So yesterday I posted about the psychological aspects of the entire stock craze.
Today I want to go a bit more in depth of how PSYOPS (psychological operations) normally work for military, but also how they apply to us today. if someone wants me to go in depth on how psyops is used on businesses feel free to let me know I'll do some research and post here
There is a certain order when it comes to PSYOPSIn order to create a successful PSYOP the following must be established:

1 clearly define the mission so that it aligns with national objectives 2 need a PSYOP estimate of the situation 3 prepare the plan 4 media selection 5 product development 6 pretesting - determines the probable impact of the PSYOP on the target audience 7 production and dissemination of PSYOP material 8 implementation 9 posttesting - evaluates audience responses 10 feedback

Before these steps can occur, intelligence analysts must profile potential targets in order to determine which ones it would be most beneficial to target. In order to figure this out, analysts must determine the vulnerabilities of these groups and what they would be susceptible to.
The analysts also determine the attitudes of the targets toward the current situation, their complaints, ethnic origin, frustrations, languages, problems, tensions, attitudes, motivations, and perceptions, and so on. Once the appropriate target(s) have been determined, the PSYOP can be created. this is the basic outline of how a PSYOPS work, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation
this is the basic outline of how a psyop works, now lets compare that to the entire GME situation
1 they need to find out what we think/feel and find our weakness.
this is the most simple one as we work in plain sight and let everyone see our DD
2 Can they pull this off? can they create FUD and divide our ranks?
Also easily yes
3 the plan:
Divide and conquer, make them doubt themselves and show their comrades are not as brotherly as they imagined.
4 the Media selection is also fairly easy to fill in
modern news media, meaning TV, newspapers, and reddit itself. We’ve all seen the people on tv saying we are idiots, we are dumb etc etc News article after news article stating that it’s over And here is the only one that may have actually shown to have some effect: other users Other users saying we missed the boat, other users showing their “gains” and using others to turn against each other. 5 Product development
See how well it’s doing so far? 6 pretesting Can and will these things affect us? Yes and no, the media didn’t work as we could see the facts were skewed across the board, and they are still using short ladder attacks so… no Having other users spread doubt… Yes, this has worked for some people. 7 product and dissemination Normally this is where (if it was used by a military operation) it would be implemented, but due to time constraints I believe they started right after the “planning” phase in 3 8 Implementation Putting it to use, again I believe the implementation begon at point 3 9 posttesting Evaluation of the audiences response, do they react and how do they react 10 feedback If it works, at which points, if it doesn’t where and why? This last one is very easy, noticed how all mainstream news died off about the negativity towards GME BB AMC and NOK? But how the influx of new users on WSB become more prevalent? This is because they knew we didn’t give a fuck about the mainstream media, we cared about our brothers in arms.
Now with knowing some of the basics lets do a quick and dirty analysis of all of this, From end of 2020 to about 18-01-2021 the sentiment was positive. At this date we saw a wide range of implementation of the media.And everyone was saying we were stupid etc etc. Hell we even got a billionaire to cry on tv
This negative attention seemed to only bolster us in our conviction that we were and are correct in what our DD has lined out for us.
Ok so the main media networks don't work, What does?
Ok so the main media networks dont work, What does? Well lets use their main tools (reddit) against them. And what did we suddenly see since the 27th/28th? Suddenly the mod team changes, and this is very important because if you control the people who control the board you control the narrative, skewing it from positive to negative. (as we’ve seen a lot of people getting their positive posts deleted, their DD deleted etc etc) We also seen a massive influx of bots, negative posters, people showing their “gains” And this seemed to work so they stuck with it. Now look at these last paragraphs and compare them to a normal Psyops mission. Do you think they kindof align a lot? Good because this is what we have been using since as long as we can remember Some real world examples of things like this being implemented are for example: The Gleiwitz incident Hitler invaded Poland, took control of their radio tower and made it seem like Poland attacked Germany, this way he could “retaliate” without any repercussions at the time. As he was only defending his country.
Operation Bodyguard A plan to mislead the Germans during WW2 to make them think the time and place of the invasion (D-day) would take place at another time and date then it did. There are a lot of WW2 examples but I think it’s more prudent to focus on modern day as this was the beginning of modern psyops, but it has evolved a lot since then. To most people when you say “PSYOPS” they think of Vietnam, and rightly so as here we were starting to use more and more psychological methods. First off this is a very interesting read; http://www.psywarrior.com/VietnamCommanders.htmlAnd for the people who think PSYOPS are no longer used, they are and they’re still recruiting; https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/special-operations/psyop/psyop-history.html
Vietnam;
The Phoenix program; The program was designed to identify and destroy the Viet Cong via infiltration, torture, capture, counter-terrorism, interrogation, and assassination. The CIA described it as "a set of programs that sought to attack and destroy the political infrastructure of the Viet Cong". The Phoenix Program was premised on the idea that infiltration had required local support from non-combat civilian populations, which were referred to as the "political branch" that had purportedly coordinated the insurgency.
Operation Wandering soul; Now this one is actually one that is pretty fucked up in my book, this was an OP that screwed with their heads on such a level this one should be criminal.
The VC believed at the time that the dead should be buried at home or else the soul was stuck wandering the earth aimlessly, sounds fairly normal if you believe in those things. But then the US was like “they aren’t at home right? What if we play distorted human sounds and zombie like sounds to fuck with them”. This is the gist of what happened
Check this site out for more on OP Wandering soul: http://www.psywarrior.com/wanderingsoul.html
Now to keep this a bit shorter I will give you a couple of operation names here which you can research if you want, they are important in this grander thing but or else this post would turn into another thesis on PSYOPS. Operation CHIEU HOI Operation MOCKINGBIRD (highly unclear of the scope but it does reflect a lot of what we see today in the ways of media manipulation) Operation FIELD GOAL (leaflet drop mission, much like the recent “GAINS” posts as it has the same effect, either you get convinced the squeeze is squoze or you lose morale)
Modern day(desert storm to now)
Gulf war Banknotes; This one is a very good one, as they used banknotes which had some added text to it, sounds innocent enough right?Nope this one was one of the more effective ones they used in desert storm/shield.http://www.psywarrior.com/GulfWarBanknotes.html
Give it a read because it’s too good to just give a small synopsis here.
Command Radio Solo over Iraq Because Iraq was still a technologically lagging country back then they used radio to give out propaganda, again using mainstream media to push their idiology.http://www.psywarrior.com/CommandoSoloIraqScripts.htmlThis page has everything on it, including the scripts they have used at the time.
Some other golf war things to look into:
http://www.psywarrior.com/Iraqleaflinks.html
Compare those to the disinformation we are receiving when it comes to gains and why we should sell.
Operation OBSERVANT COMPASS 2003 initially an op to get Joseph Kony and to end the “lord's resistance army in central afrika.
Toppling of Saddam Hussein statue Arguably the most visible image of the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the toppling of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square in central Baghdad. Allegations that the event was staged have been published.
It is claimed it was actually an idea hatched by an Army psychological operations team. Allegations surfaced that not only were the cheering group of people surrounding the statue in fact smaller than they were made out to be, in media depictions, but that also the group were not local to the area and were instead brought in by the military for the specific purpose of watching and lending credence to the pre-planned toppling.
Use of music in interrogation of prisoners. Again this one is one we all know about, using heavy metal on Iraqi prisoners, as they’ve never heard heavy metal this fucks them up beyond belief. this is a more hands on PSYWAR but it's morale based
Pentagon analysts and the mainstream media In 2008, The New York Times exposed how analysts portrayed in the U.S. news media as independent and objective were in fact under the tutelage of the Pentagon.
According to the NYT:
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance
CNN and NPR interns incident In 2000, it came to light that soldiers from the 4th Psychological Operations Group had been interning at the American news networks Cable News Network (CNN) and National Public Radio (NPR) during the late 1990s. The program was an attempt to provide its PSYOP personnel with the expertise developed by the private sector under its "Training with Industry" program.
The program caused concern about the influence these soldiers might have on American news and the programs were terminated.
National Public Radio reported on April 10, 2000:
The U.S. Army's Psychological Operations unit placed interns at CNN and NPR in 1998 and 1999. The placements at CNN were reported in the European press in February of this year and the program was terminated. The NPR placements will be reported this week in TV Guide.

Conclusion:

Am I saying the army or government is involved? No What I am saying is that most of the information regarding PSYOPS is publicly available, and anyone with a decent understanding of sociology and psychology can use this to their advantage. And I’m sure that not everyone who was in PSYOPS at one point or another, would stay there forever. These people usually branch out and use their acquired skillset and use it on the open market to get some big bucks. And while there are laws forbidding the U.S. government to use misinformation/PSYOPS on their own people, there are none for corporations, so they can still implement this. What you can see here is a fairly simple pattern and Modus Operandi. Just translate it to modern times.
-TV and Radio have been used to spread doubt about “is this over or not”.-They use twitter as an outlet showing “experts” who say we are stupid bad or nihilists, this is bait don't take it ok?
-Leaflets have been updated for the modern day, “LOOK AT MAH GAINS” “LOOK IVE SOLD SO SHOULD YOU AT AN ALL TIME LOW”, pictures are all we need instead of leaflets now. Why sell for losses? If you believed in the stock then believe in it now, even Mark Cuban said “if you can afford to hold, hold. That’s what I would do.”
Infiltration and seed Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. Make people lose faith in the cause they are in.We have seen this with bots, and real people who are suddenly in the WSB group and other groups, but it’s funny how it’s mostly concentrated on WSB no ?We have seen other members talking to people on Webull asking if they’re getting paid and they flat out said yes 20 bucks for every post with minimally 3 interactions.When those naysayers get caught on reddit and pointed out suddenly they do an account wipe (seen this at least 5 times myself and seen others post about this).

Control the narrative
This is the most important one can do, if you control the narrative you control the way people think interact etc Since a week or so WSB has become very negative about something they were rallying behind for months, like on the flip of a dime.
New mods instated, old ones removed
And suddenly all the positive things about GME are suddenly gone. u/zjz has been removed out of the blue while being one of the better mods on there.
Right now they are controlling the narrative and spreading “fake news” I fucking hate Donny but I’m ashamed to admit that he might have been right about the entire fake news idea. Because look at the news media; Gme craziness they will crash the market GME craze over now silver Silver now Uranium They all went broke etc etc. EVERYTHING BACK TO NORMAL PLZ DONT LOOK
But if you look at multiple sources…. The shorts are not covered at all The Short ladder attacks (which we can just call ladder attacks at this point) keep going day in day out because we are not selling and they keep shorting it.
Take the facts that you can check yourself. Cross check over and over and over, you will see automatically which ones are correct (if a 100 say the outcome is 120 and 20 say they’re at 50 look at the credibility of those people giving the information).Do your DD, cross check with the DD of other members (this is most likely why WSB removed these)As this is the most powerful one, who is on board who does what why do they do it etc etc.
Normally the announcement that Cohen,fils-aime, Francis, Durkin AND Kruger would impact the stock in a very positive manor, yet the stock went down 20% that day
Compare your findings with the Median of when something like that happens normally the stock shoots up, you can find what’s actually happening and what is being pushed on you.
Like: people have already sold out their shares (while the data shows otherwise https://www.reddit.com/GME/comments/lejf39/good_news_apes_are_holding_numbers_are_out_apes/ )My conclusion is that there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes to keep us infighting and divided, as long as we all keep positive we can actually come out on top of this.
Make no mistake gentlemen we are at war. And half the war is a war of hearts and minds

