Aurum Ex Machina: Building A Wealth Machine

I have Regen in Halcyon, and I think I’ve bought the store title too… I’ve not bought DR yet though. I’m sure I need it, but it also sounds very daunting. lol.

Yep, definitely a possibility.

Both have the potential to produce substantial wealth, though only 1 would really make a difference in people’s lives. The plan was for the marketing one to fund the development on the other one, but TBH I have enough cash on hand that I’ve been able to dive right in, actually…

Best case scenario, the marketing one can do $$$,$$$ per year. Best case scenario for the tech one is $$$,$$$,$$$. Both hard work, and the tech one would be a huge uphill battle, fraught with regulatory peril… but so worth it.

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Monday, listen day. Tomorrow demands optimal focus so I’ll save the Lion’s Mane until then… just coffee and my sub stack today.

After my post on Friday, I had what can best be described as an in your face manifestation.

There are 2 main software tools I’m using for the marketing project right now, and they work well together. Friday afternoon I got an email from one of the companies offering, for 1 day only, free access to a 2.5h training course on… how to use their tool with (coincidentally) the other tool I use, to… do exactly what I’m working on and how to speed up the process and avoid the drudgery of the actual writing.

:face_with_raised_eyebrow: :exploding_head:

Yep.

I signed up for the training and have access now, but haven’t taken the time to go through it yet.

Otherwise not much else to report; my wife and I watched No Time To Die over the weekend. Wow… Still reeling in my jaw from that one.

Edit: I’ve also just learned that 2 of my friends had a healthy, happy, baby girl early this morning. :relaxed:

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Happy Wednesday, or whatever day it is wherever you are in the world!

Yesterday was a bust. I had an exam scheduled, but it ended up getting cancelled a couple of hours before it was supposed to happen. I was actually relieved, as I’d been apprehensive about it and did not sleep well… in fact my Oura ring informed me that I’d been waking up on and off since about 2am. Ugh. So I’ve got a little more time to prepare for it… but it also means I get to be nervous yet again. lol.

Another listen day today, with more Lion’s Mane in my coffee.

I feel as though I’ve made huge progress in my tech project, though it tends to come in fits and starts… going from “gah this is impossible…” to “oh, that was easy!” several times in a row. I decided to simplify one part of the hardware design for the prototype that had been causing me some delays (the power system… I had been working on a built-in battery charging system and was having issues with the battery protection circuitry) and then I remembered something I heard in a YT video recently about buying a tool vs buying a project. If you need something to just work, buy something that already works… don’t try to reinvent the wheel just for the sake of reinventing the wheel.

So I scrapped the whole power system (for now) in favor of a holder for rechargeable AAs. Much less convenient for a user, but as I had to remind myself… this is a prototype. Just a proof of concept. So what if I need to swap out batteries each day? I’ve got tons of Eneloops and a charger… easy enough to recharge some AAs. Much simpler, and the project moves on rather than being stuck with me looking at datasheets for charge controller ICs for days, only to find that the perfect chip I’ve finally found is back-ordered for the next year…

I’ve got another call coming up soon with the consulting contact I mentioned last week, he seems pretty keen to do some work together. More on the marketing side than any tech stuff, which I’m looking forward to.
He’s also got some contacts for helping arrange some government R&D grants/funding, so I’ll be asking about that as well. I’ve already got some leads on another grant up to $1M, but I really need working tech, at least a functional prototype, before I can seriously be considered for that one.

I’m really curious how much this will accelerate once I add my tech genius custom to the mix, as the custom I’ve got right now was actually meant to enhance my marketing project. haha.

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Another listen day today, also with Lion’s Mane.

I had an interesting dream last night - some people I knew (in the dream, nor IRL) had a functional version of the device I’ve been designing and I really wanted to borrow it to run some tests to verify a few of the functions. They wouldn’t give it to me, and it felt a bit like a childhood game of keepaway.
Unfortunately I woke up before I managed to get the device, so no revelations in dream form… either about the tech itself or about myself. Or maybe the message was that I need to figure this stuff out on my own, as I’ve been doing up until this point.

