Skating on this ice

cryptocurrency conferences, loving the world, and alysa fucking liu

i love the world. i just want to say that. i love the world and i love being in it and i think it is such a privilege to be alive.

i’ve been in a transitory state of sorts. quit my part time job that made me want to blow my brains out and i’m just committing. i’m committing to myself, my ideas, and my visions for the world and my life. these might sound like big statements to make but i have them inside of me, you know? i feel things at a really big size and i want to do more to share that, those feelings i have inside. especially here.

so yes, i’ve been wondering what to do.

so i decided to go to a cryptocurrency conference.

god that sounds crazy as i type that out. but i went to ETH denver. technically it’s still happening now but i think mama needs a break.

it’s interesting to go to an entire conference where you don’t know anything or anyone there. a bit overwhelming. especially after hanging out in my house for roughly two months after my mom died. pretty intense…but, i did it nonetheless and i’m very happy i did.

it just felt so good to be in a large room of people discussing ideas, networking, and trying to make things happen. everyone there in some way wants to make some kind of impression on the grooves of the world. i love people like that. i love people who want to do something and they follow their energy to do it. so even though i knew nothing that was going on, i was learning, and i was also basking in the energy of people creating things or trying to create things. what a beautiful energy to exist in. the wanting to make something, the desire to make a shift and change. it’s just gorgeous. of course, everyone there has different motives but i think it’s important as human beings to believe in something and create with another.

i have a theory about the world. i think so many of the world’s issues could be fixed if we stop looking at them from so far away, or even structurally. i think to change the world, which this has totally been said, you have to change the individual. and maybe i should be more specific, i think you need activate the individual. and i think the best way to activate a person is to inspire them and to make them feel like they are so lucky to be alive on earth and be breathing and that they have a special desire. a special, secret life desire that was brought to them when they were born. i think all of us have this. we have something we are meant to do. there’s something that feels better than anything else in the world and it’s assigned to us. we just have to figure out what that thing is.

so, i think, if you can activate in each person that they are special and needed in this world and that they have something only they can give and it’s tapped into the thing that they most love — i think you can change the entire living ecosystem of the world. if you give people that joy of living and exploring and giving something. this is beyond money and access, these things can be very simple. you can bake the tastiest bread in the neighborhood, you can be the most intricate painter of houses, or you can lead an incredible girls scout group — i think if you remind everyone they have something special, a gift, and that they should explore it, i think it would change the way we feel about our lives.

then in that state of inspiration and activation, it’s harder to be cynical and angry and finger-pointy, you know? because you’re happy, because you feel fulfilled, you have some kind of purpose. you see the world not through rose-colored glasses but you see the connective tissue of everything — you believe we all need each other. and i think in that state, discussions on how to make societies and the world better will be so much more productive and not only that, but INSPIRED! imagine the ideas we could come up with? when we’re all collectively inspired?

i feel like right now the world feels so grim because we are not inspired at scale. so we have a bunch of people ideating what to do, during a mainstream lack of inspiration. it’s a crisis actually. it fucking sucks. we need to bring the glow back to people’s eyes.

i hope this is resonating, if it’s not, to be honest, i don’t even care. it just feels good to say out loud.

this actually reminds me of alysa liu. who had retired from skating as a young teen and then came back to the sport but on her terms and she put all of her joy forward. it was not the pursuit of winning but the pursuit of expressing herself and her true aliveness. and she just fucking glowed. here’s her gold medal winning performance. the announcer says as she graces the ice, “she said i don’t need a medal, i just need to be here and show people what i can do.” — and i just get chills and immediately start crying. like can you imagine that? just wanting to skate to feel the expression of your passion on the olympic stage. just wanting to embody that and express it on stage to people? that’s just so groundbreaking to me. because the feeling of expressing yourself and the work you have done is infinitely better than an award. but she got the award. but the narrative in our society is that it is the award that is more important than the feeling, which is INCORRECT. it is the feeling which precedes everything. it’s beautiful to see somebody so exquisitely live their purpose. it infects everybody. she infected everybody with that, beyond the room, she infected the world. i scroll through all the comments and everyone is so inspired and crying, it’s incredible. i think everyone should be living like that. expressing your one true thing inside of you. it’s beautiful. it’s why we’re alive. we are each individual agents of our own expression — we can detonate our own aliveness outwards. god. i have to fucking clutch my chest. fuck, this is everything .

i really try to be careful who’s opinions of the world i digest. i think the moment something comes out of someone’s mouth, it could be anything, they are telling you how they are directing the story of their life. they are telling you what they believe in, what they believe is possible, and remember, this is only telling you about them. every time something comes out of someone’s mouth they are telling YOU the story of their life. do you want to listen? do you want a play a part in this story? are you going to give this type of story precedence over you? no — i’m going to live my story. there is no such thing as an unbiased perspective. everyone is living a movie of their reality. watch what enters yours.

but yeah, i’d say what i most learned from this ethereum convention, circling back (lol), is i love being in the energy of creating and i love human beings. and how everything starts from a conversation, from feeling a brink inside of yourself and going up to someone and saying hey, i believe in what you’re doing, can we try and do something together? or even if we don’t thank you for awakening this thing inside of me. i love it. i love thinking like this. it makes me feel so good. i just feel so thankful to be alive. and especially after my mom died i feel like i have even more reassurance in this. i used to be person who maybe hid this, who thought, oh no, i must be depressed about the state of the world, but the thing is i’m not. i’m far from it.

i believe too much in everything.

ps. i love writing like this. being free. i feel like alysa skating to be honest. i’m doing it for the joy. i’m not doing this so people click links and subscribe, i’m doing this because it’s like what she feels on the ice. this feels like my ring. it feels so good to write and feel these things inside of myself and share them with you. i don’t want to think about anything else. i don’t want to think about metrics or other dumb shit. i just want to breathe and be alive and fucking skate on this ice.