A ray of light in the darkness

Mr.Rob

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Jun 16, 2013
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Hey Ray! Long time no see man, glad to see you back around.

Dude I was truly aghast to hear about your court situation. Absolute mockery of the court to entertain such a ridiculous case as touching a girl in public on public transportation. SMH.

ray_zorse said:
After I got off the train some old biddy has gotten involved and asked her "is she all right" and she's apparently become all tearful and started texting her mum, and they have all advised her to go to the Police and report the approach. Which she did.

Why would she start crying after having a gentle conversation with you? You think its because you didn't ask for her number?

ray_zorse said:
I believe the principal thing I did wrong was when asked what my job is. I don't like having to explain the highly technical things I do, and it is also a turnoff for people who are in the humanities field as this girl is. So I made a joke like "my job is to speak with beautiful women on trains", and apparently they have taken this "not as a joke" and gone to the Police to tell them there is a guy hassling beautiful women on trains.

Unless you were being super uncalibrated I find it hard to imagine that a woman would be so freaked by this that it would warrant a reporting to the police. Do you think this made her cry?

Thanks for the shoutout by the way ;) ... I've been through a hell of a fuckfest myself over the past 2 years, I was reading some of my old LR's from back then recently and was like "whoa I used to be pretty wild with this shit, I can't believe this is me"... When I get my life back in order I look forward to getting back into game and hopefully continue my shenanigans.

ray_zorse said:
"I breed kittens and sell them from a garbage bag in the boot of my car... would you like to see them?".
Lol I totally forgot about this, that's so funny.

ray_zorse said:
however I was found guilty of common assault (because I touched her basically) and fined $800.
Unbelievable, I don't see how that is possible. So you literally got charged on your public record for talking with and lightly touching a girl in public?

That must have been a humorous (albeit stressful) back and forth between the prosecutor, the judge, and your attorney when in the courtroom. Like what did they talk about in court?
"Ray_Zorse allegedly lightly touched Susie Q on the forearm for 3 seconds and since Susie Q was on her period and emotionally unstable she happened to feel slightly discomfortable for approximately 7 seconds. We find this a crime of the most heinous demeanor, and rightfully deserving punishment" like wtf.

Anyways man I'm just really surprised this is possible. One of the downfalls of feminism I suppose. Glad you made it out on top OK and are happily chugging forward working on your business and teaching and whatnot.

Anyway glad your doing well, maybe you and me both will be writing up some new LR's in the near future.

Cheers mate,
-Rob
 

Smith

Tool-Bearing Hominid
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Ray,

Jeez dude I can't believe you actually went to court for this. That is ridiculous. If the situation was reverse, a woman talking to a man and touch the man incidentally, no one would probably go up to the man afterwards and ask if he's alright...like wtf lol I remember your interactions were always pretty good too. I think a combination of the white knight on the train and the girl probably feeling encouraged to do something about it blow up the whole thing. This makes me think twice about telling girls what I do. You never know who you could offend these days. I've had a client last year who was offended when I joked about the product won't take long to finish. Anyway, glad you're doing well and your business is taking off. =) All the best for that man.
 

ray_zorse

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Hey, thank you so much Mr.Rob and Smith for the heartfelt expressions of support.

I took a little time to think about this, and I don't think the Police and this girl's position is quite as ridiculous as you make out, even though I appreciate the support. It is a fair bit more nuanced than that. I think you can see it two ways (i) it can indeed make people uncomfortable when somebody approaches them and starts touching them and saying sexual things, and I would find this unwelcome from the wrong person, but on the other hand (ii) the line between harassment and seduction is an extremely fine one, since women will find this welcome but *only* from the right person, and their assessment of the right person can change in an instant. What makes it a bit frustrating is, I believe a little bit of rewriting history has gone on, something women do a lot, but I can't expect the Police or Courts to understand that.

I do think that in principle people should be able to go about their business without being hassled, and I often think about this when somebody approaches me in the street asking me to sign up for direct debits to this or that, and also when somebody at the traffic lights tries to wash my windscreen for money. I really don't like when this happens. I have followed an avoidant strategy in the past but in the Men's Behaviour Change Programme (MBCP) we have been taught not to use avoidance based strategies. We should tell them clearly and directly that what they are offering is not wanted in this case. I found this hard to do, so I suppose I feel sympathetic to women who do not want to be approached but find this hard to say. On the other hand I wouldn't then go to Police after being too weak to tell someone to go away.

So, moving on from all that, I just wanted to sign in as I do from time to time and make a report on how things are going. Like usual it is not directly about seduction but I suppose it is about the journey to make myself the best man I can possibly be, and hence relevant to this forum. People who followed my journal before, will know that I discovered shortly after starting GC that I was codependent, this was because I could externally analyze my behaviour on dates and try to understand what led to me doing submissive and people-pleasing things, and I could see women picking up on this dynamic and finding it unattractive. I also found it unusually difficult to change these behaviours, something I have problems with today (and more so since I stopped actively practicing seduction) leading me to look into it quite deeply.

Well I had a bit of a shock a week or two back, to do with my family background, but before I go into that I will explain some recent history, which is that my sister has in the last few years gone through a messy separation with Family Court involved and so on, but strangely instead of rallying behind her to support her in her difficulty, my family have totally rejected her and instead cozied up with the former partner. This was comprehensible to me in terms of the family narrative, which has my sister cast in the role of "difficult one", and this narrative has been in place for decades. However, despite having my own problems with my sister that led to me stopping contact some years back, I decided to challenge the narrative by reaching out to my sister and at least try to hear her side of the story with an open mind.

Well despite a rocky beginning during which I challenged my sister on a lot of points where I felt she was rewriting history, I did gradually come to believe that she had received a pretty poor treatment from the family. I spent about a year or so trying to apply influence with both sides to effect a reconciliation but this proved to be fruitless In the process I discovered that my parents and siblings really do not care about her and are not willing to listen to any reasonable defence, in fact they can become quite emotional in defence of their own position (of rejecting their daughter and casting her out of the family while cozying up to the partner and enjoying unlimited access to their grandson, who is estranged from their daughter)... no amount of reasoned argument could persuade them they might be partly responsible.

Matters eventually came to a head in which I (reluctantly) agreed to give evidence for my sister in her Family Court case. Despite not wanting to get involved I did this ONLY because my father was planning to go to Court in support of the partner and tell what I considered to be a bunch of lies. So we both (myself and my father) gave opposing affidavits to the Court which were duly signed and witnessed and so forth. I was pretty circumspect with mine and managed to avoid accusing him directly of perjury while strongly hinting that my sister's position was the correct one, so this did not do TOO much damage fortunately. But to be honest the whole thing left me feeling... dirty. I had forgotten how much I hate dealing with lawyers who twist your words and try to stir up conflict. They redrafted my statement, which offended me, but by the time I had had the leisure to think through exactly what I had been trying to say and what I ENDED UP saying... it was too late to back out. I signed it.

Anyway, so I was idly texting my sister later on about how I feel I do not really have a dad since he does not seem to show any interest in any of my projects (it is all about his projects) and how if I ever go to him for help even with the most minor technical matter, he has to attack my entire thought process from the ground up and refuse to apply his considerable brain to finding a solution to the stated problem, since according to him it is not really a problem and the whole thing should be done a different way, or preferably not done at all. To put it in a nutshell, if he didn't think of it, it's no good. And my sister pointed out that this is called narcissism. This was a gigantic shock to me. Researching it further I figured out that my father (probably) has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or at least strongly narcissistic traits.

It is astonishing that I am now 42 years of age and I never realized this before. I had independently figured out a lot of the problems with my parental relationship, through deep introspection and analysis over the past 5~15 years, but I had never put them together to see the entire picture. Reading about the narcissistic family tree, it is almost the literal description of my family: The golden child, the scapegoating, the enabler/s... in particular, my mother, who is fundamentally a good person in a shitty situation. She has a lot of redeeming featuers and does seem to care, but is also powerless to do anything about the dynamic and even encourages it in a passive-aggressive way. I had some conflict with my mother earlier in the year, and she has made it clear where her loyalties lie, although she still tries to help.

