A Grand Milestone Has Been Reached

I am now a "10K Man".

Salutations, fellow Stalkers. Check this out:

Yep, that’s my official subscriber counter. I was actually deliberately posting without any paywalls for two months now to try and hit this milestone number. It was just some sort of arbitrary goal I set for myself to reach. I laugh at this now, but I really thought that I’d hit 10K about 18 months into my new blogging career. I did the calculations based on the growth rate that I was getting when I initially began writing and gloating about how Russia had finally decided to get serious and rah-rah-rah! This glorious growth rate absolutely tanked after I wrote a few “doomerish” articles. That milestone has only been reached now, after much time and energy and tears. Back then though, before my great heresy, I was getting compliments from many Z-writers.

— A new, serious geopolitical thinker.

— Talented writer with excellent sources.

— Patriotic, but realistic and steely-eyed.

Yes, there was an avalanche of initial compliments showered my way by people who have since issued fiery denunciations. There were also many reposts on alternative right wing blogs and aggregators sites. I was getting like 40k-80k views on some of my posts that were linked on these larger sites. In contrast, just so grasp the difference, I am happy to break 8k on a regular post now.

And I do mean it when I say that I’m happy with my progress regardless.

I know myself enough to understand that I prefer to be on the bleeding, cutting edge of exploratory truth than happily plodding away and making money selling people platitudes and wallowing in well-paid mediocrity. I like that this job has forced me to search out new information, to try and make sense of deep hidden lore and to grapple with my preconceived biases about the world. I know that this is probably the only kind of work that is worthy of my time and energy.

Granted, I’m too damn poor to be a true snob, but my elitism manifests in other ways.

Mainly, I already know that if I applied myself to any “established” or “acceptable” white collar career path, that I’d do well enough as just a given. As a result, I guess I don’t value such pursuits. This happens a lot to people with extremely high opinions of themselves — they refuse to “settle” for what they consider to be a position that doesn’t reflect their own self worth. In some cases, this comes off as elitist and snooty and delusional. Like, I knew a guy from a family of Puerto Rican truckers, who refused to follow in the family trade as it were and instead would buy those extremely expensive and ridiculous-looking white wigs from like 300 years ago and write nonsensical (and poorly spelled) philosophical treatises at late night coffee shops using an ink pot and quill. Yes, there are those types out there as well.

But barring extreme cases of mental delusion, there are indeed actually people who are right to value themselves so highly.

It is a tragedy to force a Michelangelo to work as a coal miner, for example. Even if there was no one out there hiring master craftsmen/artists, I don’t think that he would have resigned himself to the mines or the trucker lots at any point either. He would have rather taken his own life if it got too bad, if I had to guess. There’s a kind of quiet dignity to refusing to learn how to code when you’re not already a coder, I think.

My point here is that people are not fungible; they are not interchangeable cogs that you can swap in and out of various economic roles over the course of their lives as the market sees fit. On a deeper level, you really are born to be what you are born to be. It may take some time for you to discover this about yourself, and, in theory, some people probably never do reach this level of self-gnosis. Probably. I mean, you have a lot of miserable old people around all over the place, don’t you? I assume that they are the types that never hit that level of self-acceptance.

But I did.

And I hit that particular milestone relatively young, right as I hit 30. Above all things in my personal life, even the 10K subs on Substack that I am celebrating today here with this self-congratulatory post, I am grateful for this self-knowledge and self-acceptance first and foremost. Do you want to hear me tell that story?

**

No? What do you mean “no”? You meant to say “yes”, right?

RIGHT!?

What!?

Why are you standing up to leave!?

Sit back down. Yes, DOWN. Good. Back into that chair. Nice and slow. No sudden movements … I’ll put the gun away once you start being reasonable.

Pick up your cup of tea. Yes, good. Sip it. Not too loudly. Don’t interrupt me. Now, where was I?

**

Like, I come from a military family and I was dead-set my whole life on doing something military-related because that’s just what our family did. But then a decade of adulthood somehow passed by which I somehow spent writing and reading and traveling and philosophizing (mostly for pay) without even realizing it.

Then I hit the big three-oh (30) milestone (this was a while ago, I’m just comparing milestones and millstones in today’s essay) and spent a week or two after my birthday reflecting on the absurdity of the situation. The closest thing to what I was feeling is probably reflected in this scene from The Men Who Stare at Goats.