I had a follow-up call today with the contact who wants me to do some consulting, sounds like it may be a bit more than I had expected originally (or maybe less… still very much up in the air) but he has asked for a quote, and wants to move ahead in some capacity. So that’s cool.

Other than that, today has been relatively quiet. I got a random payment for $34.99 for some online art sales last month and thought “Hmm, that’s exactly the cost of a sub…” then realized I’ve hit the post count to be Arch-Alchemist now, so subs haven’t been $34.99 for me for a while now. heh.

I think that’s about it for now. Just cranking away on my tech project, still high levels of confidence about its viability.

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Monday, Monday… another sub + coffee + Lion’s Mane-powered listen day.

I didn’t take time to listen to QL on Friday, as I was inspired to listen to a podcast interview related to my tech side project instead. I learned a ton of useful stuff, and will go back through and take notes I think. I usually listen to podcasts and audiobooks at 1.5x or even 2x speed, but this one I will re-listen to at normal speed just to get all of the info… it was like a firehose of gold. Wait, that does NOT sound right… :sweat_smile: :rofl: It was highly relevant info. haha.

I’m really feeling Machine:Action today, as I had to write an email to a contact who is a prospective consulting client. Long email, summarizing an hour-long call we had on Friday. Normally I waffle over the details of an email, and would usually have spent an hour or more on an email of that length… today, with AEM on, I hammered it out in about 20 minutes. Gave it a quick read for errors (caught one that Grammarly didn’t) and then sent it off.

Then the grocery delivery arrived. As I was putting them away in the kitchen, I thought about yet another side hustle… this one can be completely outsourced from day 1 and would not take much of my time away from my main project(s). I have all of the resources needed to start, just need to hire a VA to do the work. I suppose I could also partner with someone who wants to work on an e-commerce business in exchange for a share of the profits too, but I think I’d prefer a VA as that’s much simpler. In any case, I’m tempted, very tempted. I’d originally had this idea months ago, but didn’t do anything about it. If I had, then it would have benefitted greatly from BFCM, but oh well. I’ve had more important things to work on. I still do.

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Monday, listen day. I’ve dropped RICH from today’s playlist as a sub-specific washout for swapping in RICH ZP on Wednesday. No Lion’s Mane today, as today is pretty quiet with nothing uber-important to work on out of the ordinary.

I’ve had some dreams that are interesting, and worth touching on briefly.

In one of the dreams I was searching for something. Clues to solve a mystery, pieces of a puzzle, something along those lines. But interspersed throughout the dream I was going to appointments with a counselor or shrink, to deal with some anger and grief over a specific issue. Now, I don’t think I’ve quite got that in waking life, but in the dream, it hit me hard.

Something else came up today, as a result of something I posted elsewhere.

I feel angry about this.

Not at myself, I could have handled the whole thing better but it still needed to happen, but at the whole situation. I live in a city where the living wage is ~$75k+ and most professionals are at $100k+. Most houses in this city are $700k+, and the only thing under half a million are tiny condos.

All that to say, you need to earn a decent amount of money to actually be able to afford to live here.

When I really started driving toward success, I got a LOT of pushback. Accusations of selling out, of “turning to the dark side”, of becoming “one of them”. What follows is a story that I may have posted before, so apologies in advance for anyone who has read this before.

The worst of it was dinner one night before a board meeting of a NGO. One of the people present, one of my best friends at the time actually, was complaining about something at his day job. He works as a mechanical engineer and had worked on an HVAC system in a house in the very wealthy part of an already wealthy city. Old money… mansions in the tens of millions value, Maseratis in the driveway, etc. His complaint was that they had huge TVs in every room and multiple luxury cars in a garage as big as his apartment.
So obviously, they were unethical and probably corrupt… :roll_eyes:
What was the conclusion from my friend?

“They deserve to be robbed.”

Also at the table were 2 other people, one of them a teacher and the other a local politician/councilman. To my shock, they both agreed very enthusiastically. I sat there with my mouth hanging open as these seemingly respectable and well-educated people got angrier and angrier at wealthy people, simply for being successful.