Ironically I had already decided to cut off most contact with family, this was for different reasons, partly financial, as I believe my golden-child brother is rorting the family fortune with an enormous and capital-intensive "business" which requires constant investment and which somehow seems to provide a slush fund for the buying of houseboats and speedboats, payment of private-school fees, building of huge houses and pools, ski trips to France and so forth... everybody is in on it, except for a few of us who work honest jobs, such as my much younger brother-in-law who works as a personal injury lawyer. I can't really relate to people who are living that kind of lifestyle while I am a poor university tutor worrying over whether I can put petrol in my car and pay the game fees for my kids' basketball the coming weekend...

So it has been an enormous relief not to have to go to the constant schedule of family dinners and other engagements, I used to do it dutifully as I believed it was my duty to put in an appearance as part of family unity. But since I realized they are happy to let my kids go to school without lunch because we haven't got $20 to buy groceries, I don't feel any obligation to them anymore. I still see them all quite regularly because (i) my mum does a bit of babysitting for my kids when I have to teach a class during Leticia's study times, and (ii) my mum usually comes to watch the kids' basketball and takes one of them to their game if we have a clash... and I'm always super polite and just make my excuses due to pressure of work, although they have realized something is up. I do take the kids to family engagements if I can.

Anyway, so the most disturbing part of all this is that I have identified strongly narcissistic traits in myself and how I approach relationships, one description in all the narcissist literature really stuck in my mind, which is that a narcissist sees a person as like an appliance, as long as the appliance is functioning properly it can be left alones but if it is not functioning it needs to be "fixed" which happens by withholding attention/love or by belittling that person or other form of manipulation. And I see myself doing this a lot, not really consciously but GC has given me enormous power and I realize now that I need to be more introspective about how I use that power. My partner Leticia is more or less an ideal partner, as she does absolutely everything for me and I hardly reciprocate. It is a bit complex as I'm the breadwinner and I am extremely tired all the time (typically I stay up until 2am marking after a day of teaching and meetings which could involve 6 hours in front of students).

So Leticia occasionally has these big fall-aparts, and I had used more-or-less GC relationship management techniques to deal with her anger and I had also been quite successful in changing the narrative and convincing her that it's her codependence/anger addiction that's causing these fall-aparts. But now I'm not so sure. I have the feeling that I have been a bit too successful in changing the narrative, leaving her kind of stuck in a corner, and admittedly she cannot easily leave the relationship due to money problems, immigration problems, kids, .... So I think I have kind of "fixed" the appliance and left her pretty much without a voice, since her only outlet was the monthly anger episode and I have kind of squelched that recently. On the other hand I'm grateful that she's trying really hard to control her anger episodes, since we genuinely do not have the resources to afford this kind of distraction when I really need to be teaching and marking every day in order to obtain the (casual) pay.

Anyway, it may not be as bad as I am thinking. I think I am quite a decent partner when I have the time and attention to be so, but at the moment I do not. So I have to be more careful about how I balance my time and energies and how I deal with problems. I am going to seek counselling with the MBCP coordinator as soon as I can.

Thanks a lot for listening guys. I know it can be kinda boring to be cornered and made to listen to someone's problems for hours and hours. But it does help me a lot.

Ray

PS. Although I have gained a bit of weight and feel no longer as attractive as I used to, when I had time for the gym and preparing diet food and so on... I may have gained a bit in authority since getting my doctorate and learning to teach better. A couple of attractive students have inappropriately tried to get close to me during the semester, I consciously decided to ignore this and act professional even though it was hard. Haha. GC training helps though, since if I didn't have GC I would feel I was missing out on "once in a lifetime" opportunities to bed these attractive young Asian students. As it is I know I can get more of same when I put my mind to it. Anyway so yesterday we had the last class of the Monday computer programming students, one of them gave me presents and a card and was hugging me in class etc.
 

ray_zorse

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Time for an update......

As to family matters... the plan to separate from my family of origin is progressing although it takes time. Unfortunately I had to stop with my previous business plan (the one I was excited about in former posts) because I decided that using the equipment in my father's factory is not worth the personal attacks it opens me up to. I also remain conflicted about the relationship with my mother since I see her as more of a victim of the narcissistic family situation than a perpetrator (my sister disagrees). So, it would be difficult to tell my mother that I no longer want to see her. There was recently a family birthday party where my grandmother turned 97, and I honestly felt a real cad not to go, but since I had already made resolutions concerning the fact I value my time and won't spend large blocks of it with people who don't respect me or value my time similarly, I was bound to follow those resolutions. I planned to call in on my grandmother earlier in the day but was turned away by a gatekeeper.

As to business matters... well there is a fair bit to tell. I recently fell in with some business partners, the principal partner is a dude I did undergraduate with, and I was excited to get back in touch with him after many years in which I discovered he moved to Canada and got involved in the IT industry and coworking community there. And this went well initially. They gave me a lot of books to read and a big smokescreen about how "IT Industry Version 2.0" is here and it involves partnerships between entrepreneur-programmers and blahblah... and signed me up to things like their Slack and their company email... etc etc... but I now feel somewhat like I've felt in previous jobs which is a bit "used"... in the past a lot of people have structured their companies around my skills and then proceeded to sort of tiptoe around me, worried that anything they do might upset me and upset the flow of work and money. I get a similar feeling with my current partners, I don't think they're honest with me anymore.

Unfortunately a fair few things have happened which touch directly on Girlschase skills or lack thereof: we went to see a customer, actually a customer of mine originally, and I got more or less told off for doing my normal sales technique which is basically to be honest with the customer and go out on a limb to accommodate them in the hope of being remunerated in the end. So obviously that has to change, but at the same time I feel that my partners are much too sales-focused and that there is really little substance there. There's a lot of talk about partnerships and blahblah... at least I'm honest with the customer and I offer something they can see and touch before they fork over their money. So I feel like I need to develop my sales skills, but in the direction that makes SENSE TO ME. Like with seduction, I'm starting well behind the 8-ball due to my background and other factors, but at the same time I have the dedication and determination to get in the thousands of hours of practice I need, and I can confidently say that after some years of dedicating myself to sales activities I will certainly be a much better salesman than the people currently around me.

The other problem with the current business setup is that I no longer have the freedom to act and make great things happen (sometimes; or stuff things up other times)... instead it's become very bureaucratic where I have to go onto Slack and have a big discussion before even contacting the customer, which really slows things down and wastes my time. And it just kind of goes back and forth with people's bullshit sales-y ideas, to the point where I could have produced a demo and demonstrated it and signed up the customer, all in the time spent trying with my partners to figure out what to do and persuade them of the approach. (They say that if you do a demo it signals an intention to work for free, but I don't agree with that since I was involved in Point-of-Sale and cash registers for many years and sometimes to get a $100,000 contract we had to do several months of work to prepare the demo). So all this is frustrating, and another problem is that I tried to put some money into the company as a precursor to asking them for a formal stake, but this was brushed aside, they made it sound like it was for my sake, but I believe they don't really want to partner.

In terms of this partnership I can see now that it would have been better to get ink on paper FIRST and say, well I demand XXX percent, instead of setting it up like I often do: undervaluing myself and delaying the negotiation and in the meantime doing a lot of work to "prove" myself before the negotiation. Well it doesn't matter, it's been a learning experience, but unfortunately ALL of this, everything described above, is part of the same general pattern of undervaluing myself and acting submissively, which led me to Girlschase in the first place. Sigh, well we need to fix that. Another problem is that I initially saw my partner more as a friend than a partner, and I have been unfortunately vomiting information about myself (what I get paid and the problems I've been having with current customers and why I act underconfident and blahblah)... I was looking for moral support but I can see now that I've set myself up as weak and to be taken advantage of. He is quite sales-y and gives me nothing much in return.

