the way through but ultimately succeeded because we had already built up a good friendship rooted in trust over the previous eight years. That became a strong foundation to build a romantic relationship over (to the extent that I’ve learned how to be romantic).</p><h2 id="858a">Recommendation</h2><p id="4e17">It’s remarkable how strongly our brains seek out patterns of interest. Use this to your advantage. Train your mind to look for what you <i>want </i>to happen and who you <i>want </i>to attract, rather than letting your mind drift into what you <i>fear</i>. Also, put yourself out there and take the chance. Better to do it terribly (as I did) but still have a nonzero probability that things will turn out well, than to never try, and have none.</p><h1 id="c52b">Choice 4: Creation</h1><p id="8c96">In December of 2018, I quit computer games and began the process of reinventing myself. I realized that I was never going to want to stop playing. It isn’t like I was ever going to “grow out of it” because that’s just not how addictions work.</p><p id="d9f6">I had to drop all my games cold turkey to get away from them.</p><p id="b6b1">With the time this decision freed up, I read a lot more, watched podcasts, listened to webinars, tried various businesses, and changed my addiction to Facebook debating (there are problems with that too, but it is closer to the authoring which is my end goal). By February of this year, just before the pandemic started to change everything, I started a Facebook group called <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/487210212167830/">Resurgent.Us</a>.</p><p id="f5ce">Since then, my impulse to create has been accelerating. As I continue to take more action, it is generating a feedback loop where there arise more opportunities to act. Along with my friend Jenner Zeno of the Mind Wave Podcast, I’ve begun interviewing authors and public figures, such as congressional nominee <a href="https://www.podbean.com/eu/pb-56puj-e43ee5">Ike McCorkle</a>. I’ve begun writing in Medium about a variety of topics, such as my ideas about <a href="https://readmedium.com/who-are-you-really-a2015de67618">self-authoring</a> and our <a href="https://readmedium.com/resurgent-us-let-freedom-dividends-ring-5b044b4b22b9">relationship to government</a>. And now, I’m affiliating myself with the <a href="https://medium.com/illumination">ILLUMINATION</a>, which has been working towards building precisely the same thing I’ve wanted to create but is already much further ahead on the project. Instead of going it alone, there’s more potency in being a node in an interconnected network of likeminded people — creators who are focused on reciprocation.</p><h2 id="8d27">Results</h2><p id="4967">Every day I feel more invigorated to push myself to develop, and I increasingly notice ways I can help other people reach their goals as well. There is nothing more fulfilling than amplifying this virtuous cycle.</p><h2 id="4679">Recommendation</h2><p id="1fcb">Just as I have created a bio, you should do so as well. Know yourself. Define your purpose and desires with clarity. And <b>connect with people like myself who want to help you get where you’d like to go</b>. Don’t be shy to leave comments, ask questions, and put yourself out there just like I do. Even if only 1 out of 4 potential mentors and role models that you reach out to gives a response back, <i>just look at that upside</i>! There’s absolutely nothing to lose.</p></article></body>

My Story in Eight Minutes

Can 39 years of living be summarized so briefly? Let’s find out.

I Believe Our Choices Define Us.

While it is tempting to jump directly into telling you about the incidental facts, characteristics, and circumstances of my life, I’m instead going to spend these eight minutes of attention you’re gifting me to talk about my choices.

I’ll tell you as transparently as I can why I’ve made them, and the impact those choices have had on myself and others. If we have time left, I’ll tell you about the choices I’m still planning to make going forward and how you can join in if you’re interested.

If you’re my age or older, you’ll hopefully empathize and commiserate. If you’re younger, or if some of these choices are still ahead of you, I hope you’ll learn from my experience, and that you’ll benefit to the maximum extent possible from what I can share.

Choice 1: “In the beginning…”

A little bit of context is probably unavoidable, so I’ll start by saying that I was raised in a very strict religious household and that the Bible was at the center of my family’s lives when I was growing up. Not just for my parents and me, but both sets of grandparents as well. We studied it daily. My grandparents have all passed away now, but as a child, I had the opportunity to spend a great deal of time with each set of grandparents, for which I’m supremely grateful.

My love for my family made the first major decision of my life a particularly painful one. I left my religion at the age of 14. I had chosen to become baptized at around the age of 11 or 12, but I barely remember the details of it because I don’t count it as my own decision. I was merely doing what I had been programmed (with the best of intentions by people who love me) from infancy to do.

I left because the religion referred to its doctrines as “The Truth”. There was no room for doubt, challenge, questions, debate, interrogation of the ideas, a departure from the narrative… it was simply a version of the ultimatum game. Either you accept all the religion’s teachings as having the authority of God — even though they admit they may be in error and could later be changed, in which case you’d have to accept the new teachings — or else you are an apostate who must be exiled from their midst.

I realized at an early age that some games are simply not worth playing. If I submitted to this arrangement, then my thinking and individual sovereignty would forever be abdicated to the religious authorities. To resist them on any point at all would mean exile and the loss of my entire social network since we were not permitted to have deep friendships outside of the religion.

Unacceptable.

So I gathered up the courage to leave and to explore Truth through my own curiosity and investigation, not through adherence to other men’s dogma.

Result

This first decision is the one I am still the proudest of even to this day because it was both the most difficult, and the most consequential. I would forge my path. I would bear the consequences.

Recommendation

That level of complete responsibility and ownership — that total acceptance of the role of active protagonist for whom there are no excuses no matter the pain or difficulty — is the decision to which I owe everything good in my life, and is the strongest commitment I can recommend for you in your own life.

