lost_polymath

@WonderSeeker Those are very good points! A passion burns deep in me for social entrepreneurship whilst the passion for actualization and expression actually burns even more intensely because I know no matter how great or shit my life becomes, I will be spending my last days at the very least doing that. If that's the case, social entrepreneurship is the career and the actualization work is the pet development project/hobby. I'm only 23 so still very young. But this is a question I've heavily wrestled with since I was 15/16 so I'm actually very happy that I'm at this final stage where I've finally chosen the arenas I want to partake in and work on the skills I need to flourish in them whilst working on conquering my survival in stage orange. It only took journaling for 6 years, doing a degree in engineering, lots of therapy, and 6 months of watching Leo's content to get to this point hahaha! Speaking of which, I need to update my journal on this website with the stuff that has happened in the past few months. Thank you very much for the help WonderSeeker, really appreciate it.

Thank you for your insight. "What gets me more excited" is a tough one as I imagine endless possibilities for myself in both as they're so suited to who I am as a person. Put it this way, on my death bed in however many years time, I would feel regret if I didn't do both those things. I will continue to contemplate whilst bearing your experience in mind. I can see a future where entrepeneurship is something I do as my "day job" whereas all my time can be dedicated to actualisation work and expressing it through art forms. I guess I'm just paranoid of falling into the trap of not focusing on that if I know how much it excites me. The mind is one fickle thing ain' it?

I seek guidance in the way a student wanders through a forest looking for a old wise person (who looks homeless) to provide some clarity. I currently work as a sales person in a engineering company. It's my first sales job in which I am enjoying learning the art of selling and my colleagues are cool. In the past 6 months I've started taking my actualisation journey more seriously through action rather than mentally masterbating to personal development content as I've been doing since age 19: - I understand my limits of what I can and can't do, as I tried doing multiple things with accountability on all of these things and it burnt me out very quickly. - I'm a lot clearer on my values. - I've been involved in mutiple entrepreneurship activities which has truly pushed me to my limits. I have finally gained clarity on how I want to be spending my limited days as a human having learnt about how my survival has shaped me, my mind plays tricks on me, spiral dynamics, 9 stages of ego development, self-love and becoming a sage. I also did shamanic breathing and it put me in a different state of mind that made me do sorts of things in that state. Really opened my eyes. I'm very determined to master my survival as a person who is in stage orange. To give some context, I romantisicied tech startups for a long time because of the associated lifestyle and status that comes with it but I realise now that I truly couldn't care less about tech. They're useful tools but I don't spend my time looking at the latest tech in my free time despite my technical background. I did it simply because my family depend on me as the "head" of the home since I'm the oldest kid who is meant to be the role model (yeah I was parentified as a child) All I want to do is spend my days doing actualisation work, expressing my findings through music, film and novels as well as business for the greater good whilst travelling and experiencing different cultures (before raising a family gets involved). I now have a better understanding of what I'm geninuely passionate about: -Social entrepeneurship (physical health, infrastructure, energy, poverty, mental health, etc) driven by my interest in systems thinking (control systems, cybernetics, ecology) and actualisation fuelled by my skills in business, leadership, speaking and writing. There's so many problems where I believe my business and social skills would benefit from my focus on them. -Personal Website/Blog, Music, Fictional Films and Novels driven by my interest in actualisation (philosophy, spirituality and psychology), deep yet relatable conversations with people (and connecting with them), growing interest in cinematography and music (hip-hop, jazz). My mind has boiled it down to those two things. These are my plan As. I don't know how to move forward. Each day, my passion burns deeply for these things. I have no dobut in my ability to do well in these two areas because one of the few things I have going for me is my inquistiveness and my resillience. However, I know it would take a very long time (10 years minimal for each of these two areas which I would be OK with if I was already quite well off) before I could even begin to master my survival if I were to focus on these things. With the sales job (aka Plan B), I've got a pretty decent plan I know I can execute on to basically x2/3 my income in the next 4-5 years through the sales route. However, I know that the passion for sales is simply a result of me enjoying being rewarded for being personable and having EQ (something I've been noted for since I was a very young child) My mind is only capable of focusing on two things at once. Anything more, I can't do. Does anyone have any thoughts to this dilemma? I don't know how to focus my time. Master my survival through one of these two passions, or just be comfortable in Plan B whilst working on Plan A in the background whilst risking falling into the trap of living the life of a 9-5er till retirement age whilst life responsibilities pile up (e.g. partner, family, mortgage, car etc)? I want to make a decision and not look back. Full steam ahead. I call it a dilemma but I'm grateful to have the clarity that I have now that I didn't six months ago. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts @Leo Gura given you had to go through a kind of similar thing yourself and you made your choice, but was there anything you wish you had done different?