Capture their minds

and their hearts and souls

will follow

Done with this life

My family started in a trailer in a poor part of my city. First my parents had my sister, and then me a year later. My parents never married, but they tried to make it work for me and my sister's sake. They made it into an apartment, and then eventually worked their way into beginning to pay on the house my mom still lives in today. Up until I was about 10 years old, my father and mom stayed together in this house, and it was the definition of hell. Screaming/fights almost every day. Sometimes my dad would start it, sometimes my mom would, sometimes me or my sister. My dad has thrown me across the room, slapped and punched my mom multiple times, (my mom is 5'2', my dad is 6'3'). He has issues, some from his own father dying while he was young, some from using/selling coke and weed and drinking. My mom told me when I was young (maybe 7-8 years old) she was raped by two men in her home state of Oklahoma, and I don't think I really processed it well as a kid. Her dad also died while she was young, he fell to his death on a construction site.
Me and my sister both have mental health issues nowadays, but she did make it through four years of college, which is more than either of my parents or me did. I personally have really bad anger issues and anxiety, PTSD from close range shoot outs and robberies. I struggle daily with depression and suicidal thoughts almost every day. I sold weed at a pretty decent level for a long time, 6-7 years. I started around 16 when I realized my parents didn't really have the money they were giving me for my weed/drug habit. 20 or so dollars every day was adding up and they would tell me. My mom was a manager at a Texas roadhouse around when I was 8-9-ish years old, and she ended up getting in between two drunk guys that were in a bar fight and she got punched in her neck. She ended up getting a $50,000ish settlement, but had to have multiple surgeries and will pretty much always be in pain and will always have metal in her neck to the point where she can feel it when its raining outside. My mom has never been great with finances, so that money after bills went by very fast. She did use probably 20-30 grand of it on a new truck. An brand new F-150. Remember she's 5'2" lol. That was definitely a mistake, and I think she knows it, but I've never been good with money either. My father has always been broke, to the point where he would ask my mother for money for his own weed and bills. I'm not sure where my dad lives now, last I heard it was in the mountains in North Carolina. He left the house when I was around 10 like I mentioned earlier. He went to his moms house for a while and then moved out. His mom took care of us a lot of nights that they couldn't because of work or other things. She's the sweetest most Christian grandmother you could imagine. She had four kids, and then as I mentioned her husband (my dads dad) died of a heart attack while they were all still young. I can't imagine the pain, I'm sure it messed my dad up pretty bad. I think these things are important to understand though, because they help me see why they were always so mad and upset always.
So in comes when it started getting hard. I had almost no friends in elementary school, I remember getting a "red card" in maybe second grade for punching a kid in the back, yes the back, lol. Because he was literally just talking to a girl I had a crush on. I never really talked to girls then, I would just decide I had a crush on them. In second grade. Lol. He didn't even hit me back, he was kind of just like "What the fuck?" And then I just walked away until a teacher came up to me that's all I remember. I've always been a kind of small and skinny dude, and I especially was back then. In middle school I started making some friends but I was always annoying them because I was always asking to hang out and to come over to their houses. I remember my bus route used to go through the nicest neighborhoods on my side of the city, I'm talking retired NFL player nice. they make my moms house look like a shack, and I don't know if I realized it back then, but it was making me jealous. The friends I ended up making in middle school were not very healthy friends, we were always the loud and obnoxious ones. I got into a lot of trouble starting around this time, 7th grade. I spent almost half of my 7th grade year in In School Suspension, just staring at wall while "doing" class work. It was also this year toward the end of the year that I got into my first real fight. I was always outspoken, and so was this other guy, but he lived in a super nice house and was from a rich ass family. We had a social studies class together, and one day, I'm not even sure how it started, he started making jokes about my mother working at chick fil a. She got that job after her neck was healed up just enough to get a job. She had to get a job, as she was my house's income. She loved and still loves that job, she's a manager now. But back then and how he made fun of her in front of my whole class while my teacher just didn't do anything about it, I was just so mad. So I told him I was going to beat his ass and after class (and more trolling me) we met next to the side of the school and a huge crowd gathered to watch. A lot of people, not the whole school, but most of my grade, because we all exited the same door if you rode on the bus. I threw the first punch, missed, he grabbed my neck and slammed my head into the brick wall, I tried to throw another punch, missed, and I just yelled "stop making fun of my mom" grabbed my backpack and got on the bus, Just cried the whole way home, my sister on the bus was just wondering what happened. I've never been good at explaining my thoughts or feelings to people, so most people think I'm even more dumb than I actually am. I didn't tell my family about that fight for years, even though my sister did. I just will never forget it. I even tried to tell people that I didn't lose that fight even though everyone heard about it. I just couldn't come to terms with it. 8th grade I don't have many memories of. I was a goofball, and my grades were really slipping now, even worse than the year before. Most people just saw me as that weird kid who got his ass beat. I think around this time I started to get very, very cynical with my worldview and my attitude. I was always on the internet when I could be, playing shitty games on our homes only computer; a dell desktop, and reading stupid conspiracy theories. Later I would start gaming pretty hard, and I loved watching streams all the way back to the justin.tv days. My dad had a PlayStation 1, and I loved watching him play Call of Duty. It might be my only good memory with my dad, honestly, and he never got to play a lot. The internet and my cynical world view pushed me away from religion, even though my family was heavily Christian. Even before this though, I hated going to church. From a young kid onward every single Sunday was a screaming match between me and my mom about not wanting to go to church. Sometimes she would end up getting me to go, but that was less and less, and before even middle school I just stopped going completely.
So in between middle and high-school I started smoking weed, it made me some new friends and got me into hanging out at a park near my moms house. This park would end up being where I spent most of my next 6-7 or so years. Most people knew it was a druggie park, would call us all "park rats" and make fun of us for wasting our time and money doing drugs. But I gained more memories here than I could ever write down, I probably could make a book out of those memories. There were all ages of people there, some young as me, some mid 30s-40s, a lot of weed smoking teens, a lot of acid tripping hippies, some Xanax/oxy fiends, and even some meth and heroine people. Most days it was just normal people getting fucked up to enjoy their time, but there was always plenty of drama. This park was known not just on my side of town but through the whole city. its kind of tucked away in woods, sits on a lake, and has a small disc-golf course, so you'd even have a bunch of random (probably) sober people show up to play some days, but they usually stayed on their course and away from us, minus a few of them. I started selling weed when my mom started telling me no to my almost daily asks of 20 dollars. I look back and realize she just didn't have the money to support my habits, and I understand now. But once I started selling weed, I realized I could start eating when I was hungry, I realized I could get and smoke weed almost whenever I wanted to. Being at the park always made it easier to sell it too, because people knew to come there to find some weed. I met a LOT of people selling, and I mean a LOT. I started moving up to QP's (quarter pounds) on the front (pay back later) and always found myself 100-200 short on my re-ups, usually just from smoking too much and cutting too many people deals, Like I said never been good with money.
Then the serious shit started happening. I was maybe 17-18 when I was at my weed guy's small apartment downtown one day. I always liked going over there, not only because I knew we'd be smoking a lot, but because me and my plug were close, I looked up to him, and we had a decently similar shitty upbringing. One day, I get a call to come chill downtown at his apartment, even had two of our friends come pick me up from the park and bring me there. Took fat dabs on the way (THC oil/wax) and when I got there he surprised us with sheets of Gel-Tabbed Acid. Strong shit. I took my usual 2 doses, I was known for tripping a lot back then, haven't tripped since this day. It was going to be a "No Traffic" day, meaning no sales in his apartment so we could just smoke and enjoy our time. His girlfriend at the time had arranged a deal between him and 3 people he did not know. A young (17 at the time) girl, a mid twenties white dude, and a mid twenties black dude. What we didn't know until after this, was they had set this up, and once inside (mind you we were tripping pretty hard at this point), the white dude and the black dude pulled a gun on my plug and my plug instantly pulled his and fired back and 20-30 shell casings later everyone ran to get out. This was a very small apartment. I mean very very small, 7 or so people all feet away from each other. I was literally sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs for everyone, even before the 3 robbers came in. I ducked behind the chair I was sitting next to. One of the people that drove me there got shot twice, once in the thigh and one through the side of his asscheek, no joke. The white guy who was robbing us took at least one to the chest, and was also crushed underneath us all as we all ran out and flooded the small staircase down, I could not describe to you how twisted and contorted his body was, and I had no doubt he was dead. I ran to find my plug, I'm not sure why, but I saw somehow he had made it all the way to the other side of the street already, and was on the ground. I ran up to him, not wanting to touch him, and told him an ambulance is coming and not to worry, he was laying there bleeding out of his mouth and chest with what I later found out were SEVEN BULLETS IN HIS CHEST. I watched him die, or so I thought. I yelled for someone to call an ambulance and when I saw some random student walking past was doing that I ran away and back to the two friends who had drove me there. They were freaking out, it was a dude and a girl, they were a couple at the time. The dude had just gotten shot two times. His girlfriend needed me to go back in and grab her purse and phone that were left in the chaos, I said no at first, but she begged me so I ran back to the staircase and over the white guy on the stairs who had robbed us, I definitely thought he was dead the way his body looked. I went back up the stairs and into the apartment and grabbed the phone and purse and all I could see was blood and holes everywhere, it was disgusting, and it makes me tear up while I type this. I got back into the car and they drove to the nearby hospital (The guy that got hit twice actually drove, believe it or not) and I got out of the car right before they pulled into the hospital.
I'm 23, and besides these last two years, I have been on probation/in legal trouble my whole life. When I was a juvenile, I was on Show-Cap probation, where a cop would most nights come check and make sure I was at home. A cop would wake my whole household up at anywhere from 10PM - 2AM just to make me show him a card I had and then would leave, almost every night. During the shooting I was talking about, I was on Show-Cap probation. That's why I got out of the car at the hospital. I wasn't supposed to be around certain people or things like guns, legally. I got out of my friends car and walked (still tripping balls) to a McDonalds a few blocks away, sat down, and called a friend, crying the whole time, and I just remember seeing black around the edges of my vision, like I was either dying or falling into a like dark area of some kind, definitely losing it to the drugs at this point. I got picked up and drove back to my moms house, I told the car full of people I was with what had happened and they couldn't offer much aside from positive words but I will never forget at least they came and got my ass quick. That was some real friend shit. I cried and cried the whole way back to my moms, got dropped off, and like clockwork a few minutes later my mom got home. I told her something had happened (but not the whole story yet) and I felt like I was going to be in a lot of trouble. About 30 minutes later, maybe in total 1-2 hours after the shooting, a black SUV pulled up to my moms house.
I had to go downtown, I will say my mom even made me one of the Sur-gel drinks I had been using to pass drug tests to drink during the car ride there. They weren't even trying to drug test me, I didn't ask her to, she was just that cool I guess. I rode an elevator up a huge building and they sat me down with two cops who were pretty convinced this was my doing in some way. They kept asking me why I had been talking to my plug that day and when I said I hadn't, they pulled up my phone logs and texts. So they not only knew about my outstanding legal issues, they also knew I was lying. I really was just lying because I thought just being there was going to violate my probation. They had me on camera every single step from leaving the car at the hospital to walking into the McDonalds. They really wanted to blame me, they even told me my friend (my plug) was dead and it made me cry and cry and cry and cry. In the end, they couldn't hold me there. They forced me to point at a picture line up of people but I told them over and over I didn't know what they looked like and that you shouldn't use what I say because I just didn't know. Whole time during all of this 3-4 hour interrogation, they yelled and screamed at me and at one point left me in the room for maybe 2 hours while I just cried and cried. They were probably just watching what I would do when alone. I was still tripping acid, hard, and just felt like death was all around me. All I could do was cry.
Like I said, they released me to my mother. They obviously had no evidence against me, but one thing that they asked me during the investigation was why was my plugs girlfriend outside talking to the 3 robbers (juvenile girl, white guy, black guy, the juvenile girl ended up getting some lesser felonies but she didn't have a gun or shoot anyone, she just tried to block the exit at first). That was enough for me to put together that she was behind this, set him up to have him robbed. She probably just expected my plug to just give up his shit without a fight, but no, no he would never just do that. Obviously this whole situation fucked me up pretty bad mentally. For weeks I thought my plug was dead. Until one day he literally just called me out of the blue. Told me to come see him at his moms house. I'm telling you, this was my brother. Got in my car and went to go see him. When I got there I tried to hug him but he said he couldn't hug anyone, he lifted up his shirt and it was like a Frankenstein stitching all across his whole chest. If I recall it was 8 bullets that hit him in total. He had to use crutches and a wheelchair to move around the little bit he could. He only has one lung now, and will never move the same. It was a miracle, but no one died during that shooting, not even the white guy robber, who was shot in the chest and trampled over on the staircase. The white guy (I keep saying white guy and black guy just because I'm not trying to give out names, I hate all people equally) ended up pleading guilty and sentenced to 30 something years in jail. The black-guy robber took it to trial and WON. No fingerprints on his taped up shitty little .22 caliber pistol. Jury found him not guilty, and he is a free man to this day. Plug's girlfriend that set it up was never even charged as an accessory, but she did violate her adult probation by being there. As if that's all she deserved. This is a true story, google Fort Sanders shooting, It'll come up. The only reason my name wasn't in the articles was because I was 17 years old at the time. Not even an adult yet.
They subpoena'd me after the shooting to make sure I'd show up to court or to trial. It wasn't until 4-5 years later the black-guy robber had his trial. By this time I had moved up a lot in the selling game, my plug (same plug) had moved out to the west coast to step up his game as well. Had my own house I was renting in my hometown, Knoxville, TN. Nice car, shitty (but real) diamond ring, bunch of shoes and clothes, 2 shitty cars. Tons of memories, good times and bad, important memories in between then and the trial. I've had a lot of friends die that I went to school/smoked with, especially when Fentanyl started coming around. From what I've heard that's a problem a lot of people share, fuck Fentanyl. I have done most drugs, but luckily I was just smart enough to stay away from shit like heroine and meth. (not to say Knoxville powder wasn't dirty, because it was) I just really liked weed, it has always calmed down my bad emotions from my childhood and from the events I've been through, I don't get to smoke a lot anymore, mostly because I am poor again now. Its still Illegal as fuck in my state too, but that's another story.
I declined to testify at the trial of the black guy robber, and they never asked me to testify at the white guys trial because he didn't have one, he plead guilty. I decided not to testify because of multiple reasons, one- I hate cops, and law enforcement. I understand some are actually decent people. But go through a day in jail without food, because they CO thinks you're lying about not getting a tray, and ask me how you feel about cops after. Go through getting kicked out of your high school during your SENIOR YEAR because someone told some teacher you had weed in your car. I got pulled out of class by cops and arrested, and my car wasn't even on school grounds. Cops used to roll through the park I grew up in and would get out and do pat downs on whoever couldn't run away in time. These things and many more have made me hate cops, and yes, I still to this day hate cops. Is me not testifying the reason one of the robbers walked free? Maybe. But I certainly had no new information to tell the jury they didn't already know. Especially if the no fingerprints on the weapon they recovered was the reason they acquitted him. Who knows, maybe me going in there and crying like a bitch or something would've made it the jury see the truth. Either way it does weigh heavy on my heart but even my plug didn't blame me for not testifying.
During and before and after the trial, me and my plug were still at work. This is when I had moved into my house I rented, after living in a shitty apartment. I fully furnished it and everything. Washer, dryer, Ps4, Xbox 1, queen sized bed, the works. Even the little shower floor mat, I loved that home.
Fast forward to early covid 2020, my plug was starting to get annoyed with me. I was always asking him about the next pack coming in, always wanting as much of it as he could get to me, and I was always on him about the quality of it, even though it was always above average and most of the time it was top shelf. He ran into some legal trouble driving through Texas, that and along with a few other things happening in his personal life, work for me started slowing down. I never was good at saving money, I knew I should, I'd always beat myself up for not having money when I needed it, but I just never could change my spending habits. I'm still not sold on the whole "trying to be something you're not" argument because I've never had to fake anything. Most of the people I was around have heard from others what I've been through. At one point people were driving 2-3 hours just to pick up from me. I've been robbed plenty of times and I've robbed others. One things for sure, if karma is real, then I've definitely paid my dues. I haven't been selling now or have been in any legal trouble for the longest stretch of time since I started it all almost 8 years ago. And yes, I am proud of that.
Almost all of the friends I've ever had have either robbed me or wronged me in some way, or I've cut contact for my own issues or reasons. As of today, I have one friend that lives in Ireland, and he's a great friend, but he's got his own life to live. I got evicted for giving a bad check to my landlord, 3 weeks before they did the eviction halting for covid, which is still active today. Unlucky for sure, but my fault nonetheless. Finding somewhere to live has always been a challenge for me because of my lack of provable income. Today I have decent credit, a credit card, and a few thousand dollars I have invested in my Robinhood account that I seem to keep losing and gaining back. I stream on Twitch, but my last stream I just sat and cried for like 2 and a half hours, its still the latest stream on my channel. No one wants to follow me or give me a chance, which I understand, I probably could make it work if I grinded harder and harder at it, its just depressing as fuck to sit there and talk to yourself for hours at the beginning.
Todays' (1/28/2021) events in the stock market made me write this. Me and my mom keep fighting and its BEEN PAST the time I move back out again. No one will lease to me. She wont even stay here until I leave, as of this last week. I'm waiting on my new debit card to get here in the mail, and whether I have somewhere to go or not, I told her I'd leave when it got here, I have been homeless a few times, lived in my car, extended stay hotels, other peoples' couches. Its hard, but I know that I can make it fine. Today I woke up and had $20,000 in my investments, up from $1,100 I started with at the beginning of January 2021. I finally felt a little bit positive about my future at least a little bit, after a very depressing Christmas and January. Then Robinhood and other brokers today cut off buying GME, AMC, and others. I was heavy into GME, having gotten in @ $69 (lol) dollars a share. It was $450+ per share this morning, after a week of mainstream media attention from every social media website, major TV news stations, and billionaires like Elon Musk, Mark Cuban, that Chamath guy (who seems awesome) and many more. Robinhood and a couple other brokers actually turned off the ability to buy the stock. Literally. All the stocks that were heavy volume "meme stocks" they cut off. I was in GME and AMC, but even Blackberry, Nokia, and others were cut off too. Needless to say, after the whole week of manufactured panic from all of these different sources, this straw broke the camels back. GME at this moment is trading @ 225, and I sold mine when I opened my app and saw it at 155, which was the lowest dip of the day. I came out in the green, I came out making a $1,500 or so dollars. But my portfolio by the time I cut AMC losses went from $20,000 this morning, down to $5,000 as I type this. I have never wanted to kill myself more than I do right now, mostly because this week it felt like I really earned this. I stayed diamond hands (held through the media pressure) through this whole week, only to give up at the end. It will hurt even more if GME recovers from this dip, but It's not because other people are making money without me, its because I could've used that money to move out, get some food to eat, get a new car that doesn't leak through the roof in case I'm living in it here in a couple days. And more importantly, I earned that money. I noticed the momentum before it even touched 40 a share. I've watch DFV's (roaring kitty on YouTube) 5-6 hour livestreams where he was going over the financials and spreadsheets of GameStop back in fucking 2019. I believed in this play and threw the money I had at it, and it should have worked out at least better than it did, I was planning to exit or at least hedge my earnings tomorrow, when shorts have to cover. But when I stepped away to eat lunch and take a shower because of how stressful this morning this morning was, I came back, opened my phone, and I was $15,000 down. So yes, my diamond hands failed. I sold. And while I still had a gain, its not at all what it should rightfully be. I can't even bitch and moan in the Wallstreetbets subreddit because apparently me being a lurker for a year isn't enough because of all of the newbies in there from all of the media attention.
So to finally wrap this up, I feel like I tried my best in this life. I haven't always been a good person, but not once have I thought to myself that I was evil. I'm too nice sometimes, and its gotten me fucked over, and I'd still go back and front friends weed or give them money/weed for free because I'm just not having fun unless people around me are too. Everyone's struggling in their own ways. I do not want to live on this earth any longer. I wrote this to at least explain to everyone what happened to me. And while I left out some very important parts in my life, this should give you a summary of what was going through my mind today. I really have been a good human being these last 2 years. Maybe I'm greedy for not selling earlier today. I was just so caught up in finally "sticking it to the man" and making the best play I've ever made I didn't want to feel like they would win by making us sell. I didn't even come out in the red, but goddamn it feels like I lost everything. I don't want you to feel sorry for me, just learn from my mistakes and take care of yourselves. You have to be stronger emotionally than I was. Move out of the U.S. if you can, its just greed and money that rule here. Maybe nowadays that's just everywhere.
Thank you to anyone that for some reason read all of this. To my dead friends Tad, Pmoney, Cierra, Raegan, Tina, I miss you guys and you better have a blunt for me when I see you all soon, I could really fucking use one about now. Much Love, - Bleezy