So now having outlined the problems and challenges I face at the moment (and I should say at this point: I NEED to have an income because I can no longer rely on any family support, I have no access to credit, and it would be unthinkable to run out of money, which is why I do the various things I do and why I've been trying to line up new work through this partnership)... now to the positive: the partnership has really changed my outlook as to how much my time is worth on the open market and what the true demand for my skills is, not having really tried to sell those skills in the past I hadn't quite realized that they're in HUGE demand. And I've been doing some pretty amazing stuff in terms of web design and other things useful to passive income generation... building my personal website and blog took me about 3-5 months of hard work to learn all about the technologies involved and was a massive hill to climb, but now I can create websites easily. I am working on some pretty advanced things now such as live technology previews that I can deliver through the web, and so on. I also created some incredible tools since my IT focus is always "don't do the work manually... build a TOOL to make it easier".

So I am launching a new website in the next month or so which is going to be about selling IT services to business, and upgrading their infrastructure. I have been reading lots of books about the sales funnel and things like that, so I am carefully constructing things to maximize conversion, initially the conversion that I envisage is only to get IT managers to fill in a contact form so that I can then email and visit them to do what I'm going to call a "business logic audit" and give them a free report on how they could upgrade their systems and integrate them more closely. There might also be a free quiz along the same lines with an automatically emailed report earlier in the sales funnel. But basically I want to get access to IT decision makers and I want them to pay me and my team on a contract basis to deliver them IT systems. I'm also starting to construct a team page and some case studies (initially they may be somewhat fabricated), to make us sound very big and established. I don't see myself doing this consulting type work forever but I find the work enjoyable and it pays well and I need the income in the meantime so that I can work on genuine passive income streams (through other similar websites).

There's a strong Girlschase focus to all this: getting IT managers to contact me is something like online dating, the email exchange is like the texting, then I can have the date and in the course of 100s or 1000s of dates that don't go the way I expect, I can develop a process for getting them into bed :)

OK! I have to go but that's the update for the last NN months... good luck to everybody's seductions :) :)

Ray
 

ray_zorse

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A quick update. I got rid of toxic business partners. A tipping point was a very critical and patronizing email from my main contact (and ex-friend) which he copied to all partners. Telling someone off and copying others in is a passive-aggressive thing to do. I made a polite reply saying that their proposals are not compatible with how I work and basically wishing them well for the future. I did not log in to the company email since then so I do not know what the response is/was, but I can imagine it. After a while I began to receive a lot of pestering text messages in the vein of the "hoover" and the "if-pology". I nearly replied the other day to state it was unwelcome, but it would've just been opening the door a crack to let them weasel their way back in and resume using me. No.

Interestingly my other stalker who I wrote about years ago is still active, she writes to me every 3-6 months. This message is hilarious in its contradictions. Check it out.
Dear Mr (my name), I noticed you observing me in the park at the end of my street yesterday afternoon as I walked to my sons school. There must be 20 really good parks between where you live and the park at the end of my street. Do you think you and your extensive family members could go to one of these? Given that I have seen you and your family members watching me in the park, around my sons school and where I live for more than 2 years now don't you think it's time to stop. You behavior effects me in a negative way. In an effort to have these events come to an end may I propose a private meeting to discuss and resolve the above issues. I understand you may be busy with your commitments and am happy to meet you during a lunch break at a venue that suits. If you prefer to ignore the above then I will have to get others involved. Regards (her name)
A year ago she actually turned up at my brother's place of business to tell him she had a restraining order to serve on me and to ask him to set up a personal meeting for service in his office. Hmm. This was a bit unwelcome due to the narcissistic family situation and the family's willingness to always believe the worst in me, but I allayed their concerns by writing a 5 page document listing how we met and her strange behaviour over time, with appendices containing all the evidence of her craziness (screenshots from various phones and so on), this wasted several days to compile but will be useful if or when she escalates it to an actual legal matter. Sigh.

Anyway. I am working 12hr days on getting my next website live. It is a frustrating process. It proceeds at a snail's pace. But I am doing very good work, that I am happy with. The core engine components that drive the system are on about their 4th to 6th version, meaning that I developed each component (the webserver, the templating engine, the analytics engine, the database, the search engine and so forth) essentially from scratch about 4 to 6 times, each time learning so much from putting the new approach into practice and finding solutions to all the problems that came up, that in the end a further redesign from scratch was warranted. It is a highly mature, efficient and scalable system now, which makes it trivially simple to create powerful websites, once the system is learned. I am creating tutorials for it.

On an unrelated project that is about 15 years old and up to about its 10th full rewrite/redesign I learned so much that I am writing a book about it as well as a tutorials series (maybe a lecture series too, I mentioned this before). However, it is a very lonely process as I have more or less given up on trying to share my ideas with others. Since people do not have sufficient imagination to comprehend my bold technical vision, the only way is to simply implement it and let people see for themselves. Leticia is pretty supportive, though she is non-technical.

I think I may be getting better at pitching ideas to people and leading, it is a bit early to tell but several people whose skills I respect have expressed interest in joining my team, others have proved to be a disappointment but one cannot expect perfection. I am struck by how if you go to people in a needy vein saying you need work and trying to get access to their contacts, the result is pure bullshit, but if you do the opposite, saying you have opportunities for them and you can find the work they are all ears. Even if you are "faking it until you make it", this is very valuable since you can gather a lot of momentum and portray your business as large and established, if you have brought enough people on board in this manner.

So the challenge will be to make something happen before money gets tight again. Lack of money really focuses the mind on scarcity (there is a book about this, called I think "The scarcity trap" on Amazon which is interesting), and makes it ten times harder to tackle anything longer-range. My mental state has really improved since client paid for a contract last month, but how long will it last? Sigh. I really hope to generate more financial security for us soon. I can't think about less pressing matters, such as gym or diet or fashion, now.

One final piece of good news: by sheer luck I came into the possession of a machine similar to the one at my father's factory, how this comes about is interesting but basically a matter of being in the right place at the right time. It turns out the former owner had become ill and given it away to someone who also has no immediate use for it, so I can pick it up anytime. It is a small model that I can operate from home, so possibly my earlier business idea (manufacturing and Ebay sales) could be a thing again. If so, it will need a website. And, luckily I am now in a better position to tackle that side of things :)

Ray
 

ray_zorse

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It has been getting time to do my occasional update here, as always the focus is more on making myself the best man I can possibly be, as opposed to seduction literally. I've been planning to write something for a while, but I put it off, as I was not feeling particularly upbeat about things. It's been a bit of a difficult time generally. Luckily, I received a really great piece of news today which has brightened the outlook considerably. I will get to that shortly.

So in connection with my previous posts, recall that I had several business ventures and websites under construction. Unfortunately this has kind of sputtered out since I wrote those posts, for one thing, some investment was needed which I couldn't possibly make. As a concrete example of this, I had lined up a photographer to take photos of my team (currently 3 people) for a website, however, he wants about $1500 to do it. I couldn't possibly pay it.

More seriously though, since I work from home and I am constantly short of money to support the family, I never feel like I've done enough work, so any work on business development ideas gets put off. Thus, all the pieces are in place for the launch of several websites, but it has not occurred, because I have not had the time to work on it, as well as not having the $1500 for the photographer and so on. As well as that, my focus has just naturally changed, in terms of what I want to work on and what I feel will be the most rewarding in the short term (I always have many more projects active than I can possibly complete).

