Question as titled – is there something you stumbled on unintentionally? Got pulled into by someone else? Happened to be at the right place and at the right time by chance? Etc
Question as titled – is there something you stumbled on unintentionally? Got pulled into by someone else? Happened to be at the right place and at the right time by chance? Etc
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Credit card churning. Haven’t done it in 5 years, but it led to learning how to do manufactured spending, and then during Covid when travel seemed dead I was able to transfer all of my points into a brokerage account, which launched a huge interest in investing which has benefited me immensely.
As a young person, I found a printed out recipe for weed brownies on the ground, which led me to totse.com. Totse was like Reddit before Reddit was a thing, but much more Wild West. A true introduction to internet culture
Entering a few things i was going through on YouTube and having the algorithm suggest videos on Inattentive ADHD, which led to a realization and subsequent diagnosis.
http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm
Cops the TV show-Just interesting to see law enforcement and what they face. But also criminals, public services etc. Also about media and how they portray what they want you to see not always what’s there.
This sub. It’s helped to make me a little more balanced towards men’s experiences and what they face. Esp in dealing with their emotions, divorce, etc.
Reddit. Really, it’s been a nice place to hang out where I can chat without getting screamed at over politics.
building 7
Mindfulness.
Focusing on making healthy changes permanent changes:
I disliked running, but it’s good for you. So I forced myself to run every second day for 30 minutes, even if it’s more of a walk than a run. It became a habit and now I look forward to my run every two days.
I disliked cooking my own food, but it’s good for you. So I reduced my budget for take-out food to $0 and pushed all that money into my grocery spending budget. Now I don’t go out with friends for food, I invite them to my place where I can cook for us.
I disliked talking to other people and had subsequent poor communication, but it’s good for you. So I watched a ton of YouTube videos and read a few books on it and am still daily practicing to be an effective communicator and portray fake confidence. It’s made a massive impact on my social life and how others perceive me in the workplace. This in effect boosted my confidence to levels where I don’t need to take it anymore.
These are actually really small changes to make if you force your mind and body to cooperate. The effects take months to start showing. The confidence topic was by far the thing that opened a lot of opportunities for me.
Philosophy.
IndoctriNation Podcast on high-control groups and coercive control. Life-changing information!
A friend told me I should try a circus class with her. Now, 8 years later I’m competing in nationals in competitive pole dancing, have an enormous circus rig in my back yard and my living room looks like a circus studio.
Woke up to YouTube autoplaying videos one morning after falling asleep, it was a video of two professional divers reacting to a video about two other divers that died while diving. Found out that both oxygen and nitrogen can actually be toxic to humans in certain conditions, and that was quite the rabbit hole of learning algorithms used to creat dive tables etc. I have much more respect for divers now.
Main battle tanks.
One day while I was waiting outside a Chinese restaurant for take-out to be ready with a friend, some street kid came up to us and asked if we wanted to trade some weed for LSD. And I was like “I don’t have any weed but I’ll buy some of the LSD.” I did. I took it some weeks later. And, well, it was just the first of many rabbit holes to come.
The UFO / UAP topic. There is absolutely 100% something going on.
I’m going through a breakup and just learned about attachment styles, it’s fascinating and spoke to a lot of issues in my relationship I didn’t understand . I’m also learning about my own attachment style ( Anxious PRe-occupied) and realizing how much of who we are really does go back to our most formative years.
Learning about attachment theory blew my mind
When I was 15 I was a Bruce Lee fan. More than his speed and skill, what I mostly admired about him was the fact that he reached the top of his craft and turned to essentially the entire discipline and said “you’re doing it wrong.” Seems subtle enough.
Fast forward to my military time. I got in before the Iraq war started in 2003. When it did get going, I basically asked what would Bruce do. The answer was he’d make sure the war was just before volunteering to take an active role. So I started observing politicians and what was said about it, and it didn’t add up. They’d lie, get caught lying, and then switch to a new lie. This was off.
Long journey-story short, I am now an anarchist. I’ve studied plenty of philosophy, economics, history, etc. Bruce Lee will always have a special spot for me. He was teaching me to really be an individual and think for myself… Except his message was meant for Martial Arts and I merely applied it to politics/war.
Walking . I walked my way outs alcoholism ! Over 500 miles a year, sober for 4 years now.
Now I ride my bike. Almost to the 500 too!
IWNDWYT
r/stopdrinking !!!!!!
Pr0n sadly
Absurdism.
I first read about the philosophy many years ago at the suggestion of a Western Civ professor in college. Its tenets have, for the last twenty years, grounded me and provided guidance. They’ve shaped me so profoundly it’s impossible to put into words. Every decision. Every interaction. Every experience.
Absurdist views are not, it turns out, liberating. By coming to terms with reality in what is – in my opinion – the most honest and proof-backed way one is capable of, you’re immediately met with an even more acute conflict: The struggle to reconcile a known truth with the batshit, every day beliefs of the rest of humanity. I often feel like I live on a planet with aliens.
It’s how and why I became a Sales Director. Humans are little more than biological marks for me these days. If most people prefer to live in a fantasy, I may as well make a profit off of their knee-jerk reactions.
Cooking. This was about six years ago when I relied on meal delivery kits. It started with entertaining videos of Gordon Ramsay yelling at folks. Then by happenstance my friend suggested I try good food and cook the meal from the box. I’m like “wait I can do this. It’s not that hard.” Then went down YouTube rabbit hole. Pro Home Cooks is one I liked (I think they changed it now though). Made With Lau. Recently AndyCooks.