5 Steps to Becoming a Writer: No-Nonsense Advice on Becoming Who You Already Are

Do you ever ask yourself, “Am I really a writer?”
In the winter of 1965, the man who would become one of America’s greatest contemporary writers was living in a halfway house for mental patients in Durham, North Carolina. He was making a buck-seventy-five an hour as a long-haul trucker.
He had a dream one night that he never told anyone about. He dreamed all his shirts had folded themselves in the drawer. His boots had crawled out from underneath the bed and shined themselves. That was the first inkling, he recalls, that he wanted more out of life. That he had ambition.
Soon after he found out just what that was: he wanted to be a writer.
But he spent three decades in what he calls his Shadow Careers. A trucker, driving a cab, an ad man. He had a regular life. But a voice inside of him never let him rest.
He kept asking himself, “Am I really a writer?”
He was in his 50’s before he published his first novel after thirty years of trying. That man is Steven Pressfield. That first book he published in ‘95? A little number called the Legend of Bagger Vance. Ever heard of it?
Since then, he’s published over 15 books, sold millions of copies, inspired millions more, started his own publishing house, appeared on Oprah. His story is the story of the Writer as Hero. We all recognize it.
Are you stuck in a shadow career? Are you living a shadow life? Are you a writer who doesn't write? When you fall asleep, do you dream of Will Smith and Matt Damon starring in something you wrote?
Are you really a writer? Here’s how you find out.

Step 1: Write Every Day

In 1910, two explorers, Robert Falcon Scott and Raold Admunsen, both set out to be the first man to plant his flag at the South Pole, one of the last unexplored places on Earth.
Both had access to mountains of research from previous expeditions, both recruited a rugged bunch of explorers to accompany them. Both stockpiled literal tons of resources. Both had experience, both had the finest gear, both had sled dogs to do the bulk of pulling.
Only one made it back alive.
What made the difference? Admunsen had a simple philosophy: consistency and focus. Where Scott’s mission had two purposes, scientific exploration and winning the race to the pole, Admunsen had only one: to plant his flag first.
Where Scott drove his men to exhaustion fighting for every inch of progress, Admunsen demanded twenty miles a day. Nothing less, nothing more. Admunsen wanted his men well-fed and well-rested for the next day’s twenty-mile march.
Scott’s men starved to death.
In the end, it was Admunsen’s flag waving in the breeze at ninety-degrees South.
To be sure, there were many more differences. Scott’s expedition seemed to go wrong at every possible turn. But experts agree on one thing: it was slow and steady that won the race for Admunsen.
He made consistent progress every single day. That’s why he won the race and that’s why he brought his men home alive. And that’s why Scott didn’t.
The first step to being a writer is...wait for it...you have to write.
That’s harder than it sounds. Most people never get to this step. Most people who in their head say, “I just want to quit my job and be a writer” have never written a fucking word.
How do I know? Because I was one of these people.
An even smaller fraction of people who want to become writers, maybe they even call themselves writers, don’t write consistently.
Have I revealed something you know but don’t say out loud? I’m sorry. I really am. But if you want to be a writer, maybe even a great one, you have to sit down to write every day.
Yes, every day.
But insert-your-favorite-writer-here doesn’t write every day! Bullshit. Even if he or she doesn’t write every day, he or she is a professional. You are an amateur. I promise you that when they got started, they wrote every day.
Everyone knows the story of Sly Stallone sitting down and writing the screenplay for Rocky in three nights flat. You are not Rocky. Or at least, it would serve you better to imitate Admunsen. Don't wait for the inspiration like Stallone.
It may never come.
A new writer may take a day off only to realize it lasted ten years and she hasn’t written a damn thing. You need to form the habit. Only once you’ve formed the habit and you’re absolutely certain you won’t fall off the wagon, then you can take a day off.
Maybe.
Willpower and discipline will get you started but they won’t sustain you. The goal is to write because it feels so damn awful not to write. The goal is to write because it is who you are. The goal is to be a writer. Writers write every day.
Here’s how you get started: wake up five minutes earlier than normal. Go through your morning routine, make your bed, brush your teeth, shower, shit, shave, get dressed, and ready for work.
But before you leave, walk to the computer. Open a document. Sit down and stare into the blank page for 30 seconds. Don’t write, just stare.
Do that for a week.
The next week, wake up five minutes earlier than that. Do the same routine, sit down at your computer again, open a document. Write something. Anything. Literally, anything. A-n-y-t-h-i-n-g. Keep it short.
Write at the same time every day, ideally first thing in the morning. Write in the same place every day. Keep this place clean. No clutter. This is not where bills, gum wrappers, and empty coke cans live. This is your altar. This is where you pray.
This place should be protected from nagging spouses and screaming children with a door that locks. If such a place doesn’t exist, wake up before the heathens do.
If you haven’t missed a day yet, you’re ready.
Set a goal. Maybe two hundred words to start. Work up to three hundred words. You’d be surprised how easy it is. You might notice you want to keep writing. Don’t. Stop every day while you’re still fresh.
You don’t want to blow your load writing three thousand words on Monday and then put up goose eggs the rest of the week. You’re looking for consistency. Commit to what you can hit predictably, even in driving snow.
Remember Admunsen or die like Scott.
What do you write about? Doesn’t matter. Is it any good? Don’t care. Don’t think. Just write. Whatever comes to mind. Write in one direction. The backspace key is made of lava. Typo? Fuck it. Carry on. Lose your train of thought mid-sentence? Good. Don’t even use a period. Just keep writing.
Having trouble eeking out the last couple hundred words?
Write this: So far, I’ve written two hundred and fifty words. I have two hundred and fifty left. Two forty-five cuz I just used five words to say how many words I’ve got left. Words. Words is a funny word. Two nineteen.
Maybe you’re six months into writing every day and you’re at five hundred words of sheer nonsense.
Awesome! You have outstripped most people who put “Writer” in their Tinder bio.