Another aspect which I've been working on is the divorce and property settlement from my ex-wife. We'd been separated about 2 years when I started GC and so it's now been I guess 6-7 years that we've been separated. Last year I managed to put the divorce through, but the property is a huge and expensive problem that I've had to put off dealing with. That has now changed, as I've engaged lawyers. The lawyers are, of course, very expensive, but they got a good result for my sister in her divorce, and so I've just bitten the bullet and engaged them. Once settled, I'd have much more money, so my family could afford to eat while I developed my ideas.

I had to take $2000 out of our budget for the initial trust account deposit to the laywers. To think that our budget could stand this, after the expense of the Christmas holiday, was over-optimistic, and we ran completely out of money soon after. Boss/client agreed to give me a loan, but this hasn't happened yet. So we've been eking out our existence on a shoestring. Meanwhile I've been frantically trying to do more work and invoice boss/client, meaning I haven't had time to work on the case with the lawyers. And horrible bills are falling due later in the month -- Leticia's school fees, car registration, council rates, unpaid taxes, fines, other gruesomeness.

So there are many challenges. And the feeling is that we slide further into the red with each passing month... we're not technically in debt, as I do not have access to credit given I do not have a formal income, but every now and then an expense comes up that cannot possibly be paid, and goes in the too-hard basket... or an appliance dies (hello dishwasher, air conditioner, ...) that cannot be replaced. This has built up to unsustainable levels. So I reluctantly decided that much as I prefer being self-employed, it is too stressful and I would have to seek full time employment again. I've been job-hunting on and off for two years, but recently stepped it up.

The first 1.5 years of job-hunting did not result in any interviews, which led me to view the getting of a job as an insurmountable obstacle, and to put my energies elsewhere (teaching, contract work, the business development ideas)... but, interestingly now I am getting lots of interest. I put this down to some tweaks I have made in my resume and LinkedIn profile. One thing taught in web development is the importance of A/B testing, where you show half your visitors one version of your website and the other half a different version, and record which version results in more sales -- I didn't formally do this with LinkedIn, but I suspect it would help.

Anyway, so I had a number of interviews in the last few weeks and although they did not go perfectly, I think I am gradually getting the hang of it. One thing I did in the last interview, was to apply the GC methodology of screening. I forget the exact terminology used in Chase's articles as it's been a while now, but the idea is that you ask the girl (or the interviewer / potential boss / company representatives) a lot of questions, to get an idea if they would be a good fit for you. You also give them the reason why you like or dislike their response. So not only do you weed out bad prospects, but the process is highly visible to her (or the employer). It makes them feel that you are a guy with options, and you want to the best choice between options. Otherwise, it looks like you'll just accept anything that comes along.

I told the employer that my life goal was to use the salary they pay me to finance my self-funded research and to write a book(s), until I had sufficient income from the book or other projects to be able to retire. And that I anticipated this to take more than 3 years, probably more than 5 years. That I was planning to work for their company for at least 3 years and if I liked it, at least 5 years. I said this because they were concerned I might be over-qualified for the position, so I didn't want them to think I was just planning to use them as a stepping stone to leapfrog between positions and eventually end up in the C-suite somewhere -- and that's not my goal.

Anyway, so this must have come up trumps, because this employer has just now offered me the job, at the salary I asked. They didn't even try to haggle. This is a 50% pay rise from any job I've previously worked at. And I think the job will be basically interesting and they'll be a good employer, although I did uncover some minor areas of concern with my questioning, in terms of that I probably won't be able to make long term decisions affecting my area, at least not yet. Anyway, I am planning to accept the position (I may delay slightly as I have another interview lined up for Wednesday). I'm feeling totally stoked about all this. No being poor for a while.

I also plan that I'll be able to start buying fashionable clothes and my diet food again, and that I will get up early, prepare the day's food, and go to gym before work. Hopefully this will feed into me resuming my postural and eye contact work, which has gone backwards. I'm really looking forward to becoming the best man I can be.

cheers, Ray
 

ray_zorse

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
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Messages
1,986
Location
Australia
Checking the new forums... I am happy to see all content has migrated seamlessly, hats off to GC's technical team. It is exactly the sort of quality work and refusal to compromise that I expect from GC.

In my life not so much to report. My personal and business development is more or less on hold because I have a full time job and many family commitments so I really do not have the time or the energy to do the steps outlined in the previous post. Still overweight unfortunately. I joined gym near work some months back but then a shit ton of work hit and I have only been there a few times.

When I look back my time of being self employed was an extraordinarily productive one and similarly my time of being a seducer slash PhD student before that. It is a pity that those things cannot continue. However my family needs me and needs the income from wage slavery (for now), so, sometimes you just need to take one for the team.

On the plus side I re equipped by replacing all broken furniture and appliances and kids gear and did some work on my bathroom renovation. But the bulk of my salary went to legal fees as I try to finalize my divorce (after 7 years separation and subsequent re marriage) in the face of intractable and entrenched opposition from narcissistic ex. That is a whole nother story for later...

Anyhow. I am quite stressed and there are never enough hours in the day. But I feel good overall. And Leticia continues to be a strong support while my boys are growing into fine young men. So it is all good really.

Ray
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
You alive. OMG. Some of the guys here completely disappeared. Nooooo...

Narcissistic ex. I have a narcissistic parent. It's just a different world where people don't understand. Life force can be drained the shit out of you but that's the manipulation that they only have.
 

Lotus

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Nov 12, 2014
Messages
624
Checking the new forums... I am happy to see all content has migrated seamlessly, hats off to GC's technical team. It is exactly the sort of quality work and refusal to compromise that I expect from GC.

In my life not so much to report. My personal and business development is more or less on hold because I have a full time job and many family commitments so I really do not have the time or the energy to do the steps outlined in the previous post. Still overweight unfortunately. I joined gym near work some months back but then a shit ton of work hit and I have only been there a few times.

When I look back my time of being self employed was an extraordinarily productive one and similarly my time of being a seducer slash PhD student before that. It is a pity that those things cannot continue. However my family needs me and needs the income from wage slavery (for now), so, sometimes you just need to take one for the team.

On the plus side I re equipped by replacing all broken furniture and appliances and kids gear and did some work on my bathroom renovation. But the bulk of my salary went to legal fees as I try to finalize my divorce (after 7 years separation and subsequent re marriage) in the face of intractable and entrenched opposition from narcissistic ex. That is a whole nother story for later...

Anyhow. I am quite stressed and there are never enough hours in the day. But I feel good overall. And Leticia continues to be a strong support while my boys are growing into fine young men. So it is all good really.

Ray
Good to see your still out there kicking! Keep on keeping on!
 

ray_zorse

Modern Human
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Joined
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Messages
1,986
Location
Australia
Time to put in my occasional update... And thanks so much for the shout out ZacAdam and Lotus! It is indeed a great feeling to be part of such a solid community as this one. And also, much as I love the ladies of course, there needs to be plenty of bro time in your life, I believe our modern lifestyle and woke sort of conceits help us lose sight of this.

ZacAdam, the narcissists are so terrible. I became quite the expert in personality disorders as I first realized I was codependent (around the same time I came onto GC, too long ago now :) ) and then started to ask WHY I was codependent. So ZacAdam I am sure you have gone through a similar process. The worst narcissists in my life are/were my father and my ex-wife.

While I cannot do anything about the shared parenting relationship with my ex-wife (I will have to continue to see her regularly and give her money and other rubbishy things) I decided about 4 months ago to go "no contact" with my birth family. They have only just noticed and have been trying to get in touch since my grandmother passed away.

I feel sad that my grandmother passed away but also sort of numb. Although she was also very narcissistic it wasn't in a way that affected me. In fact I saw her a week or two before she passed away when I dropped off a 99th birthday gift. This was illegal in the context of lockdown, but I did not care and we had a nice chat about various things. She was a bit grumbly but in reasonable health.

I don't think she left me anything, but since my father is now cashed up he is gathering votes from the family as to how to waste money at a faster rate than previously. The whole thing disgusts me and I want no part.

