Met with Nathan at Fenyk. Holy shit, this guy might be the most delusional person I’ve ever met. Without exaggeration. Everything I wrote previously was for a fairly rational person like myself; the type of people I spend literally all of my time with.
Nathan lives in a world of complete make believe, where he sets limits for himself in some places, and other places have infinite instantaneous growth. His situation, as I understand it
- Marketing business on instagram reels. Believes his edge is that he’s both videographer and businessman.
- Currently 3 clients who pay $1000/mo; he explained this to me as 36k/yr, which is bullshit annualization since they are all from the last 2mo.
- 100 followers on his business instagram, 1k on his personal.
- Didn’t get into UCalgary film school after his transcript was missing a required course, so he has to take a gap year.
- Wants to NOT UPGRADE his high school courses this year (ie, he doesn’t get to go to UCalgary in 2025 Sept), because he wants to spend more time on his film business, meaning that the earliest he can go to university is Sept 2026.
- Thinks that this is all risk free because his parents pay for housing. When I asked about what they thought of this, he said that they have no bearing because he’s 18.
- Believes that he can scale it to the point of being completely independent at some point.
I poked holes in the logic left, right, and centre, told him my experience, the experience of my friends. And he wouldn’t budge. I saw he wasn’t super engaged. So I asked him; you pretty much walked in here with your mind made up, why would you even waste my time? He agreed, but said it was helpful to hear other people’s perspectives. I was genuinely so astounded. He lets his parents pay his trips to Japan, Italy, etc, without any guilt? And he believes his 3k/mo run rate is enough to warrant TWO gap years? I suggested doing CBe-Learn (online HS) simultaneously. OBJECTIVELY his “business” doesn’t get enough marginal impact out of 1hr/d. And in like 5hr/wk in 2022 I did well enough in Gr. 12 in order for me to get into UBC with a 94 average. There’s NO WAY he can’t do both simultaneously, and yet he just said excuses about how he had mental blockers or how context switching took a long time. Kinda strikingly NGMI, which was sad to see. But truly a waste of my time, and his. I’d be very, very upset if my child was like that.
I don’t think it was a waste of time though, it’s a pretty funny story I might eventually tell. I’ve really never met anyone in my life like that. I’m really thankful that literally all of my friends are super rational, systematic thinkers where I can say something helpful, and it at least “registers” in their brain. Or when I poke enough holes in something, they can see it doesn’t hold water. Nobody I know lives in fantasy land remotely like Nathan. But meeting unique people is so fascinating.
On another note, the funniest tweet i’ve seen in a good long while.
I wanna run like 10mi today or something, I think I’ll do it when I get back home in the evening.
Fucking shit my treadmill broke after like 6km. Upset.
Mom said something which really struck me; I was just lying in her bed petting the dog as she browsed on her ipad, and she talked about how her life was pretty uneventful/complete. I get the sense she was much more upset about me not going to university than she initially made it out to be. And that she’s really purposeless; she said her goal was to raise me until 18 and now she can happily die whenever after Zoey dies. I really don’t know what to make of it. There’s so many things she could be doing, I hope she’s a bit better when she’s not as bedridden. Otherwise, I’m going to be quite worried for her mental health.