It has been a while since my last article. I am pretty sure I suffered from burnout trying to balance a full-time job, a new baby that arrived three months ago, along with keeping up with the NFT space and trying to figure out what the hell is WONDERLAND.Jason Paige, the official Pokemon Theme Song singer has written and created our song. The Song will be available soon on all streaming platforms — stay tuned!

Let us back up a little…

After everything came crashing down when Bitcoin nearly reached 20k in December 2017, things were slow. Nothing was happening. I pulled out my profit and paid off some debt. I continued to lurk in various subreddit groups and watched as people licked their wounds from the crash and the long Crypto Winter that ensued.

I lied about nothing happening. Lots of things were happening, and this is where a lot of the great projects began — deep in this Crypto Winter, sight unseen.

Axie Infinity. Cardano. Terra Luna.

There was ETHlend that launched in November of 2017. They eventually go on to rebrand themselves as AAVE.

And of course, there is Ethereum. Ethereum today is vastly different from Ethereum back then. Pricewise, ETH peaked out around $1300 and then crashed all the way down to around $100 at its low.

The building continued.

Here is the thing: we all love a good price prediction, and we all want to make money.

Price predictions are great, but we need to look beyond that if we really want to make money. What I mean by that is we have to make this paradigm shift in how we view our time — shifting it from a high time preference to a low time preference. We all want that instant dopamine hit of hitting it big, but the reality is those stories of someone throwing in $100 on a random meme coin and turning it into 100k…

Well if you are reading something like that, you are already too late. There is still a lot of money to be made, life-changing money that can release us from the everyday burden of working a 9–5 job and release us from being in a constant rat race with our peers. We have to be patient whether we are investing or building in this space. We see the end goal, but we cannot neglect the hard and oftentimes boring work that we have to do in the NOW to get there.

The best thing you can do is to simply dive in, make mistakes and fail while making sure that you assist your own risk tolerance.

There are three key pillars I will be focusing on for 2022 that I believe will help compound my earnings on my way to life-changing wealth, and pillars I hope you all consider to help fortify your foundation in this Wild Wild Web3 world.

As with most areas where one is looking to build wealth, being a creator pays the most dividends because creators create value. We humans will be pay for a lot if something brings value to our lives. Effort, perseverance, and time will be needed to be successful. Failure is something you have to be comfortable with; the best lessons can come from here and often time does. It is easy to get discourage or distracted — if you are like me, it is easy to start something and the motivation runs high at the beginning. After sometime, the time and effort put in begins to wane and then stop altogether. This is the point where you have to mentally will yourself to push on and remember why it is you started this journey.

What is your end goal?

Well, my end goal is to build something people will enjoy or find useful in this Web3 world. Something people will find value in. I do not know what that is quite yet, but I know I need to have a strong foundation. That is why I am diving deep and touching up and learning how to code for building on the blockchain. There is a lot of really great and free content out there to get started and here are two to jumpstart your journey if you need that push to come join me:

FreeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/learn

CryptoZombie: https://cryptozombies.io/

Both of these are free, and remember these are both simply starting off points. Coding is something that you do not just learn and then stop. There are always innovations to whatever computer language you learn, and having that foundation can help you on your journey to being a builder. I suggest starting with FreeCodeCamp, and then CryptoZombie which does require you to have a little bit of coding experience.

Feel free to look up the reviews people have left for each. Give them a shot, and remember these are starting off points. Continue to do your own research, and learn from a variety of resources to help build your foundation.

This is what the majority of people will be doing. There are 5 things to keep in mind while on this path:

Learning is important. If you are not learning something new everyday, get on it.

In this nascent Web3 space, there is a lot of learning that needs to happen even for the most experience of us. If you are finally taking the leap, get on Twitter if you are not already. And yes, follow influencers. To reiterate, this is a good starting off point.

Join subreddits. Read books. Watch Youtube videos. Most importantly, take the time to read the white papers of the projects that you are interested in. Some white papers can get really technical, but do your best to understand the gist of it and continue to do additional research after.

Research. Always DYOR and do not take any one person’s word on anything. Take some of that time you spend on Tik Tok and use it to educate yourself so that you can be successful in this new Web3 world. If you find yourself envious of people who have made thousands or even millions in this space, reflect on what you have been doing or not doing. You may believe some people are lucky (and yes some are really lucky in the truest sense of the word) but a lot of lucky people put in a lot of effort and diligent work behind the scenes.

It is so easy to spend all of Saturday binging Squid Games or playing Fortnite (no offense to those professional gamers, but if we’re honest with ourselves, most of us aren’t pros nor will we ever be). If you are in a place in life where you wish you had more time to do more of what you want, think about what you are doing on a daily basis. There is so much out there that we can take advantage of to better ourselves, so do not let time go to waste. Time is our most valuable commodity, and it is one in which no one can ever get back or replenish.

We are all cyborgs. Most of us have our phones practically attached to our arms, so when you are waiting in line for your coffee at your local Dutch Bros, or you are sitting on the toilet, or you are at work (because who works at work, right), use this supercomputer to help better yourself.

Yes, it is a new year with new possibilities. Just remember the whole concept of the new year is arbitrary, and that we can always be a “new me” any time we want, but if the new year is that point in time where you want to make a statement to better yourself, go for it. There is a lot yet to happen that many are anticipating for Web3, and that one thing that is certain is that we all will be surprised at some point. Whatever these surprises bring, Web3 is here to stay. Build yourself up, buttercup.

The beginning of 2022 may be boring. Price action may go sideways for a few more months. Heck, it might go sideways for all of 2022!

But people will be building as they have been in these quiet times. When it seems like nothing is going on, things are happening.

And this will be the best time to get in if you are not in already.

Be smart. Be diligent. Be patient but hungry. There is still life changing wealth to be made, so do not let this opportunity slip through your fingers.

Feel free to follow me here and on my Twitter @jamaberry (JXL-3000)