I had a close relationship with my sister recently. We had had a falling out around the time I started GC and was practising being more assertive. But I decided to overlook that and reach out to her as I was concerned when she went NC with family. I didn't know we were in a narcissistic family structure then. But since she tipped me off, it is a textbook case (golden child, scapegoats, enablers, flying monkeys and all that jazz).

So I text with my sister (who is interstate) several times a week, or sometimes every day. She helped me with legal issues too.

So the legal situation now is after many years of legal battles my ex-wife and I have settled our finances, I think the final figure is about 51% to 49% in her favour although that excludes debts and negative equity and that sort of thing. So in reality it is even more in her favour but since the judge is unlikely to recognise the debts I believe it is a pretty good outcome. Since she barely contributed anything to the shared assets in the first place it can also be regarded as robbery (I was financially secure before I met her but not anymore) but I do not care anymore. Life is too short to let a grudge fester. The main thing is that I will now get some money and be better off than before. I hope to be able to buy a house so my 6 children have a place to run around in. The apartment was very cool from a logistical point of view and helped me to rack up some magnificent lays but is no longer appropriate to our lifestyle now.

The lockdowns were pure and unadulterated bullshit. Luckily that shit is moving offshore now as it is England, Spain, France that are now in charge of rioting and fighting tyrannical government. We need a rest from that here in Melbourne after 110 days+ lockdown. There was a small protest the other say but much smaller as many of the restrictions have eased. At its peak there were hundreds or possibly even thousands of protesters facing off against heavily armed police every Saturday, Sunday and public holiday. I desperately wanted to join the protesters or at least donate them some money but sadly could not do so due to our rather perilous financial situation (I earn a good salary but most has gone to the lawyers and I had to borrow $20K or so to pay for last hearing, so a COVID fine would absolutely wipe us out, and also, I couldn't just refuse to pay as I used to do before I became a property owner, since you are very vulnerable when you own any assets at all).

A nice thing is Leticia's partner Visa is being processed, we should have done this earlier but since she was on a student Visa there was not so much pressure until she graduated which she has done. We now have a 2 months old boy in addition to our 4 year and 3 year old boys. So "GC babies" are thick on the ground here. And thank God for Chase, you guys, other brave pioneers before Chase, and cold approach, as these beautiful boys are the outcome of cold approach that ironically was quite early in my pick up career. (We had some dates but it was only a chance meeting some years later that led us to rekindle our relationship and even after that we broke up once and then reunited).

My salaried work has its ups and downs. I fell into a depression during the lockdown. But I am now feeling quite positive about things. My direct boss is a really great guy and even my boss's boss hasn't been too much of an idiot lately, in fact I appreciate him also. My colleagues are also good people. I may start looking for a higher paying job soon but that's partly because I feel that my mission (of cleaning up the mess that my area was in when I started at the company and getting things ticking over smoothly and well documented without nasty gotchas for the next engineer) is nearly complete. Whilst I should not care too much as it's my employer's problem more than mine, that's just not the way I roll and I need to find meaning in my work. It's good.

Side projects not very good. I made great progress in paternity leave period but it was over too quickly and as I mentioned I fell into a depression. So I have some anxious and unhappy clients. Still, I was upfront with them that I could do nothing while I was behind in my day job and not able to put in the full hours I should be. That is okay as I have dealt with a lot of shit that was making me unhappy and I am ready to resume now.

Gym bad and my weight very bad. I had joined gym before lockdown hit but then it got closed. It will reopen Nov 9. I plan to resume diet and gym now that a number of stressful issues are resolved or resolving.

That's all for now.
Ray
 
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trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
I hope this might help. :) DDrr Ramani, helps me A lot. with her videos.

i hope this helps other GC members with parents, family and their business.

Bless.

ZacAdam I am sure you have gone through a similar process. The worst narcissists in my life are/were my father and my ex-wife.


While I cannot do anything about the shared parenting relationship with my ex-wife (I will have to continue to see her regularly and give her money and other rubbishy things) I decided about 4 months ago to go "no contact" with my birth family. They have only just noticed and have been trying to get in touch since my grandmother passed away.



paternity leave period but it was over too quickly and as I mentioned I fell into a depression. So I have some anxious and unhappy clients. Still, I was upfront with them that I could do nothing while I was behind in my day job and not able to put in the full hours I should be. That is okay as I have dealt with a lot of shit that was making me unhappy and I am ready to resume now.


This will help cut short your marketing problems. Especially Facebook ads.

Just personal message if anything. I deal with mostly real estate agents. Usually their problems are quick money, breaking even in the short term, branding and basically don't know how to market.

Most of their problems are just nuances once your basics are tight. Everything else is just making sure your LTV numbers are fine. And then just refine the process so it's not taxing on the brain.

Recommend Google Keep. Note taking app. It's very quick to sync everywhere on your phone, tablet, desktop.

Gym bad and my weight very bad. I had joined gym before lockdown hit but then it got closed. It will reopen Nov 9. I plan to resume diet and gym now that a number of stressful issues are resolved or resolving.

Download Tiktok. Enjoy ordinary people short outburst. We all in this together.

I'm rooting for you. So is everyone. We all in this pandemic together. I hope your kids are well. But most importantly, you.

z@c+
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553

I know that you never ask. But I hope this also helps.

Bless
z@c+
 

ray_zorse

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Aug 12, 2014
Messages
1,986
Location
Australia
So guys it looks like I haven't been here for nearly a whole year. I was certainly thinking of you guys. But it's been a bit of a challenging time, challenging but rewarding too. So I will write my occasional update.

On the topic of COVID-19. This is going to be polarizing, I really don't know what the attitude is around here, but I do know that censorship is rampant in our society today and that speaking out is very much frowned upon. I do recall getting Chase's newsletter post a while back in my email where he mentioned that 25% of the dollars in existence were created during pandemic "stimulus"... and I believe he was critical of other aspects. So, hopefully Chase's sensible attitude has filtered through to the rest of us here. But I can't say that I'm terribly optimistic on this front.

At any rate, I don't believe that COVID-19 is a real pandemic. In fact I am not even sure if COVID-19 exists (I am not competent to state either way however). It is said that the virus has not been isolated. And the virus was initially reported in a paper in which the scientists had essentially taken samples from a lot of people who had been getting sick, and checking them for common fragments of viral DNA. Some tests came up positive and they came up with 3 fragments that often occurred together. On basis of this they declared COVID-19 to be a virus containing these.

However, one thing that people often do not realize is just how common viruses really are. My understanding is that a typical cup of seawater will contain millions of virus particles. Interestingly, many of these viruses are not viruses that attack humans, but viruses that attack bacteria. Indeed, historically the waters of the Ganges river in India have been regarded as having healing properties, and it has recently been discovered that the Ganges is host to viruses that kill bacteria. So if you put Ganges water on your injuries, you may find that the bacteria will be killed.

So given that virus particles are simply everywhere, the presence of three particular viral DNA sequences in a patient is not really all that meaningful. For instance, people might be getting attacked by a bacterial pneumonia with these alleged COVID-19 DNA sequences being parts of viruses that attack that pneumonia. Or there might be multiple respiratory viruses that you can catch at the same time. If you could imagine a large population sometimes getting colds and occasionally three colds at once, it could explain why low but consistent numbers are detected.

To establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease it must satisfy Koch's postulates. One of these postulates says that you need to be able to repeatedly inoculate healthy people with the microbe and observe that the disease follows. I'm sure this hasn't been done with COVID-19. All we have is these silly PCR tests, and more recently, the rapid antigen tests, which simply test for some combination of allegedly viral DNA. For most diseases, researchers could order a sample of the virus or bacteria and then try to test the postulates. But not for COVID-19.

However, suppose we assume COVID-19 exists and is a novel coronavirus. Well, the vaccines are supposed to stimulate an immune response to a certain feature (the spike protein) allegedly found on the outside of this virus particle. But there are many problems with the vaccines.

