I never knew a place like this existed.

[the Analogist]

Thanks for subscribing to my dead YouTube channel! Ha, I've got 4 kids now, and a full-time job, its gonna be awhile 'til I upload anything new...

One thing I've noticed about school is not that it extends childhood, it delays it. When you are in school you aren't properly existing. Some people never start existing. Whenever you are freed from the shackles it is as if you are the same age as when they were put on. You have no real idea about the world because you've been kept from it. You don't have any serious hobbies because you've never had time for them, and frequently people don't know who they are because they haven't spent much time with themselves. People have poorly developed morality because the cold system ignores moral questions and frequently encourages lying and rewards all sorts of criminal behavior. Growth is stunted while time passes.

Looking back to how I passed my time when I was unemployed, I mostly lived like I would have if I was like 12 or so, even though I had two and later three kids. Like the growth of a seed into its fruit bearing maturity, my unfolding was just so delayed it seemed. People like me in their 20's and sometimes early 30's might be playing video games like I was because they probably should have done it when they were younger, but their youth was robbed, so picking it back up where they left off. It makes perfect sense, but people are indeed weak of vision.

Like your quote from Uncle Iroh, , "who you are" is not a question you simply ask and get an answer. Recognition, respect, and the free time to test the answer is what's needed. I was married, so I had the regular company of somebody who actually cared about me and wanted to see me become a better man. Lack of work was hard, asking for money was hard, but the time to think about it with somebody who wanted the best for me (and herself too) was how I managed to partially grow up. (I just turned 30)

Counting from when I first starting having free-time and good company, I'm probably about 10 years old.