I was obsessed with computers, but my high school (81-85) only allowed people in advanced math classes to use them. I was not in advanced math classes.
So I worked all summer when I turned 15 to save money to buy my own. I got an Atari 800, with a tape drive and a subscription to COMPUTE! magazine. I even build my own computer desk out of plywood and used an ancient 12″ television for the monitor.
I taught myself how to program BASIC and 6502 assembler. I learned how to do math in hexadecimal and binary. Then I got a modem and discovered Bulletin Board Systems before I learned about the Internet.
My entire career is based on a frustrated 15-year-old boy who was denied access to school computers. I got into Linux in 1993, then web development, SQL databases, programming languages, and networking. Now I’m a CTO and cybersecurity specialist and still learning new things every day.
Starting to run and curbing down social media/phone time from 30h a week to 12h. The offline dopamine is waaaay better.
Aye no problem. There are plenty of works on how justice and security can be provided without a state. IDC to get into all that because the entire population combined is infinitely wiser than I. What i’d like to see is a change in approach, rather than having some know-it-all tell everyone how it’s going to be… Which is half the reason I’m anarchist to begin with.
Good talking to ya 🙂
Yoga, boxing, running. All great for mental health and can be practiced alone.
Failed suicide. After that you realize if you are ready to do that, you are ready to do anything in life…
Gardening/growing things.
I’d played recreational golf for 30 years but never really read the rules. In 1992 I was 39 and saw the USGA and PGA were doing a 3.5 day Rules workshop in my town. I thought I could help my golf game. I couldn’t get in that one but took one in another city. I discovered I loved learning them and working with lots of dedicated people.
I started volunteering at tournaments in my state. After a couple of years I started to get put on important tournament Committees. By 2000 I quit my job in software and started working as a rules official. By 2011 I was working at the USGA and helping write the rules as well as teaching them and officiating. I retired in 2019 but I still volunteer at tournaments.
Japanese noise rock
Psychedelics have been quite the rabbit hole. In fact one time I was on DMT and jumped into a rabbits anus. I can’t really begin to explain that because it’s a mystery to me also.
My buddy had me read “Think and Grow Rich.” That definitely changed the course of my life and my mindset. I still read self help books to this day. I am a better person because of that book.
rock music (learn the guitar), pickup, bitcoin
I don’t know if this is technically “rabbit hole” (by your definition).. but if I had to list the things that dramatically changed the course of my life:
Literacy .. when I was growing up (on a ranch in a remote area of Wyoming).. I went to a small 2 room school house and to supplement that (and partially as a form of punishment) my parents would always say things like “Do your homework or you’ll end up just being a ditch digger”.. or when I got in trouble “go to your room and read a book” or variations of that. I used to spend hours (days? weeks?) sometimes especially in the summer flipping through National Geographic or the Encyclopedia or Dictionary. It got so bad my parents had to change what they yelled at me to “PUT DOWN THAT BOOK AND COME TO DINNER”. I credit literacy to giving me an edge in life because the more insightful and intuitive you are about how you digest information, is a super power to how to navigate life. Not just “knowing words” and “how to read them”.. but the context and presentation and who wrote it and why they wrote it and what their target audience was and all that other surrounding context. Having all that also helps you see patterns in the data, for example if you know a certain current event happened and then you see coverage of it from several different sources, you can more easily judge how that information is being presented and why. Literacy (and information-literacy) is super important.
also agreeing with several comments in this thread about computers and technology. As I mentioned above, having been young on a ranch in rural Wyoming in the 1970s’.. my options were limited and there was basically 0 technology. Moving to a more populated area in Colorado in the 80’s and got some keyboard and computer classes in middle school and High School really cemented the bug in me of how cool computers and technology were. I probably could NOT have explained it at the time, but over the years now I realize what fascinates me the most about computers and code and technology is how infinitely re-arrangable it all is. You can take all the 0’s and 1’s that make up Microsoft Office.. disassemble them all down to a soup and re-assemble them into something entirely different. The fact that you can take the same hardware (same motherboard same ram, same storage etc) and run all kinds of different OSes on it,. is wild. We dont’ have many things like that in life. I can’t take my Refrigerator or Stove and re-arrange it to a bicycle or canoe.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how… had my family never moved away from that ranch in Wyoming,.. my path in life would have probably been being a ranch-hand or a bronc rider or bull rider. And even as a young kid as I saw those older guys who walked funny from broken backs or broken hips etc.. even at that young age I kind of knew that was not how I wanted my life to turn out. Luckily it veered a different direction.
Caring about and actively thinking about my health. Friend died of a heart attack at 32. Changed me overnight.
In my 40s now and seeing people my age go rapidly downhill while I feel better than I ever have.
When i realised that non other than myself is responsible for my own happiness and put up boundaires for myself, it really changed my life and i learn more and more for each year to come. Ive never been such safe with myself and my own thoughts, it feels like a superpower after a youth of depression and messy head.
Philosophy
Teaching English overseas. Was out of school, working a dead end job when out of nowhere a colleague said he’d taught English in Asia. Told him I didn’t know he was a teacher, he laughed and said he wasn’t. Internet was new but after a few hours of searching I became obsessed with the idea. Spent 10 years overseas and got married, still together after almost 25 years.
Longevity and living healthily. Not accepting previous generations rhetoric about aging that was really owed to decades of bad habits, drinking and smoking
Poker
Informing myself on the behaviour of narcissists