A major problem is that the trials were deliberately mis-designed so that they would not provide any information about whether the vaccine prevents transmission of a virus. They inoculated half of the participants and then recorded the severity of any cold symptoms these people had. No attempt was made to, for example, check if these people were positive to a COVID-19 PCR test or similar. Just severity of cold symptoms. Then on basis of a very tiny (but apparently statistically significant) difference they trumpeted the vaccines as 9X% EFFECTIVE! It's just a lie.

A much more concerning problem is that the vaccines are not safe, not at all. The vaccine uses what is known as a viral vector. This means the vaccine itself is a virus and what that virus does is to take over some cells of your body and reprogram them to create as many copies of the spike protein as they can before they die in the process. And then those spike proteins are supposed to circulate within your body "training" your body's immune response so that when they see a real COVID-19 virus with the same spike protein they are meant to recognize it and kill it.

The problem with this viral vector technology is that it is not well controlled. Sometimes, all goes well and the vaccine remains in the muscle where it was injected, and the muscle cells produce the right amount of the spike protein, which circulates in the intended way, and further activity of the vaccine is suppressed (I'm not entirely clear if the vaccine viral vector can reproduce itself, or whether it only produces spike proteins, but either way, the process is meant to create a certain amount of spike proteins before your body clears it and returns to normal).

Other times, the vaccine seems to distribute itself around the body creating crazy amounts of the spike protein in all kinds of places where it is not meant to be, including inside all your organs, perhaps your brain, etc. This creates all kinds of toxic and damaging effects, ranging from allergic reactions to straight out organ damage. So I would say that the prevalence of vaccine reactions depends partly on your body makeup (what you are allergic to, etc) and partly to simply luck -- I mean whether your body can stop the viral vector before it goes on rampage or not.

Needless to say, I will not be getting the vaccine and would not recommend it to anyone here. Sadly though, my oldest 2 children were injected without my knowledge or consent, in direct violation of Court orders which require their mother to consult with me before making any major long term decisions. I have consulted with several family lawyers, including a specialist who has recently run several vaccination cases, and they tell me there is nothing I can do. Although a Court may find she breached orders, they would find she had a reasonable excuse, which is legal here. And the Judge would certainly order the children to be vaccinated, in line with several recent decisions (although they weren't COVID-19 cases).

Like I said, I expect my views to be polarizing and in fact I do not see any of my former friends anymore, partly due to lockdown but partly due to them all being on board with the COVID-19 scam and lining up to get their jabs and whatnot. I also cannot see my older 3 children at the moment, for similar reasons -- I have denounced their foolish decision to be vaccinated (and then lie to me about it) in the strongest possible terms, and they ran off crying to their mother and do not want to see me at the moment. However, I am at peace with it. My principles matter.

So, now as to a more general update since last year. Well, after several years of battles in Court my divorce settlement came through around the time of my last post here. And using this plus loans from bank and family, I had planned to purchase a larger house for my now wife and 6 children. However, after house-hunting for some months (from around the time of my last post here), I came to the conclusion we could not afford the kind of house we needed. I was willing to go further out (say 1h from the centre) but houses near public transport are very costly too.

So what I did was to approach my boss for a pay rise. And you will recall I had been working in this company for a year and a half (I described how I had used some Girlschase techniques in the interview), and had been doing very good work that they were happy with. But it was costing me a lot personally, to deal with their regular crises and such. I said that my pay was not reflective of the value I brought to the organization and that I was considering alternatives. Also that I was house-hunting and that a pay rise would enable me to borrow the sum I needed for the house.

The negotiations of the pay rise went on for about 6 months and I was getting really ticked off about it towards the end, just patiently waiting and trying not to hassle them while being told "it's in progress, we are looking at it, blah blah" and eventually I decided they were stringing me along and I sent a letter of resignation. This was a pretty big decision, as I didn't have another job lined up, I was kind of exhausted from working a lot of overtime and other stress, and needed some time out. And it turns out that simultaneously, the company was experiencing a major financial problem and they fired about 1/3 of the team a couple of months after I left. Good time to leave! And my pay rise clearly wouldn't have happened.

So what we have done for the last 6 months is to exist on savings whilst I develop my other business, I have written about it in these pages before. I have a partner who is really more of a salesman (not a technical guy) and had originally hired me through someone else to write some code and paid me for it, but things went a bit pear shaped after that. So he had approached me privately (not through the other guy) and we had restarted the project. But again it's cost me a lot. In the last 6 months I ironed out most technical issues and made it into a viable product. BUT!

After demoing the working system to him, I put the hard word on my partner and told him that in view of how I had taken significant personal and financial risk to develop the system, I needed a 40% share. Considering he does no work towards the project, even to the extent that he needs me to write the marketing material for him, I considered this generous, and he would have 60% on basis that he had shepherded the project through some pretty difficult times and had invested significant money in it, on myself and previous engineers who hadn't solved the problems.

He was only willing to give 15% and furthermore he wasn't willing to incorporate our venture off-shore, which I considered essential given the very repressive tax regime here. (I briefly had another engineer working on the project whilst I was still employed at the other company, and have been operating an Australian business for that purpose, and I can tell you that it is no picnic -- you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to be allowed to operate a business and it's very very costly since you need a large staff of other professionals to deal with things similar to 401K etc).

So I told him I was leaving the project, and I have to say, he was devastated. He has been writing me a lot of mails apologizing for not having taken my statements seriously. I have tasked my wife Leticia with finding a compromise, which might involve something like me handing over the intellectual property in return for the 15% share, but he has to operate the business going forwards. (I'm not willing to do 100% of the work for a 15% share, even if he pays me a salary which he wants to do -- I really do not see myself as an employee in relation to this project, not at all).

This venture having also fallen apart, and also my relationship with the older children having apparently fallen apart, I find myself staring freedom in the face, and it's a very great feeling. It comes not a moment too soon, because the environment here is extremely oppressive, with vaccine mandates for nearly everyone, and thousands of masked Police out in the streets every weekend to beat up protesters and such. Just as I write, Parliament in Victoria (south eastern state of Australia near Tasmania) is debating a bill that will give the Government near dictatorial powers. They will be able to declare unlimited emergencies and lock up political opponents forever. It's terrifying. Exactly the same as Hitler's Enabling Act. And it appears they will be able to ram it through, because they have corrupt backroom deals with several minor (Communistic) parties.

So what I have been doing since the collapse of my business venture is to renovate our apartment for sale, and we plan to move overseas with the 3 younger children (the children that I share with my now wife Leticia). Although, I had also applied for a number of jobs as savings are getting a bit low after living on them for 6 months. I got some interest from a recruiter in Brisbane so I will consider moving interstate as a temporary measure, but I expect the vaccine mandates and political violence will follow me there eventually, so overseas is where it is at.

Over the last couple of years I had gradually assembled all the materials for the renovation, so the entranceway has been stacked with flooring and tile underlay panels and such and there are stashes of things like bathroom vanities, tiles, shower screens and such all through the apartment. I've also been gradually demolishing stuff and bringing the rubble downstairs a bit at a time (you are not allowed to put building waste in the building's skips, but if you do it gradually over many months they will not notice). And now I've turbocharged it, it's going extremely well.

I think I can get a pretty good price for the apartment once renovated, enough to set up elsewhere. Luckily most of the sheep in Melbourne are fully signed up to the vaccine mandates and political violence (they consider the protesters a nuisance and a health risk)... so although there are record numbers of people leaving Melbourne, property prices are not affected as of yet. We will see how things go though. Time of is of the essence, I need to limit the scope of the renovation to only both bathrooms, the kitchen, the doorways and all floor coverings and get it DONE.