06/06 Personal Been at my parents place for the past week now for a little relaxing. It's interesting to notice how much this environment makes me want to do little to no work (though to be fair I've did some work) and just turn my mind off. I binged a manga but it was essentially the equivalent of mental mastebration. Spent some time writing lyrics as well over a beat my brother made. Also even though it should be obvious at this point considering the forum I'm on, I had a realisation the other day that the answer to everything I've ever wanted to know lies within myself and for some reason, its something I've passively acknowledged but this time it cut really deep, I'm not sure why. Systems and Infrastructure: Opened up another bank account for allowing me to manage my money more effectively. One of the next things I would like to buy is Leo's Life Purpose Course. Still haven't made progress on developing a system that works for me that will allow me to flow between different creative things I like to do which include innovation, creative writing, writing lyrics, understanding new ideas and more. Health: Eating well like usual. Gym is going well as well. I am still saving for some equipment that will allow me to work on my mobility and my athleticism from my room which will go a long way as I wish to pivot back into the world of Olympic Weightlifting and I'd like to take that seriously for a 5 year period at some point in either my 20s or 30s then spend the rest of my days playing sports casually on days I'm not in the gym. Also still need to find a way to focus in martial arts. Purpose: Making progress, currently doing surveys for a potential product and going to go through feedback to understand gaps in the market. Still a lot of work to be done here. So much I want to do but so little time, really need to get better at priortising and focusing. I'm consciously holding back on delving into any spirtuality videos simply because I have no more bandwidth to do so despite it being in my top 10 values.... need to go back to the drawing board I think.

As the child of immigrants to a first world country, I sympathise. Something to realise which also took me a long time to realise which @universe mentioned is that your parents just want to see you happy (or at least so I hope, it is up to you to determine that). What I found for myself was that because I played a signifcant role in my family growing up, it doesn't feel like I can live a life separately from them without feeling responsible for them especially when I'm in a better position in terms of health, education and career and they're not doing as well. What I do to help me put a bit of a buffer between those thoughts is send them money every now and then whenever I'm able to and then to make it that little bit easier for them. Another thing I personally do is turning the guilt I feel as a fuel to motivate me to keep growing for not just my sake but their sake too, picturing a better future for them as @universe also mentioned. I can't take care of my parents the way I want if I'm constantly looking backwards instead of focusing to the future where there are infinite opportunites for growth (both career and personal) to be discovered! I know it is hard especially when they complain to you about how their lives are, but like you mentioned in your post: This is your new life, look forwards at all times, not backwards. Easier said than done because I still struggle with this from time to time but I'm so delusional/high off being optimistic about being able to one day bring good stability to my family that I just carry on. It will get easier as time goes on. Its quite clear you're a responsible person, but sometimes its okay to let go of responsibilities you know? You should not have to feel responsible for your presumingly still able bodied parents. They've managed to survive this long before you were born, whilst they raised and now after you've left the home, even in the face of all their complaints. Its always much harder when family is involved, especially when there has been a set tradition (e.g. you take care of your parents when they are old) but I believe just you moving to the US alone should be enough indictator that things never stay the same. I hope my rambling helps somehow

