something in the water syndrome

coined this a while ago but it bears repeating:

"something in the water syndrome": the belief that what you’re lacking is a secret sauce from not moving to the right city and not being part of some special group that will make you a phenom.

people who think this way almost always need to work on themselves way more than they need to be moving anywhere. "but the vienna ci—" no, that was uniquely due to socioeconomic necessity from wars. "but these people I know are—" NO. stop. stop the whole category of thought.

people like this don't need "circles". they need to grind like hell, meaning do at least 3 hours of "real work" a day at bare minimum, with the maximum being whatever you can handle for weeks or ideally months at a time. try your best to not get distracted from difficult, grating, exhausting tasks with not much immediate payoff. do this in some spot where you're cut oft from excitement in the air, be that your aunt's guesthouse or some shithole town where nothing interesting is happening and the data connection kinda sucks and no circle of """interesting""" people is around. work on yourself, and stop trying to find other people who will work on you for you.