So that is my update for the last year. If I have time I will check back in later and see some of your journals. Well, it's a shame I'm no longer doing pickup which is why I don't post on the other parts of the site. I would feel a bit silly giving advice on pickup when I have become very rusty myself. I used to do a few approaches here and there just to keep my hand in, but I must say that lately I've felt approach anxiety. And I'm wrapped up in my own problems and in no mood to do it. But I still like to keep in touch and GC is has been a rare place of sanity in the past.

cheers, Ray
 

trashKENNUT

Cro-Magnon Man
Cro-Magnon Man
Joined
Nov 20, 2012
Messages
6,553
Hey there!

I like to say that covid is real. I am not sure if I have gotten it but there was a week where I was feeling 'tasteless'.

Like I really cannot taste any food. Food tasted very bland if that's the right word. I'm not sure if that's Covid but I'm pretty sure many have said it is.

anyway, I read your post again.

STay safe. Keep going. We all in the same boat globally.

this is a legit uncertain time.

z@c+
 

ray_zorse

Modern Human
Modern Human
Joined
Aug 12, 2014
Messages
1,986
Location
Australia
hi Zac, thankyou for the words of encouragement and the resources you posted here about narcissism earlier, they were helpful. This is a bit of a late reply which happens because I only post here pretty occasionally with my "post seduction life" updates. It is now time for another one :)

So a big news is that I formally divorced my family of origin (with a few exceptions such as a sister, an aunt on my mother's side and an uncle on my father's side who are safe people). Although I had cut contact with my wider family a few years back, I recently decided to send them the goodbye letter, and this makes it formal in my eyes. In it I was quite analytical and I laid out firstly my reasons for writing, then I explained about my journey in discovering I was codependent following my divorce, explained how narcissism and codependency arises through one's upbringing, a little about the narcissistic family pattern (Golden Child, Scapegoat) and eventually to specifics about our family members and why I decided to leave.

I expect that my letter will be disregarded, as I know that similar letters from my sister were disregarded in the past, and also that my uncle and aunt have attempted to intercede on my behalf (not that I asked them to) and their attempts were also disregarded. Still, it was important to me to express those feelings. Before, I didn't want to burn my bridges, but as part of my recovery and GC journey I learned to have more confidence, so these days it is not a problem for me to pick a position and stick to it, and I have a lot more confidence than before that I can manage without the putative support from family, which was important before I undertook my journey since although imperfect they did provide some support.

In taking these decisions I took some inspiration from Zac and another user whose name I cannot recall, think it began with D... Dexsomething? This D-guy takes a very uncompromising view of seduction, he is also highly protective of his personal life which I think involves some kind of Internet business and he does not let girls get close to him, this may be a side effect of his quite abusive upbringing. Anyway, he posted years back about how he had cut his family of origin out of his life as they did not provide value to him in his eyes. This is the kind of thinking that you require a GC-training to develop and it's also about putting yourself and your own needs first, which is important for anyone wanting to be a high value man.

And now to some other topics which I hope will provide a model for some of the other guys out there to follow, at least as a sort of a general trajectory. Although I'm no longer active in seduction since I got married to Leticia whom I met through cold approach early in my seduction journey, and have started a second family... I have nevertheless continued to work on one aspect of seduction which is to make yourself the best man you can possibly be. I think you have to be realistic in your expectations here and to treat it as a process of development -- as there are many things about myself that I'm not yet satisfied with, on the other hand I am seeing results in the areas that are my focus. You can't focus on everything.

About my business and my efforts to develop an income other than 9-to-5 work, well I have to say that I am not quite there yet, but on the other hand due to my unique situation (a narcissistic family upbringing, yet within a family that was quite well off) I have been blessed with significant resources that I have been able to invest towards the expectation of creating such an income very shortly. I mentioned earlier in these pages about my last salaried position and how I used some GC techniques in the interview to increase my value in their eyes. I think I also mentioned about how after 2 years in the job I left the job to focus on my business development with my partner at the time. And also that I fell out with said partner.

Well, in the time since I fell out with my partner I focused on several aspects that were related to our business together but which I wanted to develop independently, such as teaching myself more about web technologies (since I am a software expert but until a few years ago I was not very proficient in web technologies, I was more proficient in backend technologies such as Internet protocols, databases and such). I developed an online store, although it has not sold anything yet. I set up an offshore company with e-commerce accounts that are linked to my store and have successfully processed test-payments. I made some progress on developing the products to sell in the online store, but have put this aside as I'll explain.

Anyway, so after a year or so in which the business I had with my partner was not developed (but only some of the independent aspects listed in the last paragraph), my former partner reached out to me apologizing for his role in the falling-out, he said that COVID lockdowns had affected his brain and also that he had had no idea I felt so strongly about some of the matters such as my percentage share in the business. For my part, I simply insisted that I get a decent share in the business. I was still happy for him to have the majority stake since he has been developing it for longer than I have and had mortgaged his house in the process, but after taking over the technical side and investing significant resources of my own (amounting to perhaps $200K of my professional time plus direct expenditures on the business from my personal funds), I demanded that I a proper share rather than being a minority partner. After a year of seeing his business not develop, he was ready to agree to this. My advice: know your value.

Therefore, things have been patched up and I have been working on the project again for the last 4-5 months and I believe we are on the verge of making a sale. C'mon! It would greatly satisfy me to be earning an income rather than burning cash that originated with my family long ago -- this cash was formerly locked up in my former family home, but has become available to my projects since my lengthy legal battle to finalize the divorce. Said legal battle was funded by the salaried position I mentioned above and was certainly not cheap as there were many hearings and mediations and each hearing or mediation cost in excess of $20K in lawyers fees and similar, so I probably funded $60K or so and I also had help from my uncle.

One area of disagreement with my business partner is in the topic of offshore incorporation and offshore banking -- my partner wants to do things the legal "on shore" way and I have eventually acquiesced to this, as compromise is always necessary in any partnership and it simply wasn't worth further arguments. Also, I guess doing things on-shore will provide me some additional protection in case my partner turns out to be treacherous after we have an income. I think this could be part of his concern as well, since I had set up offshore entities and bank accounts and was offering to do the relevant financial engineering for the business, so I think he might have been concerned that I could do something wrong with the money.

Anyway, after a few years of learning about the murky world of offshore incorporation and banking, mainly "learning by doing", I feel like I have more or less achieved one of the goals I set for myself as part of making myself the best man I can possibly be -- which is to become independent of Government interference in my finances. I recommend that other GC men undertake this goal, although its relative importance will depend on where you are at in your seduction and life journeys. I will say though, that it is a very expensive undertaking, and I would not attempt it unless you have at least $10K per year to spend on agents fees and such. If you are in early-career stage and suppose you're in a junior to mid level position on $60K to $80K then I am not sure you can spare this $10K per year, but if you can, then DO IT. Although it may turn out to be a net loss (as it is in my case at present) you need to treat it as kind of like a tuition fee, since you will not be able to learn about the area otherwise.

At this point I want to digress to say something about politics, before I return to the main thread about internationalization and making yourself independent of Government. I'm extremely unhappy about where politics is going in the Western world at the moment. I would not class myself on the left (Democratic; Labour) or the right (Republican; Conservative) as such, since I see the political continuum as more of a triangle: you have the big-Government socialists at one corner, the big-Government conservatives at another corner, and the small-Government libertarians at the remaining corner. These latter are a tiny minority, since the normie population has been thoroughly conditioned to see Government as essential or at least a necessary evil. I am one of them. In fact I go further than simple libertarianism since I am an anarcho-capitalist and I follow the writings of Rothbard. A less extreme position is to be a minarchist, and in that case you would be following the writings of von Mises among other notables.