Step 2: Write About Something Every Day

Here’s a secret no one knows: You’re not special.
Memoirs suck. No one cares what you think. No one wants to read your memoir unless you’re an ex-president, a CEO, or a famous actor. Maybe not even then.
Someone might want to read your journal if you’re a famous author like Virginia Woolf but not until you’re already dead and they’ve read all your other shit.
Stream of consciousness sucks. The inner workings of other people’s minds are not interesting. Don’t ask people to read this shit. It’s rude and you’ll be embarrassed later.
If you want someone to read your shit, you’re eventually going to have to transition from writing journal entries, to actually writing about something.
To do this, take your daily habit and build on it.
Once you hit, say, five hundred words a day and you do that consistently, write about something. It can be anything, doesn’t matter. But it should have a structure. It should be a thing, not just your thoughts.
This doesn’t mean write it perfectly. Nothing is ever written perfectly. That’s why editors exist. To become a writer, you must first learn how to write badly and keep going.
If you’re going to write something, whether it’s a book or a blog post, that’s a piece. It’s a piece of writing. That piece is made up of smaller pieces. In order for a book to work, it’s pieces have to work together. Each little piece has to stand on its own. And it has to fit with what comes before and what comes after.
Take movies for example. A movie can be split into acts. Acts can be split into scenes. Scenes can be split into shots.
A shot gives you information. A shot tells you something. After that shot, you know something you didn’t know before. If it doesn't, it doesn’t work. It’s on the cutting room floor.
You’re practicing writing something. Some thing. A thing could be an idea or a thought. It gives information. Tells a story. Like a shot in a movie.
Here’s something: The summer sun rising over pine trees, casting light on the side of the barn. Rays of light shining through the cracks, falling on the cheek of a beautiful girl wearing a flowery dress. She sits on a stool, milking a cow.
Here’s another something: A boy watching that girl, taking off his hat, holding it over his heart, wiping his brow, clearing his throat. He’s trying to summon the courage to get her attention. He does.
Here’s another something: The girl looks up. She smiles at him. “Hiya, Jimmy!”
These “somethings” stack on each other. They lend meaning and context to the one before. Each one of these thoughts tells you something and it leaves out a whole bunch. This is what’s called “leaving space for the reader”.
The reader fills in the space with her imagination.
Notice I didn’t tell you what kind of flowers were on the girl's sundress. I didn’t tell you that she’s seventeen. I didn’t even tell you her name. Because it doesn’t matter in the context of what I’m telling you. The only reason I told you his name was to show you they know each other.
I didn’t tell you he’s in love with her. I told you they were the same age and he was nervous. You inferred he was in love with her from what I did tell you. You might have thought, and you’d be right, that he was going to ask her out.
How? The word “courage”. The sweat. The hat over his heart.
See how much you can say without saying much!? This is why you’re practicing writing about something. So you know what to say and you know what to leave out.
Have you ever read something that was overly detailed? Has anyone ever paused mid-story to say “And this is so funny...” Like, bitch I’ll tell you if it’s funny or not when you’re done.
Feels manipulative doesn’t it?
As readers, we don’t like that. What we want is enough information. We want the idea. We want you as the writer to implant a thought in our heads and we will decide how to feel about it. We will fill in the details we need.
Think of writing as telepathy. Writing is implanting a thought in the reader’s brain. What’s the idea? What do you say so that person gets the idea? What can you leave out?
Let’s take a breath and situate ourselves, shall we? We want to be writers. We’ve developed the core habit of writing every day. Now, we’re going to build on that by writing about something every day.
Great!
Now, each morning we wake up. We make our bed, we brush our teeth. Shit, shower, shave. We do whatever we do and then we sit down to write. We have a word count we’re trying to hit. A twenty-mile march. We write “something” in that many words.
Then, we increase the dosage.
Say, five-hundred words. Regress to stream of consciousness if you have to but get the words in. Then, write five hundred words about something. Then write seven hundred and fifty words. Then seven-fifty about something. Then a thousand words. Then a thousand about something.
You’ll be Stephen King in no time.
King, by the way, just writes three thousand words a day and “deletes what isn’t good.” I bet he has files and files of “somethings”. I bet some of those somethings ended up in a movie you’ve seen or in a book you’ve read.
Write every day. Then write every day about something.

Step 3: Write What You Love Every Day

Michael Jordan shot a hundred free throws every single day.
He brought a basketball to bed with him. He’d practice getting that perfect backspin before drifting off to sleep. He did this in addition to practice, workouts, games, press conferences, watching film, the Hanes commercials, and having a family.
Do you think it was discipline that got him there? Willpower? No way. He’d burn out. Plenty of people do even at that level.
Of course, he had discipline and he had willpower but that wasn’t the active ingredient. It was something else entirely. I bet that time he spent shooting free throws went by in a flash. I bet he had to drag himself away.
Why? Because he loved it.
Twenty-nine years ago, the Bulls were up six against the Denver Nuggets. MJ steps to the line. Sinks his first of two. On his second shot, he looks down the blocks at the Nugget’s seven-footer, Dikembe Mutumbo, and says this:
“Hey, Mutombo. This one’s for you, baby,”
He closes his eyes, releases the shot.
Swish.
He was smiling the whole time. He loved this game.
What’s the writer’s equivalent of closing your eyes and draining one in Mutumbo’s face? What do you write for the love of the game? What turns you on as a writer?
Not sure? What turns you on to read? Are you a sci-fi nut or are you chomping at the bit for every new self-help book? Screenplays? Poetry? What could you write about every day for the next thirty years without ever getting paid for it?
That’s your domain.
Your domain is the hill you’d die on.
Sure, you could write a finance newsletter if you had to. And you will to pay the bills. But your domain is what you love. Your domain is what you’re willing to suffer for. Because even loving it is not enough. You want to be good.
Fuck that, you want to be great.
You read everything in that domain. You know the top five or ten people. Read everything they ever wrote. You read with intent. You read it as a student of the game. But that might be a hundred books!? Yup. If you love it, you’ll do it. If you won’t do it, maybe you don’t love it.
Impersonation is the sincerest form of flattery but it’s also for fucking amateurs. Professionals steal. Steal, steal, steal, steal, steal. Anyone who is anyone steals.
Pressfield stole the names, plotline, and theory for the Legend of Bagger Vance straight from the Bhagavad Gita and the narrative device from To Kill A Mockingbird. He didn’t impersonate it. He fucking stole it. Then, he wrote a redemption story about golf with it.
That’s a professional.
I stole the tone for this article from Mark Manson. I read everything he ever wrote, stole his voice, and wrote my version of the War of Art. I would say this to his face if we ever ran into each other. He’d love it. You know why? Because he fucking steals too.
Steal unapologetically from the best in your domain.
Why? Because other people are good and you suck. I say that with love. If you want to get good, steal. Everything has already been done. South Park stole from the Simpsons. Family Guys stole from them both. All are great.
Say, you love baking. When someone eats your sugar cookies do you want them to say,
A) “Wow, I can tell you really love baking,” or
B) “These are the best mother fuckin’ cookies I’ve ever had. Do you have any more,” while crumbs fall out the corner of their mouth.
The answer is B. You want them to love what you made. Does it matter if it’s someone else’s recipe?
Some people will tell you that loving what you do is enough. It’s not. You have to love something to put in the work. But the goal is to do it well.
That’s true love. Not for the accolades, not for the awards, certainly not for the money, but for the love of the game.
Here’s another truth about writing: no one wants you to be creative.
We only want to see creativity within a certain box. That box is a domain. If you’re going to write a Western, write a fucking Western. When you can write a Western properly, then you can be creative. You can do things within that domain that have never been done before.
Every genre has conventions. Those conventions are wired into us. We know them subconsciously.
Every action novel has to have a hero-at-the-mercy-of-the-villain scene. That’s a convention If it doesn’t have it, it’s not an action novel. Romance has conventions. Same for a redemption story. Same for everything. Everything has a convention.
The conventions are what makes a thing what it is. If they are absent, it will just feel wrong. The reader won’t know why. They certainly won’t be able to tell you. It’s deeper than that. It’s just a feeling. All the reader will know is that it doesn’t work.
You want to be a writer? Learn your domain. Write something that works.
Most people don’t want to be writers. They want to be praised. When they learn it’s hard work and not creativity that wins, they quit. They never write their novel. They talk about it, sure. But they never write it.
But you’re not one of them. So here’s the good news: if you do the work, then you get to be creative.
You get to write the villain who’s evil as fuck but also kinda has a point. You get to write the flawed hero. Maybe that hero even dies in the second act and it’s his daughter that’s the real hero.
What a twist!
You get to be creative to expand the bounds of your domain. But you have to work from the inside out, not the outside in.
The court was Jordan’s domain. What’s yours? Write that.

Step 4: Finish Something

In 1986, Steven Pressfield was 42.
He had been writing for 17 years and just scored his first professional writing gig: a script for a sure-thing blockbuster starring Linda Hamilton, called King Kong Lives.
He invited his entire family and all his friends to the premier. He even booked the hall next door for an after-party.
After the movie, no one showed. It was that bad.
The critics agreed: “Steven Pressfield and Ronald Shusset, we hope those aren’t their real names for their parents’ sake...”
Oof.
Can you imagine? If you’re a writer, you’ve got a knot in your stomach the size of a pimento loaf right now. It’s our biggest fear: to pour our heart into something and have it shit on.
Humans are social creatures. We really care what other people think. We’re deathly afraid of being ostracized. That’s why capital punishment in the old days was being cast out, not put to death. Lots of us would rather die than to have our novel ripped apart.
That’s why we don’t write it. That’s why we don’t publish it. But being a writer assumes one important thing: there’s a reader.
Would you write your novel if you knew no one was going to read it? If a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I don’t think it does.
Similarly, I don’t think a piece of writing is a piece of writing until someone reads it. That’s why, even if our parents get dragged into it, we must publish. We must put our work out there and let the chips fall where they may.
Don’t believe me? That’s okay.
You may argue that writing for the pleasure of it is enough. Fine. But there's an even better reason you have to publish: it’s not really finished until you do.
Something happens when you make the choice to publish something. Knowing someone will read it reshapes your perception. It raises the stakes. It invites you to see your writing anew.
That line on page 246, am I sure I’ve got the science right on that? Man, I could really use fewer adverbs. It’s a more critical eye and that’s why people don’t do it. They don’t want to be confronted with the realization that the whole first act has to be cut or their protagonist who they based on themselves just isn’t interesting.
Publishing your work makes you more self-conscious. That’s a good thing. It pushes you to be better.
Have you ever asked out a girl that was totally out of your league? It doesn’t just happen willy-nilly.
You become aware of your flaws first. You try to clean up your act. You get a haircut. You stop wearing those jeans. Maybe you even clean the Mountain Dew cans off the front seat of your car.
You fix what you can and make peace with what you can’t change. Because being confidently five-foot-nine makes you at least five-nine-and-a-half.
Ask her out. Publish your shit.

Step 5: Become Something

Imagine a six-foot-tall post standing on a bluff overlooking a river valley.
A leather strap about ten feet long is tied to the top of the post and splits into two cords at the opposite end. On the end of each cord is a hand-carved, wooden hook.
Each hook is buried into the chest of a boy about fourteen years old. Pawnee. The boy is leaning back on his heels, pulling the cords tight. His chest is bleeding down his belly. He stands like this in the heat of the sun and the cold of the night for days. No food. No water.
Why? He is on a vision quest. Waiting. Waiting for what exactly?
He is waiting for his power animal. He sings a song to it, enticing it to visit him. And to bring him a vision. The vision is what he’ll bring back. The scars he bears on his chest are his rite of passage. His manhood. His membership in the tribe.
He’s not being forced to do this.
He wants to do this.
Fuuuuuuck.
You might say this is barbaric. You might say that a rite of passage is totally unnecessary in the modern world.
But we still have all kinds of rites of passage - baptisms, bar mitzvah, quinceanera, graduation, prom. They all serve a purpose. They mark a transition from one state into another. No going back.
The Pawnee boy can point to the scars on his chest and say, “That is the day I became a man.” And everyone will agree.
There is no universally recognized rite of passage for writers. And we, writers I mean, suffer greatly for it.
That’s why we keep asking ourselves, “Am I really a writer?” Though I don’t envy having to hang from a post in the hot sun, I do envy the surety it provides.
There is no scar I can point to and say, “That is the day I became a writer.”
You might argue that the day you become a writer is the day you publish your first book. Or get paid for it. I disagree. I bet a Pawnee, before his quest often says, “Once I have my scars, then...”
He is saying once I have something then I’ll be someone. The writer says, once I have my first book published, then I’ll be a writer. This is a childish fantasy. Perhaps this is what you learn on a vision quest: You already have everything you need to be. The vision just convinces you of that fact.
Being a writer isn't about having. It’s about being.
Being a writer means, as I’ve beat to death in this piece, writing. That’s the cost of admission. But it’s more than that. It’s about willingly accepting the suffering that comes along with being a writer. Our scars.
Look, being a writer is fucking hard. Some days you sit down to write and the words spill out like Molasses on a cold Montana morning. Sometimes you get to the third draft of your novel and realize it just doesn’t work. Nearly all the time, you don’t get paid.
You don’t play this game unless you love it. You don’t play this game unless you can’t do anything else. You don’t get into this game to have. If you do, you won’t be here long.
If there is no rite of passage for writers, how do you know you’re a writer?
When you ask yourself, “Am I really a writer,” who answers? What do they say?
If you’re anything like me, your inner critic pipes up and says things like “Who do you think you are,” and “In your dreams, pal.” We all have this monster within us. Pressfield named it. He called it Resistance. It’s the universal force that stops writers from doing their work.
Ask yourself now, “Am I really a writer?”
If you sense Resistance, then maybe you just became one. Maybe you already were one. Maybe all that’s left to do now is the work.
Only one way to find out.

