Married to The Game

Everybody's blind when the view's amazin'

Crypto is a strange industry and market. It’s a lifestyle bordering on religion. It consumes you with a newfound purpose and community. It gives you direction and meaning. But at what cost?

You joined thinking this was your way out. It gave you fresh direction. But maybe you’re still lost. You used to live in the moment but now you live entranced by the future. You’ve been going with the flow for so long that you’re not sure where you’re going anymore.

Bc of the crazy bull market success last year, you keep feeling the need to exceed it, to outdo yourself, outdo everyone. If you can achieve your 5 year goals in 9 months why can’t you achieve your 10 year goals this year?

You keep feeling the need to ‘make it’. And you know what you have to do to get there, so you’ve been working even harder. Too hard maybe. You’ve been burning out at faster intervals than at any other point in your life.

“Just a couple more months at this pace and you’ll make it” you keep telling yourself. Your health is telling you that you can’t do this much longer. But you’ve set such a high standard that everyone now expects it on a regular basis. 

The specter of expectations is always looming. Comparison is relentless. There has to be a better way right? You keep chasing validation from everyone else that you forget who you are. You used to have so many hobbies outside crypto but now you barely even think about them.

Who are you anymore?

Crypto is an industry and environment that will never satisfy. It’s a double edged sword. It offers limitless opportunities to anyone with the resourcefulness to capture them. Innovation requires insatiable thirst for progress. But it’s always you comparing your gains with your friends. Always chasing the next narrative, the next mint, the next next. It will never end. It’s impossibly difficult to step back once you’re this entangled in this web of deadly comparison. But this might be the only way out. But when? And how?

You’re still trying to separate whether if it’s crypto’s culture, the rapid success, or your overbearing individualism that has led you down this path.

Isn’t this what you wanted? To be different than everyone else. To be better than everyone else.

Well here you are, you’re completely off the main path, off the side path, off the rails even maybe. You’re so focused on blazing your own path that you’ve forgotten where you came from, where you’re going, who you are. You’re lost. You’ve made the path your identity, and the path goes nowhere. 

There’s the constant pressure of an unending flood of decisions. Every decision has the potential to be life changing for better or worse. Every missed opportunity or wrong decision leads to regret. Even good decisions made without enough conviction lead to regret. None of it is ever enough.

Maybe you’re just in it for the rush at this point. You’re at the poker table just to feel the dopamine hit when you see your new hand, to feel the rush of hitting or missing the flop, even just the excitement of the potential of risk keeps you hooked.

You constantly scrutinize and second guess your decision making because you’re scared of getting hurt.

Your irl relationships deteriorate as you unconsciously trim out distractions from the ultimate goal of number go up.

You keep going and going until you forget who you are and why you’re even seeking that big number anymore.

You keep going until you finally realize that you failed to achieve the original goal of improving your real life.

You made number go up but the pixels on the screen can’t buy back all of the time that you missed with friends and family.

You got the number that you always wanted but still, you keep moving the goalposts because it’s not enough, it’s not enough, it’s not enough.

You thought making more money could scale to solve your problems but you only compounded new ones.

When do you step back and realize the diminishing returns of increasing the number on the screen?

When do you step back and realize your search for meaning was a mirage the whole time?

You need to find it within yourself. And you finally have the resolve to search for it.

But just as you start breaking free, she pulls you back in.

Just one more big trade and you’ll be done, right?

That’s when you finally realize,

You’re married to The Game.