I'm very unhappy to find myself living in a surveillance / nanny state (Australia) and I think the average person does not really comprehend how much things have changed since we were young (I'm 46). Back then you still had a lot of freedom and although the Police would occasionally pick you up for things like illegal motorbike riding in the bush and bring you home to your parents and give all concerned a bit of a lecture, no real damage was done, and the Police still commanded a fair bit of respect in the community. Nowadays, that is out the window -- it is POSSIBLE that partly the change is due to my perspective (getting red pilled) but I think it is also an actual change. Police simply behave as enforcers for the regime and that's about it. They hardly even maintain the pretence of solving crimes, etc, anymore. To the Police we are simply cattle to be controlled, or to some extent a resource to be exploited. Roads provide a fertile source for exploitation (traffic fines) but it's by no means limited to this.

And Government's science of wealth extraction from the populace has reached a very advanced stage in Australia. My wife's family who live in Vietnam are a bit jealous of our lifestyle and think we are very rich, but unfortunately this is in relative terms since it is extremely expensive to live in Australia. Most services are provided by some kind of monopoly (think Jemena the electricity distributor, or NBN the broadband network) and to own shares in one of these monopolies is to own a license to extract wealth from Australians indefinitely. Government taxes are numerous and very burdensome. Scarcely a week goes by without some new assessment or similar landing my mailbox. Even my apartment building has its own "Government" (the owners corporation / body corporate) and they of course extract their pound of flesh on a regular basis. As in regular Government, I think there is a certain cronyism in how the owners corporation is run, as obviously their goal is to move "public" wealth to their own pockets!

With the COVID thing and now the war in Ukraine, the pace has really picked up, and Governments (especially my Government here in Australia) are usurping citizens' freedom to a degree that was unthinkable a decade ago. Censorship is considered normal and essential, people are dying left and right from COVID vaccine-induced heart attacks, strokes, etc while the "safe and effective" narrative continues to have primacy at least in the mainstream media. Woke culture has made life a nightmare for any sane person (for instance in my last salaried position the people in the office were very woke and there were things you simply weren't allowed to say, I know because I said them and weathered the consequences but I only did this when I was ready to abandon ship). The trans acceptance movement would strike me as just silly (and in general I would be happy to indulge people in their wish to be addressed a certain way etc), except for the incredible danger to young adults with bodily mutilation.

Returning to the surveillance-state aspect, there are a couple of things that really bother me. One is that in Australia they no longer even try to hide the extent of their financial surveillance, indeed they treat it as a convenience for you. For instance, when I fill in my tax return through the Government app (which is admittedly a lot easier than the old paper-based system), it lists out many of the financial transactions I have made that year, such as buying or selling shares, and pre-fills the relevant sections and taxes. At this point you can still override it (for instance if the surveillance picks up transactions I did in my wife's name and I wish to move them over to my return rather than hers) but I expect that soon you will not be. Probably we will simply be taxed in real time. Another thing that really bothers me is in Australia's highway system, there are cameras everywhere, and I mean EVERYWHERE. You can't drive more than a few minutes without seeing one. Theoretically these are for traffic monitoring, but I believe they are also recording license plates of everyone who drives past.

Okay well as soon as the principle was admitted (before my time) that registration and licensing was needed for efficient road management, it was going to end up here. And much the same applies with tax file numbers (social security numbers for you Yanks out there), once the principle is admitted (before my time) then it will end up as a digital ID (happening now). But there is also the creeping surveillance aspect that we are NOT aware of, like the facial recognition technology used in city streets, I BELIEVE we have it in Australia but I don't really know. It scares me. And I am sure that the counter-terrorism police and security services are doing a lot to track our online habits. Since I regularly read rt.com and southfront.org (which give a Russia-centric view of the Ukraine conflict) I expect I would be on some watchlists somewhere. I also read XYZ News which is a white nationalist organization, I do not really agree with their white nationalist or Christian views but their articles are still good.

There is also the education system here in Australia which is utterly pathetic in terms of teaching you anything you really need to know (literacy and numeracy have been plummeting for years) and I am well aware of this since my older children from my first marriage have been through the system, I had initially positive views of it since they went to a Government school in an affluent area and such schools tend to be better resourced than others, but over time this positive view soured. They are teaching very woke principles and they are also effectively implanting the view that Government is beneficial in all regards. My children will now argue and contradict me with woke crap despite the efforts I have always taken to inoculate them against it. Sigh. And then again there are the masks and the COVID crap. Until recently children 8 and over were forced to wear masks all day, and this is a grave crime. I have taken my younger children out of the mainstream and we are homeschooling.

Based on all these factors I strongly fear for the future, and I feel that we will soon be living in a totalitarian dictatorship similar to the situation that Russians found themselves in after the Bolshevik revolution. You always think it cannot happen here. Well it can. There are differing views on how to deal with this. Some people believe we should go down fighting, see Solzhenitsyn/Gulag Archipelago where he says "why didn't we ambush the security services when we knew they were coming to deport us to the camps?" ... and of course there are some brave people in medicine and Government and other positions of influence who are speaking out and trying to beat back the tyranny. But overall I feel that the tide of history is against us. I believe it was Doug Casey (an international investor whose articles and interviews I follow) who said that history is like a boulder rolling down the hill -- the best you can do is to get out of the way.

So, my strategy over the past few years has been to plan my escape and plan how to preserve the freedom and wealth of myself and my family. I started on the financial engineering side before COVID, and I was also making plans to deal with the citizenship side when COVID hit, although I had not acted on those plans yet. During the long lockdowns and the period where you were not allowed to leave Australia, I was absolutely furious at the impingement on my freedom and I was also unhappy because my plans to travel to some of the countries offering citizenship and check them out in person were thwarted. I started making plans to acquire an ocean-going yacht in order to leave Australia illegally, or possibly to bribe a freighter captain to stow us away in the hold if I possibly could, or even to become a sailor on such a ship myself if I really needed to (since I have engineering degrees these would represent a bit of a headstart).

So during this time I started to engage with a Citizenship-by-Investment programme, one which does not require you to leave your home country or visit or live in the country physically -- since we could not leave Australia physically at the time. I made an application a year and a half ago, and it takes them a really long time to process the application and carry out their due diligence checks (the so-called "Island Time" phenomenon) but they have now accepted us and the matter is progressing, I believe the passports will be issued for myself and my family quite shortly. In regards to the cost of this approach, well it is significant and I accept that many men on GC will not have this option available to them. However, it may be more affordable than you think, and that's why I have decided to write here about my experiences. (Of course if you are a young man without dependents then it may be simpler to pursue an approach of obtaining working visas and eventually naturalization, but I did not have the luxury of time and I also could not easily move the family around the world, so it was simpler to just purchase a citizenship).

As COVID is now over and you can travel again, I took the precaution of visiting my intended country to check things out and make sure my agent is honest. After being here physically I have some mixed feelings about whether myself and my family could actually live and thrive here. But I think the important thing is simply to have your escape route planned. You don't want to be caught flat footed, as people were in Nazi Germany when the Nazis came to power, or say East Berlin when the wall went up. As well as having our alternate citizenship and my overseas incorporation and banking setup, I also have resources stashed away all over the world, for instance some precious metals in an offshore vault, several bank accounts with emergency USD funds, etc. These would facilitate a quick escape should the repression in my country intensify.

If you are interested to carry out some of these steps, do feel free to AMA either here or by PM. I am happy to share experiences/advice.
 

Karea Ricardus D.

Tribal Elder
Tribal Elder
Joined
Oct 9, 2012
Messages
626
Hey Ray interesting post. I have a similar view as to where the world is headed. I spent the plandemic in a place that did not participate, not even tests were required to enter the country, no lockdowns no tests no masks no jabs. Guess what everyone was fine... I drove past the hospital every day, always empty. Meanwhile two of my vaccinated friends are now dead and one constantly sick.

I've been on this journey for a decade and now have residency in four countries and my business entirely off shore and legally tax free. If you'd like to chat feel free to shoot me a message.

P.S.: I learned all I know from sovereignman.com and thedollarvigilante.com (those guys also have a great bitchute channel worth following). I highly recommend both their paid newsletters as well.
 
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