What's up, dude? I got a question for you. If I asked you, what are the things that

motivate you? What would you say? Do you have like a ready answer? Do you know? I have a ready-ish

answer. We played RPGs all the time. So in an RPG, you're constantly trying to level up.

And I would say that with me in real life, I see my life is basically an RPG, right? So I'm really

excited about, you know, leveling up my fiction writing skills and like publishing a novel. I'm really

excited about leveling up how many people we reach with indie hackers and like being a better founder, et cetera, et cetera, being a better boyfriend, the list goes on and on.

So like getting better at stuff is your number one motivator.

Exactly.

What else?

It's just that?

Motivator?

I don't know.

You could say the inverse.

I've like fucked up in the past at various things. And I'm pretty motivated at

like not making the same kinds of mistakes that I've made in the past. It's a carrot and the

stick. So I was talking to a mutual friend of ours, Brandon, and he was talking about how he met

this doctor who was like, just like a leading surgeon who had had retired and now he's an expert at pottery.

And this guy, apparently when he was 24, saw somebody spinning clay to make like a pot or

something or a cup or something and was so transfixed that immediately he had like an aha moment

and was like, this is what I have to do. And for the rest of his life, he basically was a surgeon, and then he retired and immediately went into pottery. And Brandon was saying that he's never had one of these aha moments. And I think I had one of those when I was a kid when I was like, you know, using computers. And I was like, shit, this is what I have to do? But I was thinking last week, okay, what if you break it down even further and ask what within that particular career?

Like, you like writing, but what is it inside of writing that you like?

And I guess for you, it's the leveling up experience.

...