dakrootie

So much for me to process here, but I’ll give it a try. First let me say I respect and acknowledge you as a human being FIRST. I don’t know which gender you were born into and to which you do desperately want to transition. What I’m confused by is why does it matter? Better said: why does something you know to be the truth (your gender) become real only if those around you acknowledge it?

Maybe im missing something. I’m female and the last thing on my mind at any given second of the day is obsessing whether those around me find me “female“ enough. I’ve had suicidal thoughts but it’s never involved anything having to do with how others perceived me.

Again, trying to understand here and trying not to preach. If you do have a maker, He loves the being you are. The beautiful being He made. You have to be more - much more - than your genitalia or physical appearance. Your comment was highly intelligent and caught my attention. You are someone I’d love to have a conversation with at a party.

So why so much emphasis on how people perceive you if you know, to your core, the truth? Why bring up Trump at all when he’s a tiny, close-minded moron? You have to think you’re something more than a physical body on a rock barreling through black space. I don’t even know you and I’m convinced you are.

Your physical body doesn’t need to be “corrected”. What would it fix? Seriously, you are an intelligent soul in a temporary meat uniform and are probably gorgeous the way you are.

Same. Been using it for over three years and couldn't be more simple.

I’m baffled as to why nihilism is equated with hopelessness or “asshole-ism” when I speak to others about it. I (almost jokingly) call myself a nihilist because I truly believe my life has no meaning. I am but one organism in a giant soup of beautiful organisms. If I have “meaning” - in my humble opinion - it means the maggots in my compost bin have equal meaning. I consider us, them, whatever...all a curious, albeit awesome, accident of nature.

While I think my life has no point (in the “being an accident” sense) I am exhilarated to be alive. How cool it is to experience wind, sun, procreation, driving, art, love, and on and on!

I truly believe nihilism and “hope” are not mutually exclusive. I still get up every day and do cool shit cause it’s fascinating to be alive. I can affect things, make things, and help other “accidents” with their problems.

Nihilism to me is humility. It’s a big universe and we mean f-all in the grand scheme. Enjoy the ride and make of it what you will.

Thank you. I was waiting for someone to bring this up. Native Floridian, born and raised. My whole life I’ve lovingly referred to our mad little peninsula as “The Freakshow State” (from personal observation growing up in Miami-Dade). This area most certainly deserves the title, but there’s a whole lotta state left. Boring orange groves, swamp, and simple folk. If you stay away from a few metropolitan areas you’ll be good. Some areas are indeed crazy, but the public transparency laws paint the whole state as a festering cesspool.

Heck,yeah! They’ll have to pry my RSS feed out of my cold, dead hands.

Getting my “content” via RSS is like reading in a cozy, quiet library, whereas with social it’s like trying to read between a busy construction site and a highway on-ramp, complete with obnoxious honking and plastered with billboards.

My pleasure. I'm here if you need to bounce some ideas around.

How would you describe your "own thing"? What does a day look like when you're living off the 80k interest? Be as specific as possible.

I have a lot of experience in this area. (Obsessed about retirement from about age 22, and set a goal for 30. Did it.) This is a very important question to ponder at the beginning. :)

I should probably add why I'm asking this question. I thought all those years I was working my ass off, missing out on so many things in life, and destroying my marriage over this goal that I needed to have the money first THEN realize my dreams. If your dreams are "freedom" and "doing my own thing" you probably don't need $2.2 million to do them today. But I don't know what they are, so that's why I asked. Sure, if your dream is to buy Ferraris and pop expensive champagne every night, you really do need that money.

Mine or more simple: traveling practically full time, getting a farm and building crazy inventions on it, etc. I really didn't need a lot of money to do either of these things. For example there are sites like workaway.info where you can go live and work on a farm, or on a beautiful vineyard in France, or in a cool hotel in the tropics, etc. TODAY.

There are similar resources for travelers.

For anything I could imagine wanting back then, I could've easily achieved by being a little resourceful, creative, and reaching out to those who could help me in exchange for my skills/talents.

Bottom line is, you would be amazed at the life you can live outside the mainstream economy. I think it's one of the best kept secrets in the world.

I don't regret how I did things entirely, but thinking about this very carefully in the beginning would've saved me a whole lot of heartache and distress.

I'm excited for you and wish you the very best.