There are a couple of questions to ask that might help you with your decision: How used are you to working with ambiguity or little to no guidance? Do you like having structure or don't mind going with the flow? Do you currently own your place or live at home with parents? Are you in a relationship or single? Do you have any financial dependents? How long have you worked at your current company? What are your current personal and professional growth goals? Does the startup in question align with things you're geniunely curious about? What do they do? What's their runway? Who are the founders? Are they 1st time founders or have they done this before? Bootstrapped or VC funded? In the nicest way possible, are you asking us for permission to leave your current job? I would say move if you meet two or more of these requirements (ideally all): You have no financial dependents. You live at home with parents and don't have to worry about bills since you'll be getting paid less. You're OK with ambiguity both in terms of your role and also your tenure at the startup which could be a month, 6 months, a year or 3 years. You value new experience and risk over stability at this current stage of your life. We all take risks, some more brave than others. Knowing how much risk you're willing to take will help in your decision. In a nutshell, will you see a return on investment from joining this venture for your career? Will you be able to captialise on opportunities that can come from working in a startup environment (e.g. meeting lots of like-minded people, valuable customers and investors)? I worked in a startup straight out of university/college and I enjoyed my experience despite no longer being there as there wasn't enough money coming in. I intend to transition back into that space after a few years working in a corporate role whether as a founder or as a part of a team. I hope that helps (somewhat) in your decision making process! Interested to know what you decide to do in the end.

I agree with this, I do think it helps having a sense of consistency in your day to day life and like you mention, reaching a fine balance between rigidity and being able to freely flow ideas from different disciplines together, almost like an intimate slow dance of harmony. Would you say the proactivity should be based on having a long term vision of what you want to achieve or simpy a matter of explore to your hearts desire? If you don't mind me asking, what are your health and fitness goals currently? Interesting that you mention health as Da Vinci was said to be in very good physical shape during his life which I imagine heavily impacted his creative output throughout his journey as a creative.

I'm still in the process of developing a system that will allow me to essentially spend all my time doing this. My time managment skills have been humbled trying to implement something multidisciplinary in a busy schedule. I'll touch base again when I get some more insight. My main form right now is listening to a variety of podcasts and watching videos across science, technology, philosophy, business and more. The application of these ideas though... still a work in progress. My only main form of outputting would be via a blog or a channel which I've generated some ideas for but need to find time to properply sit donw and develop them. Glad to see others are talking about it, the more ideas the better!

Thank you for these. I'm quite familiar with Naval Ravikant and through that have been introduced to David Deutsch, Brett Hall, Matt Ridley and more. I'll be keeping an eye on this thread!

26/05 Work has been incredibly busy but I've been managing to keep on top of it. I've been experiencing a sort of inner joy these past few weeks as I'm enjoying my alone time. This is probably a mixture of only having to worry about myself, eating healthy foods, actually taking action on working towards building a business instead of spending hours theorising on how to do so and gaining insights about how I want to approach my life. Personal I have watched quite a lot of Leo's videos but they were usually on my way to work and I didn't get to take notes on all of them. One video that I watched that I knew essentially described my state of being was on Becoming A Sage. It reminded me of my childhood and the only things I wanted to be when I grew up: a writer and a really wise person. When I was still following religious ways, the one thing I would pray for was wisdom and knowledge to do well in life. As I got older, it became a lot deeper than that, I was curious to learn how the different fields that defined our world from physics to history to economics to music to politcs and how I could take my understanding of that to innovate across a variety of fields. I do not know how to get there but its what ALL my actions towards now have been leading towards, this singularity, for basically all my life. In my words, understanding the world through a systems lens and driving innovation through a variety of mediums including business, science technology, media (e.g. music, film, books) and more. In other words, becoming a polymath or modern sage. So now I've got some clarity on how I want to spend my career, I need to pivot all my focus towards learning how to innovate. I feel a lot of joy when I think about all that there is to learn and experience in this short life, I just have a lot of work to do to make sure I set myself up to be able to receive the experiences and learnings. Systems and Infrastructure: I bought a wireless mouse and I'm already seeing a massive difference in the amount of work that I'm doing, was definitely worth the investment. The next one is a computer chair that is comfortable enough for me as my current one which my landlord provided should honestly be burned and destroyed, horrible chair. I need to develop a system that works for me that allows me to continue to learn about the world extensively whilst working towards the goal of financial independence without causing burnout. Been working my way through The Long Win by Cath Bishop, on Chapter 7 currently. It has truly changed the way I view becoming successful: perfecting process > any outcome. Health: Being eating really well with lots of my own home cooked foods. I'll need to start posting in that mega thread by PrincessArabia with some of the stuff I've been making. Really happy with progress in the gym though I have accidentally lost 3kgs despite eating like I usually done (3 meals a day) due to increased activity levels from my walks. I'm not complaining though as I'm just in time for summer hahaha. Purpose: I've been making progress, I'll go into more detail in a future post as I want to focus on doing and not just talking. To end, its been a good week so far and if I can just maintain this state for the rest of my life, I'd die pretty happy!