I called up my dad then and brought up the fact that I would have never expected to have lived such a vagabond, nomadic, and … artsy? lifestyle while growing up. Younger me would have mocked someone such as myself for being rootless or “unserious”. And long hair? Sandals? Loose, billowy, naturally-spun shirts? And what’s worse, I write “treacherous” truths about authority figures in various governments.

Truly, I had always thought of myself as some kind of a temporarily disgraced officer without an army growing up. As a kid, I collected toy soldiers. I read about ancient generals and battles. I stomped around in my grandpa’s old boots and wore his oversized parade hat. My father then confessed that he knew as soon as I was nine that this would eventually be the path I’d take in life. And the warning signs had manifested even earlier than that, apparently. In no world would I have been able to “yessir, nossir” and man a post either on the border or behind a desk silently for 40 years.

Upon hearing him laugh knowingly and dismiss my doubts, the subtle feeling of shame that I had been feeling growing inside me about not going along some prescribed path in life just … dissipated all at once.

It was that feeling that had led to the self-doubt and self-reflection and the decision to call up my dad to gripe in the first place. Instead of feeling bad for myself though, I felt like the gift of freedom had suddenly been bestowed upon me. Truly, in that moment I finally grasped the ultimate essence of fatherhood and manhood and the Sky Father principle all at once. It wasn’t exactly a full-blown mystical experience (I’ve had those, so I can compare), but it was a eureka moment nonetheless.

To the extent that I can, I’ll try and share the cathartic gnosis I experienced with you here.

It is the greatest act of love for a father to be able to grant his son his freedom and to wholeheartedly bless his life path, whatever it might be. To be able to say, “go forth and conquer as you see fit”.

How many men spend their lives desperately trying to secure their fathers’ blessing? Burning themselves out chasing that respect, that acceptance, that blagoslovenie which is so jealously guarded by their old men? And how many horrible, crotchety, feminine old men refuse to bestow that greatest of gifts upon their sons out of sense of self-inadequacy and some competitive desire to maim and hobble their own successors? Too many in my experience, especially among the reviled Boomer generation, of course. Since I write for very old men and very young men mostly, I thought I’d point out that this is the greatest problem facing male-to-male relations and offer a solution.

Look.

It is the mark of a truly masculine man to be able to first attain his own freedom and then to set other men free as well. Because personal and spiritual freedom is the exact essence of the Sky Father principle. Masculine men are driven by this impulse above all others. Yes, the desire to be free at all costs.

… and then to inflict their freedom on others, of course.

Masculinity means freedom from shame. From guilt. From self-doubt. From the worthless opinions of women and womanly men. From the fear of following your own path in this life. From the fear of dying without the blessing of your father or surrogate father figures in your life.

So…

Should you find yourself in the position of a kind of mentor figure or teacher or father or officer or boss to another, younger man, keep what I wrote in mind. Do not play the role of the miser in regards to the rations of respect that you dole out to your subordinates. I shudder to think how many young men gave up on their true life-paths because of this kind of sabotage from men who gave up on the Sky Father principle and betrayed them. My former bosses and older co-workers all tried to assume the roles of surrogate fathers in our relationships and then pull this “blessing denial” vaginal shit on me, so I know how the con works and how commonly it is used.

Elder Stalkers, don’t be stingy when it comes to giving your blessing to your sons or surrogate sons. Even if you yourself never had a positive masculine influence in your own life, make the commitment to break the cycle of feminine abuse with your own example, now. Lift up the young men under you; don’t hobble them with psychological stinginess. Do as the Sky Father would have you do and bestow freedom on your sons.

If I hadn’t had the Sky Father principle guiding me through these years, I would have crawled under a rock to die or worse, to learn how to code, a long time ago.

These milestones can become millstones around our necks without some positive support.

That was my point for today, I think.

…

Thank you for coming to my self-bestowed 10K Milestone Award acceptance speech today. I talk more about this sort of thing here, if you’re interested:

I swear to the Sky Father that I’ll start posting about the Slavgrinder more regularly SOON.

I’ve been busy learning to surf and spending some of that money that I’ve been hoarding like a miser for a rainy day. It literally started raining and I realized that it was time to spend it on doing something positive and life-affirming. We’ll get back to the dooming and glooming SOON.

I promise you that much.