Into The Web

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BladeRunner Punks

IntoTheWeb

Dance to achieve flow and freak everyone out.

The "Lost Dancing" 

The Dream Night Light in Untamed Roads

Serendipitous Life

Burning old private keys, creating new seed phrases.

Path To Now, Then 2023

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Our long walks are not the same.

This is not a comparison of better or worse. It’s a literal comparison of my intent and expectation of walking vs others.

You see, there are 3 types of things one needs to optimize for in the military (missing some less important ones).


1. High speed run at a 2 mile distance
2. Long endurance walks with weight
3. Swimming. (I won’t touch on this one here, fwiw, water is my jam.)

So 1, my fastest 2miler 13:06, could never break the 13:00 threshold to max out this run event. Over time, long distance running was something I did for fun. (sub-7 mile for 10miles became a norm) I even wanted to be an ultra runner (Dean Karnazes was my hero), maybe still do, I just want to suffer, that’s all really.

To the hot potato of the story:

Long endurance walks with weight.

This was tough shit. Didn’t matter your level of fitness. The pure intent of a ruck is what we like to call — suck-fest. Also affectionally described as “embrace the suck”.

There is a part of any and all military activity that is purely about suffering. Suffer for a greater good.

Let me tell you.

The greater good people always got their way. You don’t fuck with the people up there.

Back to suffering. Or was it long walks?

You see, these long walks were no joke. The way they worked. Maybe you’re told a distance, maybe not. In training most times, you know an estimated distance.

You’re also given a set time to complete an expected distance.

On average, walks were 8-12 miles. Depending on location you were tasked hills or not. Some hills had skeletons on the side of the road and were named after death or love symbols, till this day I don’t know why.

The terrain and weather rarely dictated anything, except level of suffering.

Wet, cold, and hilly were the optimal suffering conditions. I think I cried once. Till this day I don’t know if it was rain or tears on my face, I just walked and listened to me.

The final requirement was a ruck (backpack) that could not weigh less than 55lbs dry (dry means you drank all your water). Water can easily add 3-5lbs, dependent on a persons water requirements and desired suffering level.

My body does good with low water intake but I always maxed my water because I can dump if necessary.

Trade offs were risky.

So, you get a group of men together, slap 55+lbs on their back, tell them 10miles, you have 4hours.

What do you expect to happen?

Balls to the wall, get your ass moving and make sure you get in under 2.5hrs.

If you’re 1hr early, ngmi. Also, you’re not allowed to talk to each other. It’s a solo event with a perception of group.

To take it a step further. There is a practice which is called something like “Soul Hunters”. Where every time you are about to pass someone suffering and moving slowly, you take a deep gulp of air as you pass the person in pain. It’s to resemble the taking of that persons last bit of energy and soul. For you to carry in your tank, for the rest of your journey. Unless you become the victim.

The point of these events are not to pass an event. It’s to literally test how much you are willing to push yourself for a long walk.

The pain that moves through your body is unimaginable from a seat indoors. The amount of times that you tell yourself “I want to quit” and then convince yourself otherwise, yelling at yourself “don’t be a fucking bitch”, is in the triple digits, easy. It happens so many times that failing and succeeding becomes an after thought — the only goal is death.

If you want to learn the flip-flopping that occurs, I invite you to watch Tangled, a Disney movie about a lost princess that runs away from “home”. There’s a great scene that she can’t tell if she’s a good or bad person for running away from home. My wife and I laugh at that scene all the time. That was me on long walks.

Back to long walks.

Long walks can have different outcomes. The less time constrained you are, the slower you want to walk, for whatever desired distance, changes the level of suffering and learnings.

For our long walks we learned very little during the walk. Everything came to us after the walk.

We had to drag our bodies through hell to finally get a seat at the table with the greater good people, people up there.

Let me tell you. It felt good to sit at that table after that. Really fucking good. Sometimes so good you just fall asleep.

I’ll leave you with a real-life example, non-military.

The 33-mile trek crossing Big Cypress:

It was a fine breezy morning. Danny and I, had planned to cross the 33 mile trail within one daylight cycle — from the day break to night fall.

We had been told by park rangers that the season was a bit dry and that we should be able to cross relatively dry. This was good news because our goal was to walk hard and fast.

Boy did the greater good people have other plans for us.

The first 7 seven miles, Danny and me were killing it. We carried one pack, between us both, it probably weighed 15lbs. Exchanging the pack to maximize our pace and energy.

We had been training together for the military a long while already. The reason for this walk was 2 fold.


1. Test our bodies in an unseen terrain
2. Have some fun in the process of training

Nonetheless, our bodies were in sync these first 7miles.

When suddenly we hit some knee deep water. What follows is the shortest, long torturous story I can tell.

By mile 11, Danny and I ran out of water to drink, we contemplated drinking the Big Cypress water that we were wading through (purification tablets handy).

Trade-offs you asked? If you get diarrhea from contaminated water you dehydrate quickly causing you to night-night (This happen to Danny once before). The other option is see how long our bodies could go without water before we risk it all. Potentially hitting emergency measures. We were not carrying anyone out of there without a chopper.