12/05 Yet another hectic couple of weeks, I'm going to switch the order a little bit actually for this entry. Personal I spoke a bit about relationships in the previous entry and there has been a major update to that. My girlfriend and I have mutually decided to put our relationship on hold for the remainder of this year whilst she figures out who she is. So we're effectively single until next year when we decide whether or not we want to resume our relationship. I've been adjusting somewhat OK as I've had time to reflect having went on long walks and having time to myself. For me, I see this is a opportunity to continue to double down on focusing on my career as I've been doing with my job, Toastmasters and now focused on entrepreneurship on the weekends. I'm slowly taking steps to living a more principled life, especially on health. I've been consciously trying to filter every decision through my top 10 values to see if they align or not which is been quite helpful. I also need to do some work on understanding more about having boundaries and not being too much of a doormat to those closest to me. Systems and Infrastructure I'm missing some key things from my environment that I need, namebly: computer chair, mouse. I also need to open up a proper savings account and start to rebuild my emergency fund since I expended it all surviving unemployment for a couple of months. I bought a couple of books this week: Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari How Innovation Works by Matt Ridley Influence: The Psychology of Peruasion by Robert Cialdini Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges These are all books I've been looking to buy for quite a while now and I got a giftcard that I could use towards books so made to capitalise on it by picking books that would move in the direction of what I believe part of my purpose to be which is building and running successful businesses that are innovating and pushing the envelope of what is possible across a wide range of sectors (though I have a preference for deep tech). To me, building and scaling businesses is like a work of art. It just feels so satisfying watching businesses grow, make a impact and also be rewarded. The only book that is a bit of a more personal choice is the last one, Ficciones. This is something I tend to read whilst on my lunch break at work each day. It's a collection of short stories, its around 170 pages in total so its a nice way for me to switch off during my lunch and just enjoy some fiction. After I finish this, I intend to pick up the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov as way of continuing to cultivate my enjoyment for writing. Continuing to cultivate my love for fiction through novels, mangas and comics for when I eventually pivot from entrepreneurship to spending all my days reading, writing novels, working out, raising my family, creating music, experimenting with other creative mediums like cinema and dance and focusing on self-actualisation work will be really important so better to start now then later. And I am geniunely looking forward to reading it as I've heard Jorge is an amazing author, curious to know if anyone has read his work. Health I'm making progress on my gym routine which I'm happy about. I made the right choice focusing on bodybuilding and general health. Speaking of which, on days that I haven't been in the gym, I have been getting in my daily steps. The best way for me I find is listening to a podcast whilst walking though sometimes I just want to clear my mind so will just listen to nothing. I hope to continue this moving forward and make it into a unbreakable habit. Purpose I'm currently in the market research stage, I've been doing surveys and learning more about the market space that I'm in. The area that I'm targetting, what makes it interesting is that despite the countless apps and such out there for this problem, there doesn't seem to be a large adoption of these products. There are multiple root causes which I'm hypothesising, and now I need to validate them and prove they are the root causes then provide solutions to these problems. I need to re-read some of the ideas from Lean Startup by Eric Ries to help me do this. I will not be revealing anything about this yet until I've reached a point I'm satisfied (i.e. beta product, software solution, ~100 users) at which point I'll happily talk more about it. Side note, I need to slowly make it so my rest/down time revolves around reading, writing (e.g. personal blog where I explore philosophy, systems thinking, mathematics, the sciences, psychology and much more from my own perspective) and self-reflection instead of mindlessly consuming YouTube (guilty as charged :D). I need to think about activities that are low brain effort but still benefit me in some capacity. Damn, I didn't think much happened but when I write it all out like this, I only now realise how busy I'm starting to become. It really ain't easy trying to live in your purpose.

