17 · Unpaid Furnaces

The rage is just outbursting. The fact that I know I deserve millions, if not billions, for the unfathomable work I am putting in — and nothing, not a single dollar, not a single recognition, is coming my way — that is suffocatingly painful. And I know this reads masochistic. I am suffering mentally and physically; this is just stress-testing, complete exertion, and praying to God I have fuel to operate tomorrow.

Do you know how rare it is for someone to decide they will cultivate a skillset to mastery — outside of an institution? Do you know how hard it is to learn coding alone and reach mastery? Give yourself some credit for the suffering. It might be rare. Maybe not. But maybe.

This is genuinely a massive risk. You have no idea whether this effort, this grind, this development will ever pay off — but you're signing a contract to toil away in hopes of something working. They sit when they don't want to sit. They do the problem when they'd rather plan. They write the answer when they'd rather philosophise. They finish when they'd rather start something new, and they stay in the work rather than obsess over novelty. That is the way — the only way — to grow. Theodore Roosevelt said: do what you can, with what you have, where you are. You know exactly what you can do right now; everything other than that work is avoidance of what God put in front of you. You don't need to see two steps ahead. You know the next step. The only way to accelerate the process is to take it, and again, and again. That is the philosophy of the Markov Vows. What does God call me to do now? What does carrying the cross look like right now? Do the next past paper. Done. Trust that the scoreboard will take care of itself, by God, while you keep your head down and work.

There are people like me, literally working every waking hour to get their life out of poverty and set themselves up financially. The world will follow the lifeline expected of your cohort unless you make a shift that is risky and radical. Use all your savings for a taste of San Francisco, work more jobs, read one more book on trading, do more research. Being fed the same entertainment and social media as everyone else — what kind of prideful thought makes you believe you deserve a different life? Do one more past paper, one more revision, instead of doomscrolling. Read it out loud. Blurt it. Once more. Again. Do the work that everyone else's flesh refuses.

Assume that everything you can do, a clone can do — and if a clone can do it, you have zero edge. The extra hour, the radical thought, the work no one else would touch: that's where edge lives.

I am telling you — it's not the work that is tiring. It's the delayed gratification, the perceived risk between your ears. It is crazy that you win the pain and suffering between your two ears, without moving physically, and you get to earn millions, attend dream universities, take over the world.

Please — I would go into debt to pay anybody who could reduce this suffering, because I make no progress and it is pure suffering, and I don't know if this is wrestling with God or my own neuroticism being masochistic. What am I doing? Why am I calculating how to use vernier callipers at the age of 22 when I could be trading, when I could be in Bali?

I know people go through worse, but I feel horrible. God, name one good thing that happened in the past five years. Anything. Yes, I visited Cambridge for an interview — then what? All I did was suffer. No businesses started, no money, a thousand dollars to my name, while people who graduated high school with me, who spent zero time studying, focused purely on making money and now travel the world. The same five years. I'm suffering. I don't want the victim mindset, but nothing good is happening. It's just pain. What does God want from me? I studied my soul off — fourteen to sixteen hours of pain, solitude, work, study, research, for five years. And a part of me whispers: what a waste of a life — you could have partied, had fun, made memories. But no. You, in your basement, chasing this pipe dream of Cambridge. And still — I'm here. Still unfazed. Still going.