---
title: journal-004
date: 2025-05-14
banner: colorado.jpg
sn_id: 979677
---

This starts to feel like work, but I think it's going to pay off.

---

This was in my notes today:

> Will I remember to take a photo of my meal today?

I didn’t remember. I don’t know what’s so hard about remembering it. Is it because I’m too hungry when I need to remember? It sounds so easy, but it must have been over a year since I wanted to do [this](https://stacker.news/items/956985), and I always forget to even start!

At least I remember what I ate: a hot Cuban sandwich from [Royal Blue Grocery](https://www.royalbluegrocery.com/specialties) and a Double Cheeseburger with Bacon from [Burger Bar](https://www.burgerbaraustin.com/) on Congress.

---

I also remember that I had a great conversation with someone in PlebLab while eating my sandwich. We were talking about how different bitcoiners really are from "normies."

I took the side that we're not that different. We're mostly the same as other people and we have the same flaws. I do believe we're right about how broken our money is, but I don't believe being right about one thing of so many things in life—even if most problems are really downstream of money—means that we're an extraordinary bunch of people. We still prefer to hear what we want to hear, we have influencers that most blindly follow, and most bitcoiners can't even read code. Under these circumstances, how can we even pretend that "don't trust, verify" is anything more than just a meme? Bitcoin is not built on trust, but [trust is _the_ scaling solution](https://trustisascalingsolution.com/) for bitcoin's social layer. To not acknowledge that only proves my point even more that we're not that different.

The above is what I should have said, but I didn't, because it's easier to write. As far as I know, I never really talked about this with anyone before, I only mentioned it once [here](https://stacker.news/items/924509?commentId=924799).

I only remember that I tried to explain vastly different outcomes with compound growth. I don't feel particularly smarter than 2-3 years ago. But being ever so slightly smarter, more curious, more lucky or whatever it was that made me fall down the rabbit hole when friends didn't might be what brought me here to PlebLab surrounded by people smarter than me, a place I couldn't imagine to be in 2-3 years ago.

**A tiny difference can make all the difference.**

This is a good transition to what I wrote down next.

---

While sitting in my corner, I overheard [@bitcoinplebdev](https://stacker.news/bitcoinplebdev) sharing some advice with someone new to PlebLab. I started taking notes because I found it so interesting when [@bitcoinplebdev](https://stacker.news/bitcoinplebdev) talked about finding your 'edge in the market.' He went into different skill sets and mentioned Jameson Lopp. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but I believe he said that Lopp had a unique skill set that allowed him to understand both users and tech—a combination most people lack.

_While writing this, I dug a little into [@lopp](https://stacker.news/lopp) and found [this](https://stacker.news/items/979650). I hope [@lopp](https://stacker.news/lopp) can forgive me._

I wanted to go over and respect what he had to say by just listening to him, without saying anything myself, but that would probably have interrupted, confused, or disrupted him, so I didn't. I stayed in my corner, secretly took notes, and made a mental note to ask him for permission to share this later. I mean, it definitely felt weird to take notes on a conversation that I wasn't participating in. But it was a really good one.

[@bitcoinplebdev](https://stacker.news/bitcoinplebdev) also mentioned part of his own journey; he described it like this:

> When I learned to code, there were no LLMs, but I still took shortcuts wherever I could. [...] I felt like I was cheating myself, and I was ashamed.

This made me think of the Map of Consciousness:

![Map of Consciousness](map.png)

_ever since [@anon](https://stacker.news/anon) shared this with me in, I like to mention this map wherever I can._

He then went on how he got into PlebLab. I didn't really get the whole story, but he mentioned how he stuck around outside PlebLab and Car would always see that [@bitcoinplebdev](https://stacker.news/bitcoinplebdev) was not here to fuck spiders.

The following (just like everything before), is just me paraphrasing what I heard:

> I kept sticking around—I thought there were many others trying to get in. @Car would keep seeing me outside [in the lobby?]. But it turns out the world is smaller than I thought. There was nobody else I was competing with.

---

I already had this idea for a while, but hearing [@bitcoinplebdev](https://stacker.news/bitcoinplebdev) talk again about his journey convinced me that I had to interview him like I interviewed [@plebpoet](https://stacker.news/plebpoet) [here](https://stacker.news/items/824438). I want to get his full story with answers to all my questions.

This conversation also made me think again about how I feel that there's sooo much more potential in [@PlebLab](https://stacker.news/PlebLab), but we're not tapping into it, because we don't know how and/or we're sooo busy already anyway.

I also realized today that this is exactly the special thing I felt when I met [@plebpoet](https://stacker.news/plebpoet) for the first time: I see so much potential in her, but also in our friendship, but I don't know how to tap into it without being weirder than apprioriate.