Puts on Chinese EVs $NIO, $XPEV, Wish Me Luckin

NFLX: ~10
ABNB: ~28
PLTR: ~72 (peter pan stock)

Actual automotives, old, unsexy, fell from grace, like your grandma’s teets
- TM: ~0.8
- F: ~0.4
- VWAGY: ~0.5
I did some monkey spreadsheet math to forecast their updated TTM Revs after Q1. Don’t ask me how I did that, the answer either won’t impress you, or straight up glide over your smooth brain and I need you to focus on what’s important right now.
Q1 2021 PS if MC doesn’t change
- TSLA: ~22
- NIO: ~29
- XPENG: ~26
- LI: ~14
Yep, still overvalued AF. Before we get into the nuts and butts, there is always the risk (lotto upside in our case) that macros choke and correct >20% because of some black swan (I mean it’s 2020s, Murphy has been trying to prove a point). When this happens, we know what gets hit hardest, the ones with the high forwarding looking, rosy multiples. These EV stocks will get beat up worse than that washed up highschool varsity prom king’s girlfriend.
Some other lotto events include China stocks being delisted, and who can forget the audit risk on those poorly cooked books, but enough to win the Great Chinese Bake Off.
Can they grow Revenues though? Let's look.
3. Revenue Growth Stunted
You might be one of those Stocktwats and you’re thinking; “but but... they’ll ramp deliveries exponentially and grow Revenues just like TSLA did back in 2018!” *Smacks you in the face*, no they won’t and here is why.
Chinese people love brand name shit. I repeat, Chinese people love brand name shit. Quantitatively, go look at LVMH sales in China. The figures on Chinese tourists going on vacation, spending without looking at the price tag (naw they definitely check for them deals) is incredible. They’re not there to look at some antiquated tower (way better architecture back home), they tryin to get those furry Gucci Slips on discount (they are ugly AF btw). Tesla is no different, people worship Musk over there. You could probably sell his panties online, and some Chinese billionaire will pay millions for it, just like they did for his Gene Wilder house in LA. Qualitatively, I called my cousins in China, confirmed, he couldn’t stop jizzing at the slight mention of Tesla.
Why does this matter? Owning a TSLA is like owning any other brand name shit in China, social status. Social status is EVERYTHING to much more of the population in China vs. RoW. The biggest difference is, you’re not going to be able to buy a knock-off TSLA in some shady, cigarette smoking thug’s closet on the 2nd floor of a Chinese dumpling street stand.
TSLA just ramped the Model Y in China and started deliveries in Jan. That shit sold out in a matter of days. If you’re not buying one, you basically have to settle for an uglier wife (this is probably not much of an exaggeration). Well guess who has been selling mostly midsize SUVs without much competition from TSLA and achieving recording breaking deliveries up until now?
NIO: 100% SUVs
Xpeng: 40% SUVs
Brand aside, some triggered specs nerd out there is thinking “Well, ultimately people will decide based on specs and value, not brand alone.” Fine, let’s take a look at what aspects of an EV people care about.
Let’s break it down apples to apples for these SUV EVsTesla Model Y- Price: ~$52,800
- Range: 594 km (Kilometers for the apes)
- 0-100km Acceleration: 5.1s
- Charger network: 20,000+
NIO EC6
- Price: ~$57,200
- Range: 430 km (605 if you pay ~$9k for a bigger battery)
- 0-100km Acceleration: 5.4s
- Charger network: 290+
Xpeng G3 520
- Price: ~$30,580
- Range: 520 km
- 0-100km Acceleration: 8.6s
- Charger network: 866+
You may be thinking the G3 520’s price tag is looking pretty attractive. Then you imagine the future wife you’ll be banging, yeah, trade up for that Tesla boi.
“But JJ, NIO has battery swap tech! It’s perfect for China’s dense cities!” If you know anything about product market fit, battery swapping for EVs is like trying to bang a gerbil's anus. First of all, battery swap stations are way more expensive to build, stock and maintain. Crazy upfront build out costs and battery requirements kill your rate of expansion (shit is important for demand). Tesla superchargers are spreading like wildfire and become recurring revenue generators over time, while battery swap stations stay cost centers over time, breakeven at best. That’s why NIO tries to charge a $150 subscription fee, I’d rather get pornhub subs for the whole family. Oh btw, you can’t even do it yourself, you have to give it to a service technician to do the swapping for you. Be realistic, these wealthy, classist Chinese dirtbags (I’m Chinese and know some first hand) don’t want some lowlife service tech to sit on their mothball leather.
Back to battery swapping and product market fit. Look, Tesla tried this in 2013, decided it was dumb, abandoned it and decided to make charging super fast and let you watch the actual Great British Bake Off while you wait. In 20 fuckin 13 some of you were still reading Robinhood as a picture book.
Lastly, the people buying EVs above the $50k range have easy access to charging, especially Tesla’s network. So, battery swapping for cars above $50k is serving a niche market, a handicap, and a money losing operation.
“But JJ… China EV Market Growth! They may have a smaller share right now, but the Pie grows for everyone!” Maybe, but if you look at the 2020 EV market growth, most of that came from guess who? Tesla. Oh, and a $8k mini, pretty much a golf kart that Tyrian would be uncomfortable in.
Solar & batteries are money losing businesses right now for Tesla, but people are pricing in some of those rosy projections into the valuation. Nio and Xpeng haven't even hinted at the idea because people in China live in 3D printed skyscraper boxes. Home solar and battery doesn’t make sense, but this also means no revenue opportunity.Oh and let’s not forget about autonomy… no, let’s forget about it (for now).
International expansion you say? Sure Nio and Xpeng trying to expand oversees to... Norway. No way has the population size of a small Indian wedding. Let's be honest here, would americans buy a "made in china" EV over a Tesla or even Ford/GM EV? I'm Chinese and I wouldn't even fuckin touch that shit.
Back to Cars, to make matters worse for Chinese EV players, Tesla has already designed a budget model. Unfortunately, it’ll be hard, like wiping ass with sandpaper, for Xpeng and Nio is follow suite in this space because of... MARGINS. Let's look at this next.
4. Your margin is my opportunity - JB Retiree
History lesson; how did China become #2 in GDP globally? They industrialized their massive population, kept the RMB artificially deflated to undercut the world through exports. Sure, quality suffered, but everything was “made in china” at some point. This is all to say, you can always increase demand by reducing price, and you can optimally reduce price if you have better margins than your competitors (or have the cash to sustain a loss to not bleed out before they do).
Let’s look at the current state of margins.
Q3 2020 Gross Margins
- Tesla: 23.5%
- Nio: 12.9%
- Xpeng: 4.6%
- Li Auto: 19.8%
We’ll have to revisit Q4 margins when everyone reports in a few weeks. But wow, it’s not even close for Nio and Xpeng. This is not even taking out Tesla’s solar & battery margins, which are negative, like when your mom finds out you YOLOed your college tuition on [redacted] at $400.
“But JJ, that’s not fair, Nio and Xpeng are still ramping!” First of all, so is Tesla, just on a larger scale. I mean, they are building factories like Starbucks locations. But fine, just taking a peak at margins for Tesla in earlier “ramp” years.
2017: 18.9%
2016: 22.8%
2015: 22.8%
This may not look right, something must be wrong you’re thinking. Well, let’s we take a look under the hood, you won’t find Trayvon Martin.
- Battery is the main cost of an EV. Tesla has been working on battery tech from the beginning, they invented and are retiring the “skateboard” design, saying it’s obsolete because they got something better, while Chinese EV companies are busy copying it. Ay caramba!
- For the batteries them selves, just look at battery output distribution. Both Nio and Xpeng rely on CATL for their batteries in China. But so does everyone else at an Indian wedding, including Tesla. Either everyone is going to be supply limited, or someone is going to have to pay more. You can pay more when you have better margins to work with/bleed cash. At least Tesla will have their own way out soon enough.

Can you find Nio, Xpeng or Li Waldo?
- Tesla’s electronics are industry leading, Mario knows. Neo and Xpeng on the other hand outsources most of the Chips (Nvidia) and hardware (Mobile eye). When you outsource, you ultimately have less margin, control, speed and ability to freely synergize.
- Tesla is also literally stamping entire cars like crispy cream donuts. It's almost if Chinese EVs are trying to take on Megatron’s fuckin Fusion Cannon with blow darts. Nio on the other hand abandoned plans to make their own factory due to cash shortage and partnered with JAC. A short term plat that won't help margins in the long run.
- You know how Tim Apple gets a hard on every time he talks about service margins, EVs have some of that too.
- In car entertainment: Tesla is building an app store, while Nio and Xpeng outsources
- EV Charging: Tesla has the biggest network, Nio has $ losing battery swap, while Xpeng relied on and pays government network
- Connectivity: Startlink? *shrugs*
- Autonomous driving: Tesla is rolling out subs for FSD, and I wouldn’t trust Nio and Xpeng’s software with your wife’s boyfriend’s life
5. Closing
Look, Nio is backed by Tencent and Bidu. Xpeng is backed by Ali. Their balance sheets pass the acid test with flying colors, so they can bleed cash for awhile. But Tesla has a meme lord at the helm. Let’s not forget some of the giant local players like BYD, who is backed by Bigly Buffet himself. There is also SAIC, Great Wall, Geely, BAIC, Chang Jiang, Kandi, and dozens more names you don't know, just like the name of your cousin's mail in bride. Tesla copy cats are literally coming out of the woodworks, when buyers have a paradox of choice, the clear pick defaults back to the trusted brand, guess who?
CCP has already been 3 steps ahead of Biden (I mean, who isn't, lol) and EV bullish years ago. Matter of fact, EV subsidies (which Nio and Xpeng survive off of like a bums on opioids in the streets of San Francisco) are already getting cut by 20% in 2021, and phased out by 2022. I'll let you figure out what happens to deliveries when subsidies get cut, again comes back to magins and cash. If it comes down to EV price wars, I don't think it'll be Nio and Xpeng winning the bleed out. It'll be more like Matrix 3, rather than 1.
I’m no voodoo magic chart nerd, but Nio tested $65 resistance again yesterday and failed. Xpeng in general looks like it’s peaked. Google search interest has spiked and all the little virgin armchair analysts on YouTube have pumped it 10 times over. I’ll wait for their earning numbers in a few weeks to take the temperature again. I'll likely add more to the position then, will update.
At the end of the day, Nio and Xpeng may trade sideways for much longer than I can stay solvent, but fuck it, I’ve spent too much time on this, so sunk cost is set in hard, change my mind.
TL;DR Not sure when, but bet on EV bubble popping with Puts on Nio and Xpeng. Better to sit on the side lines for Tesla and Li Auto

I'm finally posting about the years of mental, emotional, and financial abuse from my mom

My mom started a restaurant and wanted it to be a family business. She enlisted 3 of my brothers (~13+ years older than me) to help. 2 dropped out before it even started. The youngest worked for around 2 years before he quit. She basically wouldn’t pay him anything above minimum wage and he was expecting a child. My 12-year-old brain didn’t really understand at the time, and she basically bad-mouthed him to me behind his back. “Your brother is so ungrateful, He’s abandoning me, etc.”
From ages 10-12, I worked around 10 hours a week, unpaid; doing dishes and odd-jobs around the restaurant. When my brother left, my mom essentially made me do his job all while not paying me a cent. I didn’t realize how illegal it was at the time. She conditioned me over the years to think it was “ungrateful” to be paid. When I would ask why throughout the years, she said, “This will be all yours someday.”
From ages 13-18, she made me work even more hours, reaching 46 hours most weeks because I waited tables and cooked when she needed “a break”. She refused to hire more help when she could just have me work for free. My grades suffered tremendously as I didn’t have the time or energy to study, but she still would perpetuate that “this will all be yours someday” every time I would complain about struggling in school. When I was old enough to be put on the payroll, she still didn’t pay me my wages. I’m guessing this was some sort of tactic to lower her taxes. She might have paid me once or twice at the beginning because I was so excited to be “official”, but that waned very quickly.
What little money I made was actually from the tips I made when I waited tables. I would save these in a wooden box under my bed, basically hiding it from her. I took what money I had to buy clothes when I needed them and school books, tuition, etc. because any time I would ask my mom to pay for these things, she’d say, “Money is tight and I can’t afford it.” She was getting child support from my dad, but basically using this money to fund her business.
I tried to run away at one point when I was around 13 to the brother that left after the restaurant was started. While staying the weekend at his house, I told him about the stress, long hours, no social life (I missed my friends so much), etc. He told me that I didn’t have to go back the following Monday if I didn’t want to. Even though he was struggling himself, he was going to let me stay as long as I wanted to. Monday came, and he didn’t drive me back. My mom called the cops and said he kidnapped me. So he had to hand me into the police department. While I was waiting there, I saw my mom there, crying huge fake tears. I was shuffled into a room where a social worker was waiting. She knew my mom (everyone did; it was a small town and she was a well-known business owner.) She asked me to tell her what happened and I did. I told her about her making me work 20-30 hours at the time, I told her that my grades were suffering, I told her that the stress was too much to bear and she’d yell at me all the time for being “lazy”. The social worker took one look at me and said, “Your clothes don’t seem tattered. You don’t look like you’re starving. I think you’re doing fine.” I was released back to my mom who had balled-up tissues in her hand--all a huge show. This was not the mother I knew at all.
Around this same time, I would go out to the back of the restaurant as a little escape for short breaks during the day. We had a small fenced-in yard for my dogs to roam around in, so I’d play with them for a bit. In the side yard, I’d sometimes practice hitting a wiffle golf ball against the building next door with an old golf club my brother gave me. One day, I hit the head of the club into the ground and the head broke off (it was old and cheap.). I laughed at this and picked up the head along with the broken shaft to show my mom. I opened the back door with a smile on my face, telling her how funny it was that this happened (I wasn’t a strong kid at all.) She was at the grill and looked at me with this look in her eye. To this day, it still haunts me. She yelled at me and grabbed the club out of my hand. She yelled something like, “I’m in here working while you’re outside playing your stupid little games??” Then she started screaming something I couldn’t really understand and turned the sharp, broken end of the club towards herself and tried to stab herself in the stomach with it repeatedly. I screamed and started crying as I lunged towards her to get it away from her. I kept yelling at her to stop. Eventually, she snapped out of it. It tore some of the apron she was wearing. The waitress came in to see what happened just as it ended. I still fucking hate thinking about that day.
From then on, I basically became a machine. I stopped my “childish games”, I stopped playing with Legos (They were my favorite/only toys and I literally threw my entire collection out a few weeks later into the dumpster behind the restaurant. She knew I was doing it and didn’t stop me at all.) My grades got even worse, I lost even more friends, and my stress was at an all-time high.
When I turned 18, I basically decided I needed to get out of there. I needed to get far away while still staying in the same state for college. My first semester or so at college, she would hound me every day to get a job. I saw it as a way to escape working 46 hours a week (and it was amazing). However, the small amount of savings I had from waiting tables slowly dwindled away. I took out student loans to not only pay for the rest of my college tuition (after my FAFSA grants), but to have food to eat and gas in my car. When I needed money to fix my car when it would break down, she wouldn’t give me any of the child support from my dad, though she was still collecting it.
Now, as an adult, I’m really feeling the pain from this. Not just monetarily but mentally as well. When I moved away to college, my mom (unbeknownst to me) basically wrote me out of inheriting anything that would come from the sale of the restaurant. When she sold the restaurant, she took all of the money. She basically ran it into the ground with her horrible business decisions, so she didn’t get as much as she wanted when she sold it.
I basically don’t talk to her much anymore. There is so much pain there. She doesn’t even know half of the issues I have with her. When I call her for holidays, she just complains about her life and how her children are so “ungrateful” and “worthless” (usually, one/all of my 4 brothers). It’s just a string of negativity and I hate listening to it.
There are so many more stories I could tell about how toxic she is, but this is one that has affected me the most. I think I just wanted to vent and get support. I’m really proud of you for making it this far and I thank you so much for reading all of this.

