In December of 2022, I first stumbled into Stacker News. After several years of exhausting resources on reddit, Google searches, YouTube and after a brief stint in 2020 of "diversify your crypto bro" and refocusing on what it was about Bitcoin I couldn't put down.

I don't gamble. I had a small IRA. I work a blue collar manufacturing job at a CNC shop. I'm not tech literate. I can't code. I just knew the fiat financial system was fucked and the incentives broken.

Bitcoin checked boxes that made sense to me. Decentralized. Scarce. Verifiable. I set up a core node on a laptop I constantly had to resync when I needed it.

SN was my first touch point with lightning other than Muun wallet for a few months prior.

Since then I've ventured into custodial wallets, Nostr, realizing the potency of public private keys, used LSPs to open channels on wallets like Phoenix, Breez, Blixt, Zeus, Mutiny (RIP). Eventually set up 'that umbrel garbage' (sorry Darthcoin) and run my own LND node.

I've zapped a few sats for a laugh, bought gift cards, artwork from plebs on Nostr, even paid my electric bill in a pinch with Bitcoin. It's become my savings.

I verify all my cold storage with Sparrow through my node. I backend my Alby and SN wallets with my own lightning node I can access through Tor or simply Zeus.

I'm still working my machining job. I'm still saving what I can in sats, but gradually I'm replacing and embracing one system for another. At a pace I can, and in layers as I see fit.

I took a long time off from posting here, but this is what set a fire under my ass. To keep pursuing something I think matters.

Sometimes it feels like I've made no real progress. Then I remember two years ago I was using muun.