I have no idea how that particular family became wealthy, but the likelihood that they achieved it through hard work is greater than the idea that they are criminals of some sort. I started noticing this same attitude from other people I knew, and before long it was intolerable.

I responded by resigning from both of the NGO boards I was on - president of one, just a director for another - and withdrew from the social circle. I stopped calling people back, I stopped engaging with them on social media - and then stopped using social media completely.

I haven’t seen most of them since early 2016, and while it’s true that I don’t think I miss them, I realize I still have some anger over the whole thing. I want to have enough to provide for my family and be able to make a difference in the world. If that means I need to become a millionaire to afford it, then that’s what I want. I was told I was wrong for wanting anything more than scraping by, as otherwise, I am “greedy”.

I disagreed enough that I left, it’s done. So why am I angry about this still?

I’m not seeing the answer yet. This shouldn’t be bothering me. But it is.

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The West is collapsing, and it’s only a matter of time that hunting of the wealthy begins.

You know they are coming for you. It’s going to happen in your lifetime.

A lot of smart people have already started moving out.

You aren’t prepared for this.

:scream:


EOG makes you subconsciously aware of trends, going 30-50 years into the future.

This is getting combined with your strong Fear/Survival Instinct.

There are dark clouds on the horizon.

:+1:t2:

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It’s not just in the west… I’m not sure where is left to move to.

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Wednesday, listen day… and the first with RICH ZP as my only title today.

I decided to give it the proper attention it deserved and did a Z-meditation while listening. Lots of interesting imagery and memories came up, including thinking about something that I want but don’t currently have… it was followed immediately and effortlessly by the thought of “but I can have it, more easily than many people…” I also had the thought that I should get a new phone as mine is from 2017 and is showing it’s age a lot lately, and that was also followed by “yep, easy.”

So that’s interesting. :slight_smile:

Bring on the reality shifts!

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Monday, listen day again. Though I missed Friday… super busy day and one time when I knew I was going to be out for a couple of hours I figured that would be a perfect time to run my stack. Unfortunately my phone had other ideas and decided to dump 50% of its battery charge in about 3 minutes leaving me with hardly any power left.
I also felt like CRAP on Thursday… probably recon from Wed, but man I felt awful. Fear, anxiety, and a lot of what is best described as bitter defeatism. This persisted through Friday night as well, but then I slept well (Oura ring says 2h 40m of deep sleep vs 1h 4m of REM. suck it, dreams!) that night so Saturday was good. Busy family day though, so still no loop of AEM.

Today is another listen day, and I have a choice… do the missed loop of AEM and bump RICH ZP to Wednesday, or make today a ZP day?

I’d like to start listening shortly, as I like to listen while I work in the mornings… Best quick advice ̶w̶i̶n̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶z̶e̶ gets to determine my stack today. :nerd_face:

Stick to your schedule. Get a battery case for your phone :joy:

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If it were just the battery I would, but the phone is acting up in other ways too. Next time I’m at the mall I’ll just get a new one… I’ve not been ready to give up my headphone jack and home button quite yet but now it’s just getting annoying. :upside_down_face:

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Asia.

(post must have at least 10 characters).

My thought is:

Our relationships, particularly adult relationships, tend to fulfill many different functions in parallel. You made an appropriate stand and made appropriate choices based on your values. The values are solid and are in integrity with your vision.

That part is all good.

But they were still friends and colleagues, ‘co-creators’. And there are emotional and instinctual bonds of belonging, connections, and ‘place’/community to which such people contribute as well.

My thinking is that once those other needs, (needs which are probably less acknowledged by you, since that’s the norm for many well-adjusted adults), are being met in other ways or by other people, then it will be easier to release the anger.

Another way of putting this. Anger is the emotion of boundary-setting and boundary-keeping. Your healthy desire for connection leads you to think about reconnecting with those friends and colleagues. Your anger then arises to make sure that you don’t compromise the boundaries of your values and your vision. It’s performing a useful function. But maybe it’s also time to look at other communities and connections that are better aligned with your values.

That’s one way of thinking about it.