TL;DR: My mom refused to pay me wages in the family business for YEARS when I was 10-18 and tried to make me feel bad about it. There was also a lot of other toxic things that still happen to this day.
PS: If anyone cares, I’ve estimated the unpaid wages to be at least $55,000. I keep thinking about how much better of a position this would put me in financially, at least. I’m still paying those student loans...

Puts on Chinese EVs $NIO, $XPEV

Every time I see another pump article on the “next Chinese Tesla” because deliveries, I get triggered and have to put on chilled cow on spotify for 3 hours. Although entertaining, “NIO is going to squeeze like GME, all aboard!” comments on stocktwits is making my testicles feel like tiny furrowed cerebrums and not because it’s cold AF outside.
So I had to put together some pleb research on TSLA, NIO, XPENG & LI for you to scoff at. This is NOT financial advice, I just don’t like these stocks.
1. Positions
https://imgur.com/qKMQHBo Yeah my lazy ass needs to switch off.
A few more 2023s, I just went sniping randomly yesterday. Full disclosure, I also hold and sell CCs on my Tesla shares, so this play doubles as somewhat of a hedge for me. Sorry, not up to YOLO standards, I'm a lil biatch.
2. The Chosen Ones: NIO & XPENG
Did you ever look at TSLA and think, god damn that shit is overpriced? Then look at the price to sales and realize, holy fuck it is? Then looked at it a month later and the price doubled? Well guess what, NIO and XPENG are trading even higher than TSLA.
Current PS as of 2/10/2021
- TSLA: ~25
- NIO: ~40
- XPENG: ~41
- LI: ~19 (It’s because their flagship SUV is hybrid electric +ICE, insane PS reserved for pure bloods only)
Let’s compare. These guys aren't coding the next Gran Turismo 8, but let’s look at high margin tech anyways.
- NFLX: ~10
- ABNB: ~28
- PLTR: ~72 (peter pan stock)
Actual automotives, old, unsexy, fell from grace, like your grandma’s teets
- TM: ~0.8
- F: ~0.4
- VWAGY: ~0.5
I did some monkey spreadsheet math to forecast their updated TTM Revs after Q1. Don’t ask me how I did that, the answer either won’t impress you, or straight up glide over your smooth brain and I need you to focus on what’s important right now.
Q1 2021 PS if MC doesn’t change
- TSLA: ~22
- NIO: ~29
- XPENG: ~26
- LI: ~14
Yep, still overvalued AF. Before we get into the nuts and butts, there is always the risk (lotto upside in our case) that macros choke and correct >20% because of some black swan (I mean it’s 2020s, Murphy has been trying to prove a point). When this happens, we know what gets hit hardest, the ones with the high forwarding looking, rosy multiples. These EV stocks will get beat up worse than that washed up highschool varsity prom king’s girlfriend.
Some other lotto events include China stocks being delisted, and who can forget the audit risk on those poorly cooked books, but enough to win the Great Chinese Bake Off.
Can they grow Revenues though? Let's look.
3. Revenue Growth Stunted
You might be one of those Stocktwats and you’re thinking; “but but... they’ll ramp deliveries exponentially and grow Revenues just like TSLA did back in 2018!” *Smacks you in the face*, no they won’t and here is why.
Chinese people love brand name shit. I repeat, Chinese people love brand name shit. Quantitatively, go look at LVMH sales in China. The figures on Chinese tourists going on vacation, spending without looking at the price tag (naw they definitely check for them deals) is incredible. They’re not there to look at some antiquated tower (way better architecture back home), they tryin to get those furry Gucci Slips on discount (they are ugly AF btw). Tesla is no different, people worship Musk over there. You could probably sell his panties online, and some Chinese billionaire will pay millions for it, just like they did for his Gene Wilder house in LA. Qualitatively, I called my cousins in China, confirmed, he couldn’t stop jizzing at the slight mention of Tesla.
Why does this matter? Owning a TSLA is like owning any other brand name shit in China, social status. Social status is EVERYTHING to much more of the population in China vs. RoW. The biggest difference is, you’re not going to be able to buy a knock-off TSLA in some shady, cigarette smoking thug’s closet on the 2nd floor of a Chinese dumpling street stand.
TSLA just ramped the Model Y in China and started deliveries in Jan. That shit sold out in a matter of days. If you’re not buying one, you basically have to settle for an uglier wife (this is probably not much of an exaggeration). Well guess who has been selling mostly midsize SUVs without much competition from TSLA and achieving recording breaking deliveries up until now?
NIO: 100% SUVs
Xpeng: 40% SUVs
Brand aside, some triggered specs nerd out there is thinking “Well, ultimately people will decide based on specs and value, not brand alone.” Fine, let’s take a look at what aspects of an EV people care about.
Let’s break it down apples to apples for these SUV EVs
Tesla Model Y- Price: ~$52,800
- Range: 594 km (Kilometers for the apes)
- 0-100km Acceleration: 5.1s
- Charger network: 20,000+
NIO EC6
- Price: ~$57,200
- Range: 430 km (605 if you pay ~$9k for a bigger battery)
- 0-100km Acceleration: 5.4s
- Charger network: 290+
Xpeng G3 520
- Price: ~$30,580
- Range: 520 km
- 0-100km Acceleration: 8.6s
- Charger network: 866+
You may be thinking the G3 520’s price tag is looking pretty attractive. Then you imagine the future wife you’ll be banging, yeah, trade up for that Tesla boi.
“But JJ, NIO has battery swap tech! It’s perfect for China’s dense cities!” If you know anything about product market fit, battery swapping for EVs is like trying to bang a gerbil's anus. First of all, battery swap stations are way more expensive to build, stock and maintain. Crazy upfront build out costs and battery requirements kill your rate of expansion (shit is important for demand). Tesla superchargers are spreading like wildfire and become recurring revenue generators over time, while battery swap stations stay cost centers over time, breakeven at best. That’s why NIO tries to charge a $150 subscription fee, I’d rather get pornhub subs for the whole family. Oh btw, you can’t even do it yourself, you have to give it to a service technician to do the swapping for you. Be realistic, these wealthy, classist Chinese dirtbags (I’m Chinese and know some first hand) don’t want some lowlife service tech to sit on their mothball leather.
Back to battery swapping and product market fit. Look, Tesla tried this in 2013, decided it was dumb, abandoned it and decided to make charging super fast and let you watch the actual Great British Bake Off while you wait. In 20 fuckin 13 some of you were still going through behavioral therapy.
Lastly, the people buying EVs above the $50k range have easy access to charging, especially Tesla’s network. So, battery swapping for cars above $50k is serving a niche market, a handicap, and a money losing operation.
“But JJ… China EV Market Growth! They may have a smaller share right now, but the Pie grows for everyone!” Maybe, but if you look at the 2020 EV market growth, most of that came from guess who? Tesla. Oh, and a $8k mini, pretty much a golf kart that Tyrian would be uncomfortable in.
Solar & batteries are money losing businesses right now for Tesla, but people are pricing in some of those rosy projections into the valuation. Nio and Xpeng haven't even hinted at the idea because people in China live in 3D printed skyscraper boxes. Home solar and battery doesn’t make sense, but this also means no revenue opportunity.
Oh and let’s not forget about autonomy… no, let’s forget about it (for now).
International expansion you say? Sure Nio and Xpeng trying to expand oversees to... Norway. No way has the population size of a small Indian wedding. Let's be honest here, would americans buy a "made in china" EV over a Tesla or even Ford/GM EV? I'm Chinese and I wouldn't even fuckin touch that shit.
Back to Cars, to make matters worse for Chinese EV players, Tesla has already designed a budget model. Unfortunately, it’ll be hard, like wiping ass with sandpaper, for Xpeng and Nio is follow suite in this space because of... MARGINS. Let's look at this next.
4. Your margin is my opportunity - JB Retiree
History lesson; how did China become #2 in GDP globally? They industrialized their massive population, kept the RMB artificially deflated to undercut the world through exports. Sure, quality suffered, but everything was "made in china" at some point. This is all to say, you can always increase demand by reducing price, and you can optimally reduce price if you have better margins than your competitors (or have the cash to sustain a loss to not bleed out before they do).
Let’s look at the current state of margins.
Q3 2020 Gross Margins
- Tesla: 23.5%
- Nio: 12.9%
- Xpeng: 4.6%
- Li Auto: 19.8%
We’ll have to revisit Q4 margins when everyone reports in a few weeks. But wow, it’s not even close for Nio and Xpeng. This is not even taking out Tesla’s solar & battery margins, which are negative, like when your mom finds out you YOLOed your college tuition on [redacted] at $400.
“But JJ, that’s not fair, Nio and Xpeng are still ramping!” First of all, so is Tesla, just on a larger scale. I mean, they are building factories like Starbucks locations. But fine, just taking a peak at margins for Tesla in earlier “ramp” years.
2017: 18.9%
2016: 22.8%
2015: 22.8%
This may not look right, something must be wrong you’re thinking. Well, let’s we take a look under the hood, you won’t find Trayvon Martin.
- Battery is the main cost of an EV. Tesla has been working on battery tech from the beginning, they invented and are retiring the “skateboard” design, saying it’s obsolete because they got something better, while Chinese EV companies are busy copying it. Ay caramba!
- For the batteries them selves, just look at battery output distribution. Both Nio and Xpeng rely on CATL for their batteries in China. But so does everyone else at an Indian wedding, including Tesla. Either everyone is going to be supply limited, or someone is going to have to pay more. You can pay more when you have better margins to work with/bleed cash. At least Tesla will have their own way out soon enough.
https://imgur.com/ZacBvhz
Can you find Nio, Xpeng or Li Waldo?
- Tesla’s electronics are industry leading, Mario knows. Neo and Xpeng on the other hand outsources most of the Chips (Nvidia) and hardware (Mobile eye). When you outsource, you ultimately have less margin, control, speed and ability to freely synergize.
- Tesla is also literally stamping entire cars like crispy cream donuts. It's almost if Chinese EVs are trying to take on Megatron’s fuckin Fusion Cannon with blow darts. Nio on the other hand abandoned plans to make their own factory due to cash shortage and partnered with JAC. A short term plat that won't help margins in the long run.
- You know how Tim Apple gets a hard on every time he talks about service margins, EVs have some of that too.
- In car entertainment: Tesla is building an app store, while Nio and Xpeng outsources
- EV Charging: Tesla has the biggest network, Nio has $ losing battery swap, while Xpeng relied on and pays government network
- Connectivity: Startlink? *shrugs*
- Autonomous driving: Tesla is rolling out subs for FSD, and I wouldn’t trust Nio and Xpeng’s software with your wife’s boyfriend’s life
5. Closing
Look, Nio is backed by Tencent and Bidu. Xpeng is backed by Ali. Their balance sheets pass the acid test with flying colors, so they can bleed cash for awhile. But Tesla has a meme lord at the helm. Let’s not forget some of the giant local players like BYD, who is backed by Bigly Buffet himself. There is also SAIC, Great Wall, Geely, BAIC, Chang Jiang, Kandi, and dozens more names you don't know, just like the name of your cousin's mail in bride. Tesla copy cats are literally coming out of the woodworks, when buyers have a paradox of choice, the clear pick defaults back to the trusted brand, guess who?
CCP has already been 3 steps ahead of Biden (I mean, who isn't, lol) and EV bullish years ago. Matter of fact, EV subsidies (which Nio and Xpeng survive off of like a bums on opioids in the streets of San Francisco) are already getting cut by 20% in 2021, and phased out by 2022. I'll let you figure out what happens to deliveries when subsidies get cut, again comes back to magins and cash. If it comes down to EV price wars, I don't think it'll be Nio and Xpeng winning the bleed out. It'll be more like Matrix 3, rather than 1.
I’m no voodoo magic chart nerd, but Nio tested $65 resistance again yesterday and failed. Xpeng in general looks like it’s peaked. Google search interest has spiked and all the little virgin armchair analysts on YouTube have pumped it 10 times over. I’ll wait for their earning numbers in a few weeks to take the temperature again. I'll likely add more to the position then, will update.
At the end of the day, Nio and Xpeng may trade sideways for much longer than I can stay solvent, but fuck it, I’ve spent too much time on this, so sunk cost is set in hard, change my mind.
TL;DR Not sure when, but bet on EV bubble popping with Puts on Nio and Xpeng. Better to sit on the side lines for Tesla and Li Auto

