Moment_x_OSF

This weekend I had a moment where I legitimately thought I was going to die.

Could barely stand up, blurry vision and full-on shaking.

Sometimes when you get backed into a corner you have flashbacks of certain experiences in your life.

For me it's the near-death ones, and the ones where I thought all hope was lost and I somehow dug myself out of a hole.

Over the years I have consciously developed certain tools to help me pull myself out of these situations, and tbh it's also guided how I see the world through my lens, which I feel like is different to most.

When we grow up, we're led to think about measures of "success", achievements, what we did well.

What can we do to accomplish our goals? How do we improve ourselves? How do we beat the person ahead of us? How can we become the best?

We're led to think it's all about winning.

Winning is great, we get a feeling of elation from it, but I've come to realise what is more rewarding for me is that feeling of surviving.

That feeling of having everything taken away from you, to have the odds completely stacked against you, only to somehow still be alive.

You can kind of compare it to underdog stories, my favourite of which is the Rocky series by @TheSlyStallone .

Half of the films he doesn't actually win his fights. The other half, he's come back from being massively behind or against the odds to scrape a victory.

Rocky I is the best example.

Apollo Creed actually wins the fight in a split decision, but no one gives a fuck about that.

It's the fact that this random nobody has gone toe-to-toe with a world champ and almost defeated the odds.

You feel like Rocky won even tho he didn't.

"But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done."

This is a direct quote from the sixth film, and tbh I think it really nails how I see things.

It's actually not about winning, it's about your ability to not die.

It's about your ability to take max possible pain, and still be alive, somehow still standing...against all odds.

That's the concept that has always driven me.

It means my outlook and focus is not result-orientated.

It's not about the outcome, it's about the process and the journey.

Outcomes are just byproducts of our actions, thus our focus should be on our actions.

My "actions" or "process" is basically just one belief, that I can't die and that I won't give up.

I've been in multiple positions of going to zero and below, and have somehow pulled myself out of it against the odds.

Not because I'm some special person, but because...

I've consciously trained myself to believe I can't die.

I could lose everything literally everything I have, and still back myself to find a way to bounce back.

And sometimes you need to have experienced that...multiple times...to truly realise it.

So I approach life not with the mindset of "I reckon I can be really successful at this".

I approach it with the mindset of "I can take massive risk here because if even if I fuck it up and lose it all, I have full confidence in myself to resurrect it".

It's not about the ability to succeed. It's about the ability to not die.

It's always been this way for me but I suppose it's taken me years to collate my thoughts and understand it.

I'm always re-realising that it's how my brain operates, by each new situation.

I'll be honest, when I made @rektguyNFT there wasn't much thought behind it.

I just wanted to make a pfp extension of my art and something that looked a bit diff to what's out there (inverted backgrounds, colours etc).

But over the past few weeks I've started to realise it's kind of like a subconscious depiction of everything I just wrote.

I never intended to time its release with a market crash, or have a culture of "rektness" form around it, it just kind of weirdly happened.

People prob gravitated towards it coz everyone was losing money, down bad, and it kind of became like a safe place for everyone to celebrate their losses and know and feel they weren't alone in their mistakes and failures.

But I think there is a deeper meaning to it. It's almost like the the idea of someone thriving in a negative environment.

Someone actually masochistically revelling in their losses, almost deliberately causing themselves the pain so they can have the opportunity to not die.

Art can depict so many different emotions. Love, hate, pain, grief etc etc.

@rektguyNFT depicts the emotion of rekt.

For me, that means "down very bad, still alive and also kind of enjoying it tbh".

The emotion/concept/idea of rekt is something that's often celebrated in crypto culture, but tbh is prevalent in so many instances of our lives...we just don't consciously acknowledge it (because most people don't like to admit failure).

The craziest thing to me is how this was just created completely subconsciously, and it's kind of insane to put the different pieces together and understand why I drew what I drew, the colours, the traits, the concepts...it's like a piece of my mind got extracted onto canvas.

As you can prob tell, I definitely had a bit of a "moment" recently which prompted me to write this this morning.

But I've now started to understand what @rektguyNFT is.

It's a depiction of the person who will destroy themselves but never die. The person that stands against all odds.

The person who gets written off, only to still see them in their rear-view mirror.

The person who seeks pain, just to prove to themselves they can withstand it.

We've seen so many of these themes and concepts play out in the world of crypto time and time again, and 2022 will be a year to remember for us all as we all probably held at least a few things that dropped 99% in value.

For me, @rektguyNFT has become some manifestation in my head that is a badge of honour.

It's the depiction of "you can punch me as hard as you want, but I'm not going down, and btw keep punching me coz I want it".

Down bad, but never dead.

Thanks for all the concerns - I’m all good btw was just on my stag and had a bit of a big one that’s all 🤣

In August 2022, OSF had a "moment", this is that story