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There’s another thing that is nagging ay my mind. This Sherlock scene in particular sums it up perfectly.

Maybe I am lonely. I haven’t got many friends that I still really spend any time with, and between the reduced socializing recently thanks to Covid and generally being preoccupied with raising a child, even that has dropped to a few times a year at most.

I recently had a dream about a friend that I haven’t spoken to in a couple of years (has it really been that long?? wow) and in the dream, I went to visit him and discovered he had become very successful - both socially and financially. I was happy for him and felt a bit down for a few moments when I woke up.

I believe I’m having some ZP recon… I listened to RICH ZP yesterday and, like last Wednesday, felt awful afterward. So anxious I could barely sit still, and was simultaneously on the verge of both panic and deep sadness. Bad enough that I texted a friend who is also into subs that if this is the recon I’m getting from ZP then I’m going back to Ultima. I’ve never had such a reaction before, but 2 listen days with the same sub is approaching a pattern.

I think I’ll do a ZP washout for a week or so rather than deciding I’m not going to run it anymore, as the stuff I’m feeling does not match others experiences, so there may be other factors at play. Tomorrow is another listen day and I’ll be back on AEM, which never causes any issues for me… except when I’m primed to work and keep getting interrupted, but that’s another story.

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AEM yesterday… No major productive drive but no hellacious anxiety either. Terrible dreams last night, definitely feeling some recon today.

Yeah.

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My wife said something to me a few nights ago that was just an offhand comment for her, expressing a feeling relating to something that had happened with her father actually, but my brain heard it as “Be more alpha NOW!”

Her father was involved in a business deal and essentially got scammed. The person/people he hired to build a particular online asset delayed until the terms of the contract were up and then just disappeared with the money, never having delivered anything. What she said was…

“He’s too nice and trusting, like you.”

Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

So, after nearly 2 years away from it… Emperor is back in my stack.

Updated stack:

  • AEM
  • Emperor
  • QL2 - I need a brain boost to finish the current stage of my tech project by the end of the year

The observant ones will notice that there are no ZP titles in my stack anymore… not even RICH.

I ran RZP a few times and had a less-than-ideal response each time. I thought it over and I have some ideas on why it might be, but I’ve got a meeting in 4 minutes so I’ll save that for another post.

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First some background.

I started out, young and idealistic (and always ambitious of course)… fresh out of school I joined a nonprofit organization and was running it within 4 years. I’d hoped to transition that into a consulting career in the same field (green building, generally speaking). But… the reaction that I got, from most people, was that I was “selling out” and had become greedy, once I tried to monetize my time. I was fortunate to have a few contacts that realized (due to the presence of functioning brains) that I couldn’t keep living in an expensive city on the west coast while working as a volunteer indefinitely. I got a few contracts… $5k here, $10k there… that carried me through. But, I became thoroughly disillusioned with the anti-capitalist mindset that I was surrounded by.
I’ve already recounted the story of the final straw that made me split from that group entirely, so I won’t go into it again. The result was that I went full corporate. I made money my primary objective… not by doing anything counter to my morals, I wouldn’t participate in anything that was harmful… but I was done doing work for others without getting anything for myself.

Fast forward several years. Here I am, with access to some amazing subliminal technology that promises to change my reality. Hell yes, sign me up. I’ve had excellent results with RICH Ultima, some great productivity with my wealth custom, as well as some interesting opportunities for partnerships etc come into my life. So, of course when the new tech is announced… I’m all over that.

And then…

Consider me envious of the many successes that others have had with ZP, it has not had that effect for me yet. And I fully recognize that it’s an issue with my brain, NOT the ZP tech. In fact, my immediate “results” after RICH ZP were about $1,500 in unexpected bills and expenses… ouch. I also felt TERRIBLE. A deep despair and sense of hopelessness that I’d not felt in years. Also, deeply disturbing dreams that woke me up with a pounding chest and a ton of fear.

I chalked it up to a bad day, and kept on about my life. A few days later it was another ZP listen day, and once again I felt just… ugh. The worst recon I’ve ever felt… I couldn’t sit still, it was in between a constant panic attack and such overwhelming sadness that I couldn’t do anything but sit at my desk and breathe, trying not to cry. Then one of those big unexpected expenses came up, so I walked numbly to the bank (just down the street) to make the transfer.