I found a diary about an earthquake that never occurred

Day 7
Blink.
My name is Adrian Caguiat, I know this. I am sitting against a floor of dust, my back absorbing the cold of the wall as I stare at the ground trying to get a grip of the last seven days. I tell my self, this will pass. In a few more hours I will get back home, reward myself with my home cooked dinuguan, and greet my students hello.
My left arm is freshly cut to the shoulder, slowly bleeding out the rest of my life. I take a deep breath, my limb felt like being pounded between steel doors every half a second, my stomach aching like sharp teeth are eating their way out of my insides. I don't have enough strength to move. I am stuck in a dark corner inside a mall’s hardware store, beneath the ceiling that fell into a slope.
Where is this goddamn rescue team?
It had been a week since the earthquake, the air was heavy of gasoline and rot. Among the darkness: the dust, the broken shards of fluorescent lights, the limbs of those who did not make it, some blood, and darkness, a black existing by itself, in itself.
Blink.
Sasha squeezed my hand. “We’ll get through this*,*” she assures. Her palm is soft against mine— warm, even. It is only then that I realized that I've been trembling hard.
I was trying to distract himself from the pain, staring at Sasha’s face. I focus on her eyes, her long black hair, inhaled, then tried to relax. I felt the air imploding inside my lungs, thought about all the other things I will do after I was out of this ruin, then exhaled.
Sasha smiles at me with her dimples burying inside her cheeks, and I managed to calm down a bit. She then help me eat by hand-feeding me meat.
For one demented reason, it felt good about having her stuck here with me.
During the earthquake, the department store's upper floor collapsed. I thought that would be the end of it, but with God’s holy miracle and a probability jackpot, the upper floor slumped to the side and fell into a slope, shielding my group from other falling rubble and left us untouched.
Electricity was the first to go out, we made our way blind and lost in the dark. At first, we were just happy that they survived, but as the days went on, we were forced beyond our limits. Joseph, one of the clerks, broke a water sprinkler straight to the pipeline, turning it into a source of water. It served as a solution to thirst, and was enough to fill a stomach that was empty of food. Although of course, not completely. One needed protein and carbohydrate just as much as one needed oxygen.
Blink.
I chew, munch, and swallow. Once one gets too hungry to even consider the taste, one will stop thinking about what one eats and just focus on the fact that one is eating.
Sasha yank another chunk of raw flesh from my recently amputated arm, then proceed to feed me of it. My teeth munch it like it’s undercooked tocino. I savor my own blood like juice, squishing out between strands of meat.
“’Tutoy, thank you*,*” Mr. Martin said, his voice is old and scruffy, but calm and gentle. He rubs my shoulder, maybe trying to comfort me. “Your sacrifice saved us all, and that is the most important part.”
He continued his pep talk, and in a normal occasion his words would flow in and out of my ears. Mr. Martin’s words reminded me of the old movies I used to see as a child, those lines about nobleness, heroism, and other morality talk films wanted to prime in its audience. Today, they were music to my ears.
It was a rational decision. We all had sacrifices to make, and this one was mine. Yes, it was my arm, but what was a piece of limb compared to all the lives it could save?
“Just one thing,” Mr. Martin added. “Please don’t tell my son what he’s eating, he’s been through enough.” He turned to look at his seven-year-old son, whom they referred to as Junior, mindlessly eating a chunk of meat.

Day 8
Blink.
When I woke up my throat was as dry as a drought and my head was a spinning sandstorm. My fever wasn’t helping either.
Water, is the first thought I had. I was going to use my left hand to help myself up, and as I fell I was immediately reminded of what I lost. I groaned, swearing I could still feel it.
“Hey,” Joseph came to help and walked me to the broken pipeline. Water rained from above, caught inside an empty tool bucket. Joseph carried the bucket up to my face so I could take a gulp. I let the liquid flow down my throat, as soothing as water soaking a dry soil.
I closed my eyes, remembering the day of the earthquake, how I wouldn’t be stuck here if I didn’t make the small decision to buy a new screwdriver. It seemed like divine intervention, for leaving us alive. Today, it seemed like damnation for being given the slowest possible way of death.
Sometimes the talking made things cozy. Even just for a moment we could forget about the situation they were in. Joseph and I had casual talks about the bad system of contractual work, since we both worked as salesmen once. Mr. Martin and his son shared stories about Europe, the countries they had visited, lightening up the topics a bit. And Sasha, a God-sent nurse, reminded us to be strong. She told us about her most hopeless patients, and how people could survive and defy imminent death.
That was after we stopped trying to get out, after we accepted the fact that only bulldozers could destroy the walls and set us free. But as time went on, our shared hunger and paranoia fed their doubts.
Today I just sat on the floor and cried. We were long due for rescue. It was an earthquake with enough magnitude to bring down a building, how come the rescue team are not here yet? How is it that I hear no machines outside or people shouting for survivors? Have they abandoned us?
I didn’t bother to wipe the tears from my cheek, I didn’t bother to hide my weak sobs. Most of the time, I thought about the idea of how being crushed under debris was better than eating yourself to death.

Day 11
Every passing day is worse than before. My head ached, my body is weak, each second I felt like I was going to puke, but there is nothing to vomit. I can almost see my own hands ripping through my skin, to my intestines. My stomach banging, burning yet bloated from water.
In two days, it would be Joseph’s turn to sacrifice an arm.
I could still feel the hand saw burying itself into my limb, the blade grinding against my bone.
Soon, there would be a new member of the amputee cannibals club, and I didn’t ponder a single thought about how hard it would be for Joseph to share my fate. The only thing I cared about was that in two days, I am going to eat.

Day 13
Today, I woke up to Mr. Martin’s cries from a distance, screaming his son’s name over and over again, shaking the walls, shaking my head.
I scramble to my feet, half-awake. “I’m sorry,” I could hear Sasha, speaking in a muffled sob. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do anything.” I rubbed my eyes as I sprinted across the rubble, stepping through stones, stepping against a palm of a corpse. My stomach growls, my head aches, my veins burn.
There is Junior, lying motionless on the asphalt, his shorts torn on the left, revealing a narrow, swollen wound on his leg. The cut is yellowish, rotten, surrounded with dried blood. It started from his upper knee to his lower waist. The boy’s eyes are open the whole time, never blinking once. His whole body was steady—stiff.
Mr. Martin sat beside him, crying as he held his son, caressing Junior’s cheek. Sasha beside them, and Joseph, coming from a distance holding a handsaw.
My stomach writhes and writhes and writhes.
“Martin,” Joseph mumbled, his face dripping with sweat*,* “there’s nothing else we could do. Sasha tried everything.” He continued, taking a slow step forward. “And I know he’s your son, and I am sorry that I am saying this but…” he paused, “all of us are hungry.”
Joseph looked at Junior, and I knew, in that moment, that those eyes weren’t looking at a corpse; that those eyes were already looking at his food.
It was the amazing miracle of death.
“It’s been six days since we last ate.”
“Don’t you dare lay a finger on my son.” Mr. Martin swept Junior into his arms. His voice was deep now, stern, like that of a soldier commanding his platoon.
“Look, I’m not a bad guy, and I know what I’m saying is wrong,” Joseph reasoned out. “I mean fuck, I’m supposed give up my goddamn arm today!” his hand closed into a fist. “But because this happened, maybe…”
“This is my son’s body!” Mr. Martin’s voice boomed throughout the room, his whole face turning red. “I intend to bury him whole!”
Sasha tried to squeeze in between, begging them to stop, pulling Joseph by the arm, but her words faded into white noise.
I watched and writhed and writhed and writhed.
In my ears, all I hear is a concert of chaos and disorder. The sour violins and the bitter piano screaming in high pitches, trying to outsound the other.
Joseph’s eyebrows folded underneath, “Alright then, we’ll bury your child, and then what? You’re going to cut my fucking arm?” Joseph’s foot charged another step forward, “I’m going to give up my limb, while we’re burying some goddamn food!?”
I could hear church bells swinging back and forth, a choir in a fortississimo.
“Just fucking try.” In a quick second, Mr. Martin rose to his feet, his height meeting Joseph’s. His fist swung straight into Joseph’s face.
Joseph kept his footing, his nose leaking drops of blood. He fought back, knocking Mr. Martin to the floor. He wrestled over the old man’s chest, landing punches against his cheek.
I think of juice leaking out of tender meat.
I stared at Joseph pounding on Mr. Martin’s head. The way the bones of the hand buried against cheek, turning it to red like pounded beef. It felt like a spell, a requiem forming within me.
Blink.
Mr. Martin reached for a screwdriver he kept in his pocket as Joseph delivered another swing.
Blink.
I don't know. I was lost in a trance, my eyes were looking at Sasha, but I wasn't really looking at her. I wasn't really listening. She had grabbed me by the shirt and was shaking me back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
Blink.
“Stop them Adrian!” She was saying, “Adrian!”
Blink.
Blink.
“G-get… the hell away from my son...” I pulled Joseph away from Mr. Martin, he had bludgeoned half of the man’s face. Mr. Martin’s right eye had swollen half the size of a golf ball.
I turned to Joseph, “What were you thinki*—*”
Blink.
There was a screwdriver impaled through Joseph’s right eye, pierced through his skull. His body fell flat to the floor as I let go.
Blink.
In my head, I thought of barbecue skewered through a stick.

Day 14
“The wound is still healing, so don’t try to move much or you might bump into something,” Sasha wiped wet cloth where my shoulder used to be, she cleaned the blood stains around, then tied it with another cloth. “We can’t risk another infection,” she continued. “I failed Junior, but I won’t let myself lose another person.”
I leaned against the wall, looking at the small light that managed to squeeze itself through the tiny cracks. It must be morning now. I wonder how many days has it been.
I could see Mr. Martin from a distance, the old man’s loathing eyes aimed directly at me, at his hand, at Joseph’s leg between his teeth.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do anything,” I told Sasha.
Told, I thought, not apologize. Semantics. I stopped lying to myself that I was not glad of my inaction, that what it deserved wasn’t an apology, but gratefulness. It was my inaction that is inside our stomach. It was my inaction that served as hands to pull us from the abyss of starvation.
I wanted to tell Mr. Martin that. I wanted to grab the words and shove it to the meatball of those eyes.
“We were all in shock,” Sasha justified. “His kid just died, my patient just died, and you were still burdened by this—” she placed her hand on my shoulder, then my head. “I’m so sorry.”
Mr. Martin sat beside his son, blood on his hands.
I wondered how he could stand the smell, but paid it no attention. He approached him and offered a chunk of Joseph’s flesh.
“Just don’t think about it,” I said. I wanted to give the old man back the same pep talk before, back when I offered up my own arm. I thought that it was the least I could do for the man who gave us food. “It’s done, it happened.”
Mr. Martin simply shook his head in response.
I looked at the old man’s beaten eye, swelling in blue, trying to imagine how painful it must’ve been, but all I could think of was how it would taste like.
“You need to eat, we need to eat, let’s stop worrying about anything else for now,” I tried to encourage him. “At this moment, the only thing worth a value is our lives. So eat.” he insisted. “We can live for days out of Joseph’s body.”
Mr. Martin paused for a brief moment, then turned to him like he was told a bad joke. “What happened to us, Adrian?” He mumbled. “I killed a person, Adrian. I murdered a human being, for God’s sake he should still be alive with us right now, he should be at that corner trying to make a toilet, or a light for us, and I killed him.” His eyes were filled with horror, with the watery weight of guilt that hauled the soul from its windows and pulled it down the cheek.
“And you made us eat him.”
I wanted to tell him that it was simply a rational decision, that we did what the situation forced us to do, that we were only playing the cards we were dealt with.
But I knew that the old man was past that reality; that all that his mind could think of was death and despair: of Junior, of Joseph, of the piles of corpses that littered the hardware store, of the walls left undestroyed. I could see it in the way Mr. Martin stared at random spaces as if every pile of rubble gave him an existential thought or a moral crisis.
What was real was simple, and I understood it. I understood that we needed to eat, and none of the dust, rocks, or hardware tools were at the very least edible.
“Are we still human, Adrian?” The old man asked. He looked at Junior’s corpse, lying beside him. “You’re a teacher, right? What would you say if I was one of your students?”
I tossed a chunk of meat on his lap. “Morality is a privilege of the fortunate. Now stop your drama and eat.”

Day 13
Mr. Martin lied in a pool of blood, and in his hand was the same hand saw Sasha used to cut Joseph’s body. The old man lost it.
All I could think about was how fresh were the remains. In my head, that body wasn’t the same living, breathing, caring father I knew. At this moment, he was just a corpse. Dead. Lifeless. Decaying organic matter. Meat.
It was simply a rational decision. We needed to maximize what we had.
And Sasha—the alive body—could only bury her face in my shoulder, her arms wrapped at the last ray of hope she had. Every inch of her skin was trembling, her hands shaking as they pressed against my back. “We can do this,” Sasha assured, but I knew that she had had enough. I knew she could not simply take more. “We can do this,” she repeated. But she sounded more like she was trying to believe it herself.
For one demented reason, it felt good about having her stuck here with me.