You never know which one will actually take you further. So many variables at play. 33 mile trek and only 22 more to go, through water. Long 22 miles.

Somewhere along the way we ran into other people. It was our lucky day, they had spare water bottles and water purification systems better than ours. Danny literally turned to me and said.. “and you don’t believe in God?” where I looked at him and said “Nope”.

We rehydrated, briefly, shed some weight from the pack and carried on. At times like these, every ounce counts. Literally. Your body feels every ounce.

For the rest of the trek, Danny and me would  look up, see foliage and trees, look at each other and say, “I think that’s land”. Learning in every instance, yes, it was land but the trail we had to walk through was not on land. It was through waist deep water. Around the land. We went through this cycle an unimaginable number of times.

Long walks you say?

We touched land around mile 28. We also did not meet our goal of crossing in 1 daylight cycle. We did meet the gods of pain. We camped with some other bodies. They helped us refuel a bit.

When Danny and I woke up the next morning, we shook off all the water bugs that had sneaked between our nice warm bodies with wet clothes while sleeping. I casually shook my pants and had several water bugs fall down my pant legs. They were not small creatures. Then, we looked over at the other group as they were getting dressed.

One of the guys asked about our boots that we had on. They were military style light weight boots. Foot care is a premium skill in the military, especially when you do rucks. Your lively hood depends on how good those feet are.

I mentioned the boots were awesome. The guy shows me his hamburger feet with the Asics he had on — he had massive blisters. I offered him to try on my boots on to see if they fit. They did.

I asked him to keep them, he did. He asked if I wanted his Asics in return, I respectfully declined.

Danny and I were on our way to the final stretch of our long walk, mostly land, some water. Barefoot.

We emerged from the bush of a long walk new men. Men that respected the potential for death when trying to have fun. Men that looked at flat prairies with respect. Men that learned a new level of suffering.

When I walk, I only know how to walk to suffer.

Our walks may be different.

I shall learn to walk for thinking & learning, not souled suffering.

One day.

P.S. till this day my cousin, Danny, will outright reject any idea of wanting to cross Big Cypress again. I think I’ll convince him otherwise, one day. Every time I drive through I-75 or Alligator alley, I look out at the flatlands and think when can we meet again. Nature calls to me all the time. I want to die in it.

P.S.S. The longest walk of ours was 18miles on the sandy beaches of Miami Beach, we had 55lbs on our backs. All our walks did. We started at about 4am and didn’t finish till mid-day or so. That was for fun too. We have several other long walk stories together, military and personal. \n 

Long Walks: Made To Suffer, Not Think. 

Building different things requires different mindsets.


1. Building a home.
2. Building a team.
3. Building a product.
4. Building a family.
5. Building a life.

The list easily goes on and on.

Yet, the idea of building itself, requires a singular mindset.

To do. And to do again. And again. And yet again.

It’s a fractal loop that we must accept, not allowing ourselves to be driven mad.

Insane, we must not.

“The Work” is visualized within these 4 states, consider this a confusion matrix.


1. The work that burns your body, but satisfies your mind. (entropy ranged)
2. The work that burns your mind, but satisfies you body. (entropy ranged)
3. The work that burns your mind & body. (entropy maximized)
4. The work that satisfies your mind & body. (entropy minimized)

Believing we are all in pursuit of finding sweet spot, minimizing entropy, reaching flow state of the mind and body.

Continuing on.

Let’s run through a real-life example(s), mainly my own. I can only ever speak of myself, for I cannot speak of or for others.

* **Building a home:**

  In 2015 I bought a home. The home sucked and I had a mind & body to waste. The moment I closed, I began tearing down walls. When one wall fell, I looked for another to tear down. By the time I was done I was living in this.

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  It was a bit mindless, enjoying what I had been done after the fact. Before I knew it, I was ripping out plumbing (water & waste) & electrical, the house was demolished to the bones. An almost clean slate. The process is no different in the Army. Tearing down every internal wall before any work can be done. The work that rebuilds you a solider, marine, airmen, sailor, etc.  Except this this was a home.

  “Rebuild you a home!” That’s what I told the house. (I hope it believed me)

  Rebuilding was tiresome. One 1/2” copper pipe at a time. One 12/3 romex at a time. One cement bag a time. One tapcon at a time. One 2x4 at a time. One tile at time. One drywall sheet at a time. One bucket of plaster at time. One paint bucket at time. One cabinet at time. One everything at time. It was tedious and labours. Very.

  This work satisfied my mind, deeply. My body? well I think it was asking me to take a break. I lived without AC & hot water for several months. Admittedly, the 6am cold baths forced me to practice meditative states. Suffering is more a test of happiness than a test of misery. These living conditions became a meditative mental state of suffering. I have no doubt I lost years of my life from inhaling only imaginable things but gained a mental endurance that I had not experienced outside the military.

  Let’s return. That’s right, mindset.

  To this day I couldn’t tell you if the work I was doing during that time had any intentional mindset.

  I just did, every day.

