Originally published on Yours.org on February 11, 2018.
Hey, crypto-oldtimers and newbs (and everyone in between)!
Perhaps you have found yourself obsessing about bitcoin price movements, “news”, or the latest conversations on social media. (Hint: Are we #winning yet? What does that even mean?)
Beginning
Maybe you are in, or can easily recall, your steepest learning phase of bitcoinology?
Have you ever spent a whole month (or more *cough cough*) solidly lurking and reading every possible link on r/btc (or maybe you started out in r/bitcoin?!! or an even older forum?!!!), fallen down countless rabbit holes, and have only investigated the tip of the crypto-iceberg?
Have you dropped your favourite Netflix shows in favour of binge-watching hours of crypto-videos on Youtube? (For educational purposes, of course!)
Middle
Are you worn out from being baited by hordes of internet trolls and helping to educate countless newbs on those monster threads on reddit or twitter? Have you seen *all of the memes*?
Are your ears ringing from hearing “bcash bcash bcash bcash bcash bcash bcash bcash bcash bcashvbcash bcash bcash bcash bcash BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH BCASH”??? (Sorry, I wasn’t sure how many times to copy-paste that. p.s. Did you know that you can mute specific words and hashtags on twitter?)
In the end
Is emerging from online Bitcoinland with your mental and physical health part of the equation?
There is an urgent need for people to do the real work of making useful things and taking actionable steps to improve the value and encourage adoption of bitcoin (cash) in the real world. Ok, many of those tasks involve being online, but not 100% of the time.Satoshi’s prescription for generalized crypto-anxiety may be common sense. “Forest bathing” (or the Japanese concept of shinrin yoku) is not a recent discovery on an intuitive level.
At the risk of being slightly pedantic, here’s a little suggestion for a Sunday (or any time) activity:
- step away from your screen (if you’ve not done that yet today, you can do that as soon as you finish reading this article)
- go for a nice long walk in the forest (or on the beach, if that’s more geographically convenient, or anywhere that you can breathe in the company of some plants…even a short break to a rooftop garden? a community garden? a neighbourhood park? a meadow?)
- breathe some fresh (hopefully) outdoor air and enjoy a dose of being
- repeat as regularly as needed
- spend some time with friends and loved ones
- be kind to yourself
What is your own criteria for #winning? (It’s not necessarily what everybody else tells you it is.)
Health is wealth, too!