28/04 It's been a hectic couple of weeks but I'm still around. It feels rare nowadays having time to myself from almost everyone on the weekend and it feels amazing when I do. Systems and Infrastructure I attended my first ever Toastmaster's public seaking session and I really enjoyed it. I felt like I was in a flow state and watching other people speak and perform their speeches gave me insights into what I could do be doing better with my own speaking. I even had the chance to do my own speech as I knew I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone. I really like that you get really detailed feedback. I plan to be recording all my future ones and publishing them on YouTube which I will share here as time goes on. I forgot to mention last time but I'm slowly filling out my common place book. There are so many things to research and learn about and it geniunely brings me joy knowing that I'm living in a period of time where I can do this to my lesiure no matter how long it takes. I am continuing to read through The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and have been doing my best to incorporate living a principle-based life based on my values. Health I'm still in the process of incorporating a much more active daily lifestyle. What makes it a bit difficult is that it constantly rains where I'm living which puts me off from going out there especially knowing that my socks get wet which just doesn't feel great to be honest. Once I rebuild my financial reserves, I can look to purchasing better shoes and waterproof clothing but that will take a couple of months as I need to save for a car first. The gym has been going ok, I'm just patietnly improving my strength. Purpose I have made the decision to full focus on business and achieving finanical independence. My resting times will be where I explore creative writing, hip hop lyricism (I intend to create at least one album before I leave this Earth), philosophy, physics and much more. Personal Relationships are a lot of work. Especially romantic ones. I'm finding it hard to balance having to play the role of my girlfriend's "therapist" (despite her being in therpay for quite a few months) as she deals with a lot of self-esteem issues for months on end whilst trying to move towards my potential. It's tough to let go because there really and truly isn't quite many people like her and I want to make it work.... its just tough. Sometimes it feels like the best thing I can do for her is to break things off to give her the push she needs to get better but that could end up backfiring. I seem to have a reoccuring pattern of ending up in both romantic and platonic relationships with people where I'm essentially the caretaker/therapist for them for months and years on end and I'm starting to get sick of it. I need to investigate what the heck it is I'm doing that ends up attracting these sorts of people in my life. I suspect its coming from my inability to enforce my boundaries when I really should, due to how much I care for people that seemingly care for me. All that to say, I have definitely grown from those experiences. I'm now very content having a extremely small group of people I call friends who I talk to like once or twice a week or every couple of weeks/months whilst being mostly on my own. It's something I've learned to appreciate after entering my first proper romantic relationship where so much of my time was devoted to them and it being taken for granted. I'm learning a lot from it. My relationship is like a mirror as it allows me to see who I actually am in relation to someone else on a intimate/romantic level. It allows me to realise my shortcomings and my own insecurities that I will continue to work on the daily along with the help of the Actualized videos whilst moving towards the future I want for myself.

Thank you for this thread, I also enjoy cooking when I can but mostly stick to boring meal preps since I work/in the gym multiple times a week. Diet mostly consists of rice, pasta, eggs, red kidney beans, meat/fish (turkey, chicken, salmon), fruit (avocado, bananas), veg (onions, bell peppers, tomatoes) and bread. I intend to learn more Caribbean dishes as a lot of the ingredients used in those dishes are used in my culture as well (West African) plus it makes me feel great so will be using this thread to post anything I make in the coming months and years. And then Indian, Italian, Japanese etc until I have a cookbook in my head. That Red Snapper dish you made looks amazing a while back, was that recipe passed down to you or did you find it online?

