Sabbatical: Day 232 4

It’s been a long time since I gave a sabbatical update. After a quick post search I believe the last update was May 10th, 98 days in. Well I’m now 232 days in. When I wrote that post I’d finished work at the end of January and spent six weeks in Singapore, back for a week then to the USSR for four weeks. Back for a week and then off to Eastern Europe for six weeks. Sadly these two ‘euro holidays’ proved to be a disappointment, for reasons I briefly covered in my last update.

  • Living with very competitive gamers drained all fun from it and wigged me out
  • Pussy Paradise failed to materialize and game was no easier, if not harder, than in London (who’d have expected that)

And thirdly, and probably most importantly, my lack of experience and skill in living effectively without the 9 to 5. As I’ve previously said, doing nothing isn’t easy. Most people, bar the professional indolent, couldn’t cope with quitting work. The demands of their job shapes their lifestyle and removes all choice and they’re too busy and tired to experience any existential dread. Were they to quit and ‘relax’ 95% of people would probably have a heavenly first four weeks then quickly become a total wreck. What I’m doing is trying to undo almost twenty years of workplace conditioning. I’m learning to self motivate not because I have to but because I want to, and I know I’ll be ultimately more content that way.

I’ve been back in Newcastle for, amazingly, ten weeks now, thankfully spaced out with a fabulous two week trip to China (more on this below). I’ve stabilized myself, sadly gained an enormous amount of weight, but recovered from the depression I sank into on my last trip and now again have the itch to do two things: travel and game.

I’ve certainly got the hunger to join in the noble pursuit again. I miss it! Life’s just more exciting the more CPU cores have processes running on them, rather than sitting idle, like they sadly do in Newcastle: the pussy-wasteland. I look back fondly to the days last year of regular daygame with Nick and having a phone full of leads and always having a few dates scheduled.

I haven’t really made a big enough deal of it on this blog, really for reasons of, ahem, respect, but I actually have been loosely ‘dating’ a girl for over a year now. She’s twenty four, yes: twenty four and British (what are the chances?). Effectively I am ‘living the dream’. Here I am, 39 and increasingly adipose and I have a lovely, charming 24 year old girl doting on me. It’s a sad testament to my brain’s capacity to become accustomed to anything that this ‘living the dream’ affect seems to have worn off. I feel the need to ‘live the dream’ again by repeating this. And perhaps this is the problem? Abundance is not what you have but what you know you can reliably get, and the last year has proven I so far have a problem with consistency.

In fact since my run of successes with daygame last year I’ve regressed from a lot of the belief I had at that point back to, to some extent, my pre-success mentality of being an ageing man terrified he can’t fuck girls under 30 anymore except once in a blue moon. I’m looking forward to getting back to Europe and going out and doing some good, solid effort towards rectifying this. Perhaps I’ll do nothing except prove my fears are correct? Well I’m not sure I’m out for the count yet. My problem, or rather my opportunity, is that I’ve never really fully maximized my game potential. It’s not like I’ve mastered game or even got to where I can get with it. Luckily for me the gains I can get in improving my game can far, far outstrip the negative effects of ageing and weight gain, probably for quite some years yet. People like Krauser, Torero and Jabba: they’re pretty much on the plateau on the graph. There’s nowhere really for them to go: their game is finis… they are complete. They crank the handle and keep stamping out results, which if anything will get worse as time goes on and they become older, fatter or most definitely weirder.

I’d hop on a plane tomorrow and hit a new town to begin my rebirth, but something interesting’s come up. I’ve actually decided to start my own business. I have no desire to return to my loathed career and the horrors of a 40 hour week and I’ve always fantasized about running my own wee business. Recently I stumbled on an idea, it’s low investment and not much risk so I decided to give it a go. My instincts tell me it’s the right thing to do and in fact I’ve just been in China for two weeks on an amazing trip researching suppliers.

I need a few more weeks to set this thing up (the bit that can’t be done remotely) and then I can be off, working on it from shores afar. It’ll be fascinating to see how it plays out. At worst, I lose possibly a couple of grand and a number of hours of my free time, which is still probably a net gain given the knowledge I’ll accumulate and the drive and value I’ll gain from doing this. Interestingly, while researching this idea I stumbled upon another idea, a totally different business, which I am also researching and setting up as well.

At best? After six months of headaches and annoyances, a few fuck ups and problems, I have a micro business which takes <10 hours work a week to run and nets me £2,000 a month. Nice. Even if it makes me £50 a day I can live like a king on that…. forever.

So that’s it for now. I’m not cruising the post-Singapore highs but I’m still ticking over and I’m still grateful as hell that I don’t have to get up every morning, knackered and filled with dread and go to a job I hate. In fact every morning when I walk round the park on my Anthony Robbins style ‘morning walk’ and run through my list of the things I’m grateful for, this is pretty high up there. I’ve had a few ups and downs but I’m definitely on the up again, chip chip chipping away and doing small things to improve myself, move towards my values and have a higher quality of life. Soon my time in limbo will come to an end and I’m looking forward to what the future brings.