After a whirlwind last handful of years in bitcoin, doing lots of writing, going on the podcasts, meeting so many incredible bitcoin folks, I decided to do something sort of weird - sort of like an experiment I thought would be useful and informative. I decided I wanted to step away for about six months, unplug almost entirely from the space, cut out as many bitcoin-specific inputs as possible (no articles, no podcasts, no new books, no checking nostr, radically reduced twitter activity, etc), and just kinda give myself some space from it all. I was beginning to feel like some of my thoughts were being prompted, midwifed, or actually scripted by the deluge of inputs I’d been receiving for so long. And I wanted to see how I felt and thought when I removed them. I wanted to see where my mind would migrate and what I’d feel drawn to explore. It felt like an interesting way to gut check some of my very strong feelings about bitcoin. Internally I sort of viewed it like the Amish rumspringa experience. The results were interesting. Maybe I’ll write about it at length one of these days, but, suffice to say for now, I found myself naturally returning to thinking about bitcoin, even with zero inputs for an extended period. Did I uncover some more nuance in my views? Yes. Are there some common opinions on ancillary issues I’ve come to disagree with? Yes. Do I agree with my bitcoin family on everything? Absolutely not. But the core idea of bitcoin, it’s transformative power and potential…my mind kept coming back to it. And so I think it’s time for me to come back to the community. Hoping to do it here more than Twitter, because Twitter sucks. Might even start writing again. So hello out there again everybody.