07/04 It's been two weeks since my last post. I was away from home last weekend so didn't get a chance to update. Work has been very good. I took a risk with my career since I was transitioning from a purely technical role to a more mixture of technical and people skills role and it is working out very well so far. I'm still making use of my degree whilst doing a job that represents my authentic self which is very talkative, empathetic and personable which is something I was shunned for by my parents who always wanted me to be more quiet natured like my younger sibling which I then spent 10+ years trying to do till I reached my breaking point. I'm going to split my entries into the following: Systems and Infrastructure, Health, Purpose and Personal. Systems and Infrastructure Right now, I'm researching, understanding and developing the systems and infrastructure I will need for my success. Something I have decided to work on is my public speaking skills. I have signed up as a guest for a Toastmasters evening in the area where I live which will be happening in a couple of weeks. I don't know what to expect but I do look forward to it and giving it a shot. One thing you'll notice me talk a lot about which is concidentally very similar to Spiral Dynamics: Stagr Yellow is systems approach. A well know branch of engineering is Systems Engineering and is in fact something I've worked as in the past and also one of my favourite topics during my college days was Control Systems. I enjoyed both the mathematics as well as the fact you could apply it to a range of different systems so figured perhaps this could also be applied towards life so was very pleasantly surprised to see that was the approach that Leo took for Actualized. On a side note, I need to spend some time having a look at cybernetics, just for curiousity sake. I'm currently reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I had started it months ago but never finished it so I'm starting now. Currently on Habit 2: Begin With The End In Mind and been working through the exercises laid out. Very eye opening and is shifting my perspective on how I should be approaching my life. I intend to up the number of books I'm reading at once thanks to some ideas from Phil King. I was mid way through Atomic Habits audiobook so will finish that and also read a book called The Long Win by Cath Bishop. In terms of fiction, going to re-read American Gods by Neil Gaiman since I... started it and never actually finished (god this is getting embarassing to keep admitting). But the last book I'll be re-reading which I actually did finish is "So Good That They Can't Ignore You" by Cal Newport Health I'm in the gym multiple times a week. I train on a upper/lower split. I've been programming all my training since I started at 17 and will continue to do so. When I was 18, I popped the right side of my hip whilst squatting and it's been like that ever since. I'm not able to afford a physical therapist but is something I need to somehow get looked at. For these past few years, I've been trying to get a much bigger squat but I always end up making progress than having to restart due to the random shots of pain my right leg gives me as well as my terrible ankle mobility. So I've now made the executive decision to stop going around in circles for another 5 years and stop squatting until it gets properply looked at. I will be doing Hack Squats and Bulgarian Split Squats mainly in the mean time. I meal prep all my food and I get such a high from eating such nutritious food even if its the base meal over and over. One thing I intend to incoporate more of is just a generally higher daily activity. The first one is getting 10k steps minimal a day. This is hard to do when it's rained literally 80% of the time I've been in this new place so I'll need to invest in some good waterproof clothing and shoes. The next thing I'm thinking of also joining a indoor climbing place near my house but its extremely pricey for a monthly membership there but I'd be going x1-2 a week. A chance for me to be active, improve my flexibility and also socialise with people who are like minded. Purpose Creative Writing: I've also been working on a short story intended to target and work on one of my (many) weaknesses as a creative writer which is having all characters have the same personality and speech patterns. So I decided to use AI to generate some prompts for me to practise. It's been helpful as a form of Deliberate Practise (Cal Newport) so will use this as my main way of improving my craft Business I have been keeping up to date somewhat with what's going on in startup world but I need to also focus on deep diving into my current industry that I am in. As mentioned earlier, putting some infrastructure in place to work on public speaking. I need to determine the next things to work on. I'm still in a limbo as to how to focus my efforts. My obvious thought is to focus my efforts into learning all aspects of the business world both on my job and outside of work. I find the creation of businesses (more specifically startups) that are solving fundamental problems for people using the various tools at our disposal (i.e. technology) whilst also generating money for the business (though all money is is the aftereffect of providing value) incredibly fulfiling and a work of art in itself. At the same time, this joy I've had since I was a kid of creating my own worlds with my own characters in my head...and now I finally am translating to paper... also so much fun. Thinking about it long term, it makes most sense to focus all my attention into becoming a very successful businessman yet which I have 1000% confidence in myself to do. It feels l'm asking for permission here which I kinda hate that I know that's what my mind is doing right now, but I just can't help but feel a sense of panic when I'm not working on becoming some sort of prolific self-actualized creative writer. I think I'm afraid of losing myself in the process but that's why I'm taking my time to truly understand the best way to go about it. Personal I've been working through Leo's videos on Spiral Dyanmics. I definitely identify with various aspects of yellow, green and orange. Still have a lot to work through. I find it very tempting to jump into spirtualism and other abstract ideas but I'd just be mentally masturbating as I'm still trying to work things out in terms of my survival and becoming finanically independent, which has been my goal for the past 2 years but have made little progress towards and in fact actually regressed. However, I just have to keep moving forward.

I see, that is something I'll try experiment with more of as well. Ooh that's actually a very good idea, and I've actually got some books in mind that I intend to read and will use to build up some momentum. Thank you for the insights!