I'm glad that you took my post good-naturedly, Michael. I let out a sigh of relief that this didn't immediately escalate. It sounds like you are dedicated to bettering yourself as you have more experiences and gain more perspective, which is an admirable trait. It's not my place to tell you what to do, but if you're open to input, I would timidly suggest the following: if you play the tape backwards and notice that, every few years, you find yourself distancing yourself from some of your extreme behaviors or stances from a few years earlier, then you could try to get ahead of that trend going forward.

Emphasis on "long". One year is not "long".

Ha, okay. I suppose we'd just have to take this to longbets.org.