  I lived by the bounds of the physical structure that was my home. Done! Meant I reached the limits of the physical space for a given section of the house (or money) e.g. laundry room or the kitchen. “Finishing” in 2019.

  The irony in all this, a home is never done. Ever! (I just remodeled the kitchen, again)

  The mindset that I was building this home in was, mindless, just do, mind. Sitting in empty rooms, on a bucket, staring at walls thinking what money was available, what is possible, what isn’t possible, my mind wondered far and wide. I tried casting as many nets as possible. Except far casting was limited then.

  Throughout, the home built me more than I built it. I was giving the home a physical structure, while it gave me a mental structure. I wouldn’t realize this till much later. The world began to overlap with all the problems I had faced while building this home. I would constantly reference ideas such as, why I built a wall in a given location, a design issue that I spent weeks on, long nights of troubleshooting small task (fixing my terrible soldering of a tight plumbing space), the problems were limitless, and the solutions, well, also limitless.

  This is where I began to realize that it didn’t matter what I was building.

  My life, my family, a team, or a product. I just need to keep one thing in mind.

  Do. And do every fucking day **within the confines of the space you want to build in**.

  Build.

  P.S. I have recently returned to this home with a deep desire to build in the physical space again. The mindset is much more intentional. It seems like building feels different in the physical space now. Digital building does require a different mindset but requires the same principal element. Do.

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Build. Do. Mindset.

This week will be about Time & Space.

Recently, this conversation has risen multiple times. The idea, our minds are molded by 2 things.


1. Time
2. Space

What does each mean in relation to *Mind Space*?

**Time**: There is a certain amount of time that your mind needs to achieve a certain state, level of thinking. I recently casted on [Farcaster](https://www.farcaster.xyz):

> Everyone has the ability to rise to the moment. Do you give the time and space to arise. Every 🥖 rises at a given temperature and time. Undercooked, overcooked, or just right. Which are you?

Unpacking what’s already in our mind is one thing. Then transition. Finally, enter the desired state of mind. How long does that take? Different every time, I’d bet. One day, 30 minutes of unpacking, 5 minutes of transition, and 10 seconds of desired state of mind. Not that productive.

Other days, 10seconds of unpacking, 5 minutes of transition, 30minutes within the desired state of mind. I’d call this a productive session.

So, how much time do you allow yourself? 

To enter the right state of mind?

Next.

**Space**: This is mental space & physical space. Physical 3D structures embody ideas and thoughts that are not obvious. They become obvious when a certain mind set has been attained. 

Attaining the right space has proven to be one of the more difficult task, of molding the mind. 

The variables that impact space are wide and deep. Money is big. Time is even bigger. If we don’t control our time, the only other way is money. Certain mind sets can be tapped more quickly through exposure to the right physical & mental space. 

Some of my thoughts on applying time & space:


1. **Time:** Do not set a timelines on certain activities if the desired states is exploratory. Do it till the sense of that exploration has ended and your attention naturally shifts to something else. 
2. **Time:** Set a timeline on activities if the desired state is exploitative. Do it till time is up and move away. You may not achieve the desired product but its time aggregated to the overall task at hand. Next time will likely be better.
3. **Space:** Identifying what objects the space requires for a desired outcome. If I want to be explorative, I want people or access to people and outside information. Do these objects or things reside in a standard space? WeWork vs. walks on calls vs. in mind pacing around house vs. pitch wedge in lawn (Digital space vs physical space).
4. **Space:** Identify the mental space of any given idea. If I need to execute on a specific idea. I must try and learn what type of mental space that idea embodies.  E.g. Writing code requires my mind to be in a different space than when I’m trying to create a slide deck on the big picture of how web3 is an emergent economy. 

**Allow me just 1 full example:** Colleague X is wondering why his script that I tested many times, and recently used, was not returning any data, when ran. My mind was on different things but I promised to look at it by EOD. When I sat down to look at my terminal and `cd` my way to the land of hero-dom. My mind wondered. First to writing about something completely unrelated, short-form note taking as usual. Then my mind shifted to an NFT project that I want to buy (the NFT + the project itself, royalties). It took me a near 30 minutes to unpack my thoughts to only find out that the API keys were wrong, I just needed to update the API key. 

`commit` and done. Voila.

**__Let me wrap this up by talking about learning & education.__**

We never stop learning. It’s not a natural process - to be stagnant. Not learning is intentionally choosing to be left out of evolutionary history. Information structures, humans, want more and more information. Just do.

My biggest lesson, through having kids, a child interacts with ideas of time and space very differently than us “adults”.

Children have no conception of time. They only have conception of space. As we become older we become more aware of time with a greater ability to manipulate space. Yet, as the “adult”, I limit my child’s time within any given space, directly impacting their learning path, constantly.

I bring this up because children aren’t consciously optimizing for a state of mind, they are defaulted to a curious mind, moving from one idea to next, regardless of time. But, we as parents control their future state of mind by how we limit their time in any given space.

As “adults”, we need to learn how to leverage the same ideas for own Mind Space.

Leverage time & space for your mind, like a child.

Weekly: Mind Space Check 1