Bitcoin has been my life for years.

I've been active in my local community since 2019, when I did start also my fiat university path. That's been a hell of a ride. Meetups, online appearance (with and another alias that makes me very identifiable), even a small no profit organization to help boosting the adoption of bitcoin with events and activities on social media.

Every minute I shared with my bitcoiner friends has been magical, every workshop, every lesson learned. I started my bitcoin journey being a sort of tech enthusiast not so familiar with linux, and these 4 years have changed completely my life: a ton of lessons learned, a lot of tech skills learned.

I'm deeply grateful for everyone that took some time to give me hints, explain something or simply discussing Bitcoin technicalities with me and thus deepening my understaning of the protocol. More than anything else, I'm grateful for letting me understand the importance and value of Freedom, the real Freedom.

Bitcoin and bitcoiners taught me that. Bitcoin and bitcoiners taught me that, when anyone else was celebrating lockdowns and money printing.

In my local bitcoin community I met cheerful people, optimistic about the future. People that cheer others' successes, always there if help is needed. It's very uncommon to be as such, for a community that was born basically online and still lives a lot on the rails of the Internet. I'm really grateful for it. I'm even grateful for the (few) annoying people I've met. They made me angry, annoyed, bitter, but they taught me an important lesson: the World is your ally if you welcome the struggle of fair confrontation and are up for a bit of compromise. And I also understood that their annoying approach to bitcoin education, their unwillingness to make compromises is one of the foundations of Bitcoin's strenght. No matter how many NGU crypto bros, plebs, ETFs, Countries adopting bitcoin etc are out there, we still need to keep in mind that Bitcoin is rooted on solid principles, key ideas. And those principles need to live in the soul of bitcoiners, in order to make bitcoin something great.

I like to think that Bitcoin shall be a tool USED by anyone and not simply FOR anyone. All the bitcoiners I met helped me to understand why Bitcoin is on the good path towards this goal. Using bitcoin is an action that can be triggered by several reasons, experiences, but all lead to the same consequences: enrich your knowledge of the World and live a life dedicated to Abboundance. And Bitcoin triggers this, ultimately.

I feel like my personal life crossed bitcoin's story at the perfect time, at the perfect place. I was lost, I lived with my parents, I didn't have money. Now some things have changed, I feel more financially free, I feel that I've achieved something in creating what I did with my local community. I feel that I finally KNOW something, even though I still have plenty to learn about bitcoin.

I wrote that "bitcoin was my life" because during these last 4 years I did what is not really rational to do, socially and financially (even though it turned out it's been a good bet). I did all-in. All-in on ideas and sats. I tried to keep up with the double life as a normie and as a bitcoiner and I don't suggest anybody to do that. Identity is way more important than anything else and if you don't wear it 24/7, you fall apart easily. That's where I'm headed, I guess. I have normies friends, some of them are somehow interested in Bitcoin but they only care about price so there's no room for ideas and principles. I have a lot of bitcoin friends, although the "privacy" side of bitcoin doesn't make me able to engage in personal conversations too much without making them uncomfortable.

Bitcoin has given me hope for individuals, for society to be rebuilt on top of better, more fair, more sound roots. Despide all these things, I'm still struggling with hope in my personal future. I'm part of a lost generation doomed to doomscrolling, with the brainrot social media have put into in our silly and meaningless lives. I say meaningless because that's what is believed by most of my normie peers here.

We always say that Bitcoin solves everything and I used to think about it in this way too. Now I'm struggling with meaning, as most of my peers, and Bitcoin doesn't solve this. I realized I've been struggling with meaning since my childhood, but I've burried questions under the dirt of routines, packed agendas and silly relationships.

Bitcoin entered my life at the perfect time to provide more agenda entries, more routines, a new round of activities to do. It gave more fuel to my self driving car of life, where I've not been the driver for too long. Agreableness is a sickness and I found myself agreeing to stuff I didn't had the time or energy to do at all.

Among the sublime novels Dostoevskij wrote, there's one called "Notes from Underground", in which the nameless protagonist reveals himself as a cynic, bitter individual that runned away from everything by burrying himself into his own soul and mind. In the middle of the novel there's a sentence that brokes me into pieces every time I come across it. It says

Every individual is alone in front of the others, and every member of the "others" is alone in front of the others.

As of now, with the incoming "persecution" of bitcoiners in UE (with the tool of taxation, criminalization of anonimity tools, etc), this is exacly how I feel: I'm alone and they are all. Cannot trust meetup members anymore, someone could be a cop trying to get info about you. Cannot trust digital devices, because online traces cannot be deleted. Ultimately, I feel burried in my Underground. And that's not "Bitcoin's fault", clearly. It's the battle we decided to fight and we agreed to it - although I don't know how much awareness there's about that. Having a double life does not help at all.

I'm not bitter or resentful, Bitcoin has given me hope for humanity and individuals, but I'm not able to run at the needed pace to keep up with that, I may be not well equiped to fight this battle, at least spiritually. This situation reminds me a song of Jason And The Scorchers called "Getting Nowhere Fast": Bitcoin is going fast, bitcoiners are going fast. You guys are going very fast, I don't know if I can push the metal pedal deep enough to keep up.

So that's where the title of this post acquires meaning finally: I've not been able to disappear from bitcoin because I love the ideas, principles. I love the tech, I love how optimistic and cheerful you guys and girls are - altough girls are one of the reasons why I still need my normie life to resist. Now I feel I've come to a turning point where some clarity is needed and I'm struggling with the idea of letting bitcoin, bitcoiners and this world aside for a bit. I guess this is a sort of FOMO but for ideas, community and tech rather than for price.

Now I got to the end of this post, my normie life is calling. Christmas dinner is approaching and I need to wear the cap of normality, dress the coat of average-Joe and go back to what the real world asks me to do. This ride has been a pleasure and I'll be looking forward to come back to this community soon, hopefully with more clarity in mind. New Year, new goals, I'll work on it.

Merry Chrismas to y'all Stackers.