Day 18
I found myself being carried to the inside of an ambulance. Beside me was a woman, wiping alcohol to clean the cut on my left arm.
“You are Adrian Caguiat, correct?” she asked.
I wanted to nod. I wanted to tell her “yes, that’s me” and that I survived. But I was not Adrian, at least not anymore. Because Adrian was a cultured, educated man who lived a life so cushioned that survival was never an issue. And inside me, that Adrian was already dead. I was barely even a remnant of what Adrian was.
“Is there any part of your body that hurts?”
“You fucking pieces of shit,” Adrian would never had cursed. Adrian was supposed to be a good young man who was willing to give his left arm to save other people. Adrian wouldn’t have the heart to slaughter Sasha in her sleep. Adrian would never consider the idea of killing someone just so he could eat. And of course, Adrian would never have survived.
Perhaps the proper question to be asked was: “Why now? Why the fuck is it just now?”
It was a magnitude 7 earthquake, enough to crumble Manila and its old set of structures in just a few minutes. The rescuers lacked numbers and were working in small groups. The country didn’t have the resources to respond quickly to such a massive catastrophe.
Blink.
“How did you hold on?” the woman asked. “You’re the only person we found alive in this building,” she continued. “No offense, but after a month most people would have lost hope. We’ve seen lots of cases of suicide.” she added. “But you… you cut your own arm so you could eat. I don’t have the right words to express how hard that was. How did you survive all of that?”
It was an interesting question, and Adrian Caguiat would never have grinned so wide.

___________

I found these notes tucked inside an Anatomy book I borrowed from our school library. Its previous owner was named Adrian Caguiat, who, after asking my professors and alumni's, never existed within the university. The notes had stains of dried blood and smelled like spoiled food. Aside from this, there was never a magnitude 7 earthquake in Manila. My friends and I dismissed it as fiction written by someone who watched too many psychopath documentaries.
That was until, while passing by a mall within my area, in a split-second between blinks, I saw the city crumble in itself. Then return to normal.

How I went from being 400lbs to an Ultra Marathon runner

Hi, Josh here! Welcome to my story of how I went from 400lbs to an Ultrarunner!
So my weight loss journey began in 2015 when I decided I was tired of being fat and I needed to start eating healthier. I thought all I needed to do was not eat fast food so much (I lived off takeout) and eat veggies and fruits and home cooked meals and I'd be fine. My wife (gf at the time) told me all I needed to worry about was calories, and eating an entire bag of carrots and two bananas isn't going to do anything for me. I argued with her and told her that no way 100 calories of carrots and 100 calories of chips is the same thing.. well I was wrong , but I didn't know it then. Another good example is at the gas station. I'd get 2 breakfast sandwiches, a hashbrown and an energy drink or something. Healthy Josh got 1 breakfast sandwich, a banana, a protein bar, and a "healthy" sugary drink. Same amount of calories though..
I didn't lose any weight, so I gave up and thought that it was just genetics. My family has all been bigger, so clearly I can't fight that. Again ..so so wrong!
Fast forward a year or so.
In order to save money, I ask one of my roommates if he wants to go halfsies and prepare meals for a week at a time together.
He said sure, but he warned me that he is on the Paleo diet, and if I'm making food with him, I'd be following that as well I was, 320lbs, I needed a change in diet habits anyway. Our first week we made this bomb chili, and the only thing I ate aside from that was vegetables.
Diet alone isn't enough, if I'm doing one, I might as well do more. Regardless of my size, I've always been pretty active by playing disc golf a lot, but this summer I haven't been for some reason. So I started going on nighttime walks.
Then one Friday, I got to work (quick backstory, I worked in IT for a small local company. There are 11 employees, we were a pretty tight nit bunch) Fridays were usually awesome. We don't work that hard and IT meets the programmers for lunch, beers, and usually after work beers. Not this friday though.
Thursday night, one of our programmers was out for a jog, collapsed and died due to heart failure. Turned out it was one of those one in a million things, he had an undiagnosed enlarged heart valve that closed up or something of the sort. I didn't just lose a coworker. We lost part of our work family. It's not fair. He jogged, biked, kayaked, and everything. He smoked and didn't sleep right but we all have our faults. He was always grinning at something, usually a find from the thrift store across the way.
Needless to say I was pretty goddamn motivated to lose weight. I got down to around 300lbs, but then went on a vacation, stopped eating paleo and went back into my old habits. I consider this failure #1. What I learned from this failure is that motivation is fleeting. I lost a very good friend, you can't find much more motivation to get your shit together but it wasn't enough. During the times when you get motivated, it's not going to last. You need to develop discipline during that time so when it wears off you have healthy habits that you stick to during the times when it gets tough.
Fast forward to around January of next year. I couldn't sleep, and of course when you can't sleep you start thinking about life. I thought about how much I've accomplished in life, and anything I've wanted I've been able to just put my head down and do it. Except..for losing weight. It's dumb. I have no reason and no one to blame but myself. So , I started browsing different diets. I started browsing reddit and found out about the 4 hour body slow carb diet. I thought, heck this seems awesome and I get a cheat meal each week, I can do this! You're only allowed meat, eggs, dark green veggies, and beans every day except for one glorious cheat day a week.
That weekend I went shopping and attempted my first ever meal prep. Chicken, beans and squash - http://imgur.com/a/lEAy7
I lasted 2 months on slow carb before it was just too restrictive and I "relapsed" and started eating everything and falling off the wagon. I felt like crap though, and I didn't want to fail yet again.
This is failure #2. What I learned from this failure is that meal prepping is fucking awesome and something I want to keep doing. Although it's not necessary with CICO, I find having my meals pre logged and premade for the week helps me achieve my calorie goal for the day. Plus I love cooking and I'd rather have my food than fast food lunches most days anyway. If you're interested, I have all my meal preps and a guide at this site - reddit.com/hxcjosh23mealprep. I have even been featured in a published Meal Prep book as a recipe tester! My meal preps have also come a long way from the one posted above - https://imgur.com/gallery/by5YFP0#YfcY9OX
Anyway, cue another sleepless night, Back to reading about diets and such. Then I found out about CICO on here. It was different then the "fad" diets, let's face it pizza and beer are just too good to live life without! CICO: calories in, calories out...just take in less calories than you burn. It's pretty much just simple math!
I downloaded myfitnesspal, entered my stats and started tracking everything I ate. It doesn't take long to do, I maybe spend 5 minute inputting my meals for the day. I do meal prep for my lunches, which helps quite a bit because then I know what I'm eating and it's cheapetastier than eating out all the time, but it's totally not necessary. You could eat mcdonalds for every meal, and as long as you stay under your calories..you'll lose weight! I still about once a month or so hit up that Chinese buffet. But instead of thinking oh I "fell off the wagon" I just realize It happens. It's one weekend, or one day, or even one meal. Just get it over with and get on with my journey. In doing so, yes I delay my results by a few days, but I fucking love Chinese food and I typically eat a small breakfast and lunch that day to make up for it. The day after, I don't go..well I ate a bunch , better stop doing CICO and working out and just go back to eating a bunch. I just go about my day like normal, track everything and do my workouts. Remember , you're making lifestyle changes not dieting! Your daily habits will far outweigh those days where you eat all the things.
This whole lifestyle change started a domino effect. I ate better, so I felt better. I felt better so I moved more. Exercise wise, I didn't do anything for the first 50 lbs or so. When I got around 300 I started walking a route from my house to a chinese resturant and back. I live just off the main street of my town and the restaurant is almost at the end of the street. The route is a little over 2 miles. Walking it took about 50 minutes and I would be out of breath afterwards. I got to about 290 and decided to give Couch to 5k a try. I've never been a runner, but I've always been "athletic" in my life. I love sports, I played disc golf professionally and loved playing other sports. It gave me something new to try and a new goal. I gave myself the condition that if anything hurt at all I would stop and keep losing weight until it didn't hurt. I remember running my first ever mile during Week 5 day 3 of the program. I was so excited that I woke my wife up at night just to tell her =). (It was 11pm at night and she worked at 5am. She wasn’t as excited as I was lol)
After doing my first 5k (a local turkey trot) I needed more. The route I used to walk, I was able to run in a little under 20 minutes and was hungry for more. I started doing the couch to 10k plan, but got bored one night and decided to see how far I could go and knocked out a 10k! I stuck around that distance for a while just enjoying running. I got down to 220ish and knocked out a nice 9 mile run in December of 2017. Then the story takes a little of a backslide. Wife and I learned we were expecting our second child. I had to get a second job since my wife wasn’t able to work and we couldn’t afford daycare. Things were fine for a while but then some stuff happened with my day job and luckily I was offered a management job at the restaurant I was working part time at. The downside though, is I was around free food and beer for most of the working day. I would snack throughout the day so I wasn’t really losing weight anymore at this point. We opened 2 stores in a 6 month period . I had to live in a hotel for 2 months opening one store in a different state. Opening stores is a 90-100 hour week as well. My diet pretty much went out the window here, and I couldn’t really keep up with my running either.
I slid back all the way to about 290. I knew what I needed to do but the stress and my schedule was basically just making food decisions the last thing on my mind and I went back into old habits. I started getting pretty down in the dumps and was not doing so well. But, the good part was I already lost the weight. I knew what I needed to do. I got more active on loseit again. I became more active in the challenges. I started meal prepping and running again. I started training for my first half marathon. I worked my way down to 240 while working around my crazy schedule and successfully completed my first half! It was pouring rain the whole time too! I made up a pretty awesome race report here - https://www.reddit.com/running/comments/brda83/i_used_to_be_almost_400lbs_this_weekend_i_ran_my/
In training for my half, I discovered a podcast called Ten Junk Miles. It’s a running podcast, but the allure is it’s a group of runners that more or less talk about their lives and silly stuff, and running to a short extent. They basically are like running friends for runners who don’t run with friends. They kept talking about Ultra Marathons so I did some research. The half marathon was cool but I needed a new goal, the marathon was the obvious step up but these Ultras seemed way cooler. I kept it on the backburner as after my half I kinda took a small break from running in which I backslid a little again to around 260. I was still active on the loseit challenges so that backslide didn’t last long. Plus, the Ultra was still in the back of my head. TJM also started a group chat and other events where the fans/hosts all became friends. I would talk to these people on the daily. Their motivation pushed me to go further. An Ultra marathon is any distance over a normal 26.2 marathon. Typically they start at 50k (31 miles), but also have them in 50 miler, 100k (62 miles) 100 miles, and on up. It seemed pretty far out of reach but as I became more connected with this podcast and other people from it, I knew I was going to do one.
I worked my way up to GM at my restaurant but for my health, I knew I couldn’t keep doing it. In November 2019, I managed to get a job back in IT with an amazing company, and go back down to part time at the restaurant. Now paired with a more consistent schedule, I developed a new running training plan. I got heavily back into meal prepping too since I could do it on the weekends and have lunch for the week at my office job.
2020 had its ups and downs for me (and most people), but I was finally feeling back to my old self. There were some super stressful months, and we were limbo with buying and selling a house for 4 months or so, but I just kept grinding the training and sticking with MFP tracking. In fact, currently as it stands I have a 1696 day streak on Myfitnesspal. It’s part of my daily routine at this point, I would feel super weird not tracking.
Fast forward to August 2020. The races I had signed up for in 2020 went all virtual, I was supposed to do my first marathon in September but that also got postponed. I signed up for a 50k and a 33 miler virtual race instead. My training wasn’t the best since we were in the middle of moving, but I just wanted to try it. I wanted to see how far I could go. The furthest I had ran up to this point was 14 miles. We finally moved into our new house on Aug 21st. The date of my race was Aug 28th.
I woke up at 6am that day to set off on my 33 mile journey. I started off really well, kept up with hydration and eating good, ran 6 miles with a friend even! I got to mile 26.2 and thought man, what a stupid uneven number to stop at! Good thing I’m still going! Around mile 29, my right foot was just done. Looking back I think I wasn’t drinking as much water towards the end since I wasn’t running as fast and I may have had a dehydration cramp. Either way, I was so close so I pushed through and death marched to the end. The last 4 miles were pretty brutal, but I was determined. My wife and kids set up a finish line for me, I broke through that and laid on the ground for a solid 10 minutes. I had done it! I am now an official Ultra marathon finisher!
4 months later, I’m still keeping up. I'm down to around 240 again and I plan on running another 50k in the Spring, and a 100k in the late Summer. My scale is steadily going down. I’m still tracking and meal prepping. My love for running and my goals keep my diet in check, as losing weight helps so much with running. Sometimes it’s tricky to find the right deficit, as I have to eat more than 1800 calories a day during longer run days, but I’m in this for the long haul.
I can’t stress how much having like minded people around me is. loseit has played a HUGE role in my success. It helps seeing people strive for healthiness every day. Also, teaching people helps keep me accountable. I don't want them to make the same mistakes I did. If I talk the talk, I have to walk the walk so it keeps me on track. If I had to pick the one moment I can look back on that caused so much amazing change, it’s when I clicked on loseit, read the quick start guide and the FAQS, and then started getting more involved here. I cannot recommend it enough!
Thanks for reading, enjoy my progress pics! They get better as you scroll down ;)
http://imgur.com/gallery/RpXjG - from one year of progress 2016-2017
https://imgur.com/gallery/uYiS1xm - Half marathon finisher pic
https://imgur.com/gallery/ZsTmpGv - My favorite pizzacat shirt
https://imgur.com/a/V3s9Nxb - Ultra finisher medal and most recent progress pics

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