Choice 2: Arrogance & Cowardice

Lest you come to admire me prematurely from what I’ve told you so far, I had better quickly balance out the triumphs of my courageous successes with the tragedies of my cowardly defeats!

I can do so because it isn’t any longer a sense of shame or regret that I feel regarding my mistakes. It is more so that I strive to approach my life with the same ruthless dispassion of an analyst annotating a chess game. Black made an unforced error that weakened his pawn structure. White sacrificed the queen and gained tempo through the gambit. Which side I was playing is irrelevant.

Buddha was right that too much attachment is the root of suffering. Instead of defending our poor decisions because they are “ours” (…or do we even really have free will at all? A fascinating question to explore another time!), you play a much better game of life if you can objectively study your play, recognize weakness, and adjust.

My failure for decades to overcome ego and to self-examine in this third-person sort of way was quite costly. As Socrates put it, “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Little wonder then, that for long periods of my life I’d suffer depression and have suicidal thoughts fairly regularly (though thankfully in my case, there was no escalation to suicide attempts).

Result

My reaction to severe acne and unhappiness with my body type was to hide from prospective mates and rejection. My reaction to loneliness was to retreat into a severely obsessive computer gaming addiction. My reaction to investing as a teen in a single penny stock on my father’s enthusiastic advice, and then losing everything, was to not invest through my 20’s and 30’s. My reaction to getting good grades without much effort was to pause skill-building and arrogantly coast through a stagnant education career on the weight of my degree and experience.

Recommendation

The harder and earlier you wrestle your ego, the happier your life will be. Reiterating the lesson from the previous section, you can only change the things you accept responsibility for and ownership over.

If you suffer suicide ideation, you can choose to process its meaning as I did, which is to see these thoughts as the unconscious part of your mind trying to communicate with the conscious part through metaphor. The message is that your current, limited identity needs to die. You have to let go of who you’ve been to make room for who you could be. Your mind is NOT trying to communicate that the physical body itself needs to be harmed. The deep-self merely recognizes that you’re on the wrong track and require a radical change. It’s trying to save you before your life passes you by.

Choice 3: Partnership

The two most consequential partnerships I’ve formed are intertwined as one. Palm Beach State College is my employer of 14 years. Through it, I met my wife of 6 years — Professor Bridget Rogers (pictured above).

Long before I married the love of my life on pi day, I knew what I wanted in a wife. In my 20’s I had taken the advice of a role-model (probably Tony Robbins? Almost all my good ideas I got from him, so let’s go with it). I had written down what I wanted in my ideal mate. Not the superficial things or the wants, but the “must-haves”. What things are non-negotiable?

The ones I remember off the top of my head are “kind”, “intelligent”, “industrious”, “loyal”, and “laughs liberally”. I got all of them, and more.

That’s the power of getting extremely clear about what you want.

The funny thing is that I had completely forgotten about doing this exercise. Bridget stumbled upon it when cleaning out some old papers from my college days, which was almost 20 years ago. She thought it was adorable. I think it is a wonderful thing to talk about, especially on the days when I forget to take out the trash.

Results

I won’t go into a ton of detail, but my courtship of her could not have been less smooth. It began with the text “I’m kind of into you.” I blundered my way all the way through but ultimately succeeded because we had already built up a good friendship rooted in trust over the previous eight years. That became a strong foundation to build a romantic relationship over (to the extent that I’ve learned how to be romantic).

Recommendation

It’s remarkable how strongly our brains seek out patterns of interest. Use this to your advantage. Train your mind to look for what you want to happen and who you want to attract, rather than letting your mind drift into what you fear. Also, put yourself out there and take the chance. Better to do it terribly (as I did) but still have a nonzero probability that things will turn out well, than to never try, and have none.

Choice 4: Creation

In December of 2018, I quit computer games and began the process of reinventing myself. I realized that I was never going to want to stop playing. It isn’t like I was ever going to “grow out of it” because that’s just not how addictions work.

I had to drop all my games cold turkey to get away from them.

With the time this decision freed up, I read a lot more, watched podcasts, listened to webinars, tried various businesses, and changed my addiction to Facebook debating (there are problems with that too, but it is closer to the authoring which is my end goal). By February of this year, just before the pandemic started to change everything, I started a Facebook group called Resurgent.Us.

Since then, my impulse to create has been accelerating. As I continue to take more action, it is generating a feedback loop where there arise more opportunities to act. Along with my friend Jenner Zeno of the Mind Wave Podcast, I’ve begun interviewing authors and public figures, such as congressional nominee Ike McCorkle. I’ve begun writing in Medium about a variety of topics, such as my ideas about self-authoring and our relationship to government. And now, I’m affiliating myself with the ILLUMINATION, which has been working towards building precisely the same thing I’ve wanted to create but is already much further ahead on the project. Instead of going it alone, there’s more potency in being a node in an interconnected network of likeminded people — creators who are focused on reciprocation.

Results

Every day I feel more invigorated to push myself to develop, and I increasingly notice ways I can help other people reach their goals as well. There is nothing more fulfilling than amplifying this virtuous cycle.

Recommendation

Just as I have created a bio, you should do so as well. Know yourself. Define your purpose and desires with clarity. And connect with people like myself who want to help you get where you’d like to go. Don’t be shy to leave comments, ask questions, and put yourself out there just like I do. Even if only 1 out of 4 potential mentors and role models that you reach out to gives a response back, just look at that upside! There’s absolutely nothing to lose.