Although one friend said I needed to just “push through it”, I couldn’t take it. Not right now, at least… it’s almost the holidays and I’d like to enjoy the time!

So, I’ve dropped ZP titles from my stack for now. As I mentioned previously I’ve gone to a stack of AEM, Emperor, and QL2, and those are working well for me. Dreams have become much more pleasant (though that took over a week until the nightmares subsided) and I feel good once again.

Ok, so why??? I know it’s not a problem with the tech, it’s me. I have some thoughts.

Recently I did a thought exercise. If income generation wasn’t a concern anymore… what would my interests be? I didn’t bother speculating on how that situation arose, just accepted it as a situational condition that I had all the money I needed.

The first thing to go would be the marketing and business books, email subscriptions, and software tools I pay for. That made sense, as I do business to serve my life, not the other way around.
The second thing, which greatly surprised me, was the technical books, subscriptions, etc relating to my business.

Huh?

I always had this mental picture in my head of being this Tony Stark-type character who tinkered with projects in a well-equipped shop, and spun off businesses to monetize what I came up with. That’s what I’ve done with 2 businesses now, though my shop is still rather modest. I figured if I were financially free, I’d continue doing that. But my SubC response was that I might not.

So what would I do?

I went through several answers, and only one truly resonated. I’d live a simple life, being as self sufficient as I could be. Not a lone cabin in the woods, but a house in the country with a big garden. What surprised me was most of the extravagances that I thought I wanted (indoor pool, home theater, museum-quality replica dinosaur skull on display… ok that one might be a bit much for anyone)… weren’t there. A simple house, for a simple life.

I’d happily spend my days doing woodworking, clearing bush, fixing things around the property, maybe some farming.

Am I chasing a dream that I only thought I wanted?

Here’s the kicker. I need considerable amounts of money to buy said land, to build said house in the country on… In this area, even a standard 1970s-era house in a normal neighborhood is near to a million dollars. Land outside the city is several million.

So clearly I need to keep pursuing wealth.

What’s the problem with my SubC then? Sure, I may not truly want as much as I thought I did, but I still need considerably more than I’ve got presently.

Anyway, that’s the loop my brain has been stuck in for the past couple of weeks.

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Man. I definitely want the shop. That’s what I’m working towards with my tinkering and empire-building.

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First of all, I LOVE that GIF. It so nicely expresses how I (and I think I’m not the only one) sometimes feel.

Your desired future and mine are very similar. I always see myself in a cabin close to a lake and a small town where people all know one another, but within driving distance of a larger city. I would still work freelance on projects for my town, not something that nobody really needs but something which actually helps the people and the town.

Makes me wish I had been a doctor or vet instead of an IT engineer. It would have made small town life easier.

At home I’d try out new techniques like vertical hydroponic farming to grow my own food, I’d have some solar panels or other ways of generating my own power. And of course a nice porch where I could cuddle with the girls (yeah, why not have more than one even if their periods unfortunately synchronize over time?) and maybe look at my kids running around playing with the dog.

Like you I realize I would need a ton of money to get there, and it is certainly not getting any less as I get older. And yet I have never seen wealth as a goal, only as a means to an end. So running wealth-subs and setting wealth goals is difficult.

The key I suppose is in finding a way to reframe the concept so that wealth is a goal but doesn’t feel like one.

For me, I maintain the idea of accepting wealth into my life. I don’t actively pursue it but I hold in my mind the idea that it is there to support me whenever I need it. A goal is that I would never have to check my bank balance and be able to buy anything I wanted. And when I do check my bank balance I always visualize an extra 1 in front of whatever number shows up as an exercise in visualization. Simply because I feel it should be there, the bank must have made a mistake.

This avoids me feeling like I’m chasing wealth I don’t believe I need to be comfortable.

I also see handling money as a game or form of art. There’s a skill to it which most people lack and it makes for an interesting and challenging pastime which makes me smile when I do it right. So I don’t do it for the money, that’s simply the end result of doing it right, like a little red hotel on a monopoly board. It’s satisfying to see.