What Mizza said: "Realize that you are an artist." What perfect, elegant statement. And so very true!

I'm a professional artist and have been earning 50-100% of my living through my art for about 20 years. I sold a publishing company I co-founded about 5 years ago and was so burned out, bitter, and over the art world that I went through a devastating creative slump that took 3.5 years to dig my way out of.

It was the first time in my life I didn't create art in some form daily. I was convinced my creative talents were either atrophied or dead when business idea after business idea either failed or were abandoned.

I was fortunate, however, to have the ability to take several years off and just tinker. Once the burden/responsibility of creating solely for monetary gain was lifted, everything changed.

I would say, "Let me build this idiotic thing I'm thinking about today!" The sillier the idea, the more I welcomed it because, after all, I'm not an artist anymore and my career is over.

Just the process of saying "f-it" and trying damn near anything has turbo-charged my creativity. So much so, that I feel the way I did when I was a child.

When you completely relax, get your mind out of your own rear end, and just try neat - albeit meaningless - crap, amazing things can happen.

The point is not the failed side project! The point is all the beneficial things you learned/solved for/figured out to make something cool. They stay with you and will benefit you in ways you can never, ever expect.

Recently, I decided I wanted a vertical clothesline. Stupid, right? Something nobody would ever buy. (Oh well.) I have a very shady back yard and wanted the ability to move my clothes to whichever point in my yard had the most sunlight given the time of day. Just the process of figuring out how to get an entire load of laundry quickly onto this contraption and then have it fold down into nothing when not in use was an intense creative exercise...especially because I have no engineering background.

I could go on and on about how side projects with no hope of monetary gain saved my grits.

(Love this community...finally something on which I can offer "expert" advice. ;) )

So I see you've learned everything you know about the South from TV/movies.

When you get a chance, visit (in person) Jacksonville, Savannah, Asheville, Charleston, Austin, Birmingham, Atlanta...and on and on. It's amazing how they're just like the other non-hateful cities from time to time.

Yes! This book changed my life. Keep trying to convince friends and family that you get rich by saving money, not spending it.

Dude, I'd actually pay a toll to have safe, isolated bike lanes wherever I wanted to go. If there's not enough demand/money for bike lanes I'm sure others would pony up too. The lack of human-navigable roads in my neck of the woods (Florida) is astounding.

I don't know if this answers your question, but do read The Vegetarian Myth when you get a chance. It is one of the most profound and wonderful books I've ever read about the subject of sustainability/ethics for vegetarianism vs. omivoreism. Lierre Keith, while rather radical, makes a beautiful argument as to why meat (in moderation and humanely raised) is preferable to a veg-only diet. This is one of the top five books that's changed the way I see the world. Cheers!

+1 Debt: The First 5000 Years. Fantastic! Especially for economic theory/sociology nerds.

I completely agree. The Selfish Gene did more to change my view of the world than any other book I've ever read. Not in a religious sense, as many others cite, but rather it laid the foundation for a deeper understanding of people, culture, violent behavior, herd mentality, etc.

It's a masterpiece.

There is acknowledgement of inflation in every one of my examples, save certain electronics. I have no idea how to answer this question as I didn't deny prices increased.

Nothing. Works. Anymore.

Here I was thinking the world gets more awesome every day. I am now awake.

Everything?

True, some prices have risen. But, if I may, here are some fun equations to ponder.

1996 (Florida)

Minimum wage $4.25 Gallon of milk $2.73 Gallon of gas $1.26 Dozen eggs $1.31

2017 Minimum wage $8.10 Gallon of milk $3.31 Gallon of gas $2.41(was almost $4.00, if I remember correctly a few years ago?) Dozen eggs $1.59

1996

Electronics (to do work, using one's natural talents, for example) Expensive.

2017 Electronics: Much cheaper. Adjusting for inflation: much, much cheaper.

Of course, with electronics, there are too many intricacies to list, but here's a specific one. I bought a 512MB compact flash card in 2001, which set me back $249. I think the last one I bought was 2 years ago, or so. It was $60 for 16 GB. I make my living taking pictures. What would 16 GB worth of pictures have cost me in 2001?

I'm happy with these numbers. Simply put, let's think very carefully before using absolutes.

He hired a woman to smack him? I would've done it for free.

Amen. Amen. Amen!