But I don’t have the same passion (or desperation, a very effective one) for wealth that I see with some people having great successes here on the forum. I don’t know if that is the challenge I face at running wealth subs and seeing great results.


As far as the unexpected bills go, that sucks! All I can tell you is that it’s probably best to release the idea that it is somehow related to running RICH. I have found that once you mentally anchor things to one another, it is hard to get rid of that link. So I do my best to anchor my positive results to the subs and commit the negative results to my mindset or the universe giving me a teaching moment.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking I’m being delusional. Like some religious people claiming all good and bad things must be the will of a deity, not all things, good or bad, are linked to subs. Subs don’t have that power (and said deity certainly doesn’t micro-manage that much).

As a well-developed individual I acknowledge that in the end I and I alone carry the responsibility for it all. I manifested it, I wished for it somehow, even if the subs may have given me an edge. I simply got what I was asking for.

Then I consider if there’s any harm in relating good things to the subs and conclude that there’s not. But there is an upside however, as I’m teaching myself to trust the subs as something which can help me cause good stuff.

So when something good happens, I try and say to myself “you know, RICH or AM could have helped manifest that” and when something bad happens I say “what thought, action or behavior might have brought that one on and what could I have done differently?”

For example, when my upstairs neighbors moved in with their exceptionally noisy kids, it took all of my focus to convince myself that there was something to learn from it and that I must have done something to bring this upon me. I quickly concluded that I’d been telling myself for years that I wanted to renovate the house and add sound-proofing in. Then I told myself (and the universe) that there were less impactful ways to teach me. Why make me suffer this much when it could have been gradual instead?

Once I finally came to terms with it, it turned out the neighbors were decent people and the man happened to be in construction. By now, a significant part of my house is renovated and my home office had ludicrous amounts of soundproofing. And it cost me a fraction of hiring a contractor while helping me learn how to do things myself and overcome my fear of change. Bad things, something I manifested myself, but also an opportunity to grow.


On the money front, I’ve been doing that visualizing a 1 exercise every time I open my app, and even though the lottery still hasn’t come to its senses (see what I do there, I never lose the lottery, they simply made a mistake) I did get offered a job at the place I’m currently working. Starting January I get a 600 bucks month raise and a year-end bonus and my salary would be about 700 bucks higher compared to the norm with opportunity to rise another 1000 a month over the next few years.

So the question is, how can I link this to subs? It certainly isn’t a massive windfall. In the grand scheme of things I am still an employee and not an entrepreneur. Saint and Fire still haven’t made me their partner even though it frustrates me to no end that my thinking process might help them evolve subs exponentially and I have been unable to convince them to take a chance on something which could be truly magical for SubClub and its clientele. Which is my failure, not theirs. I’m also not a millionaire by the end of the year as far as I know right now.

But I am further along than I figured I would be a year ago. I get to work from home or close to home, allowing me to have a good work-life balance. I get supported in my growth and studies and I will have certain opportunities in the future since the job is for the federal government which always looks good on a resume.

I could have had my miracle wealth, but I might have required me to sacrifice in other areas of my life. Instead, I get an above average growth in wealth and my personal life, giving me time to focus on everything which matters. I may have subconsciously told the subs that I had other priorities besides wealth.

Somehow, since I’ve been running wealth subs, everything financially seems to be going in the right direction overall, at a higher speed compared to pre-subs. But we are talking a span of 2 years now.

Is it because of the subs? Maybe they cleared out the cobwebs and made it easier for me to see what needed doing and have the courage to do it. So sure, why not?

Thank you, subs, for clearing things up for me. Thank you for helping me grow, even though consciously I still have hope you’ll help me find my privately owned island while I am still young enough to enjoy it. I just might have to do some opening up my mind to the possibilities first.

But my comfortable financial growth could be the subs, so I say let it be because of the subs. They showed me what to do like a teacher would, without asking me to sacrifice like Scrooge did in his youth.

I am DarkPhilosopher and I approve of this essay.

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