Lately I’ve been grinding testnet points so obsessively it’s getting a bit out of hand. I originally thought of it as practice, but then—one slip of the hand—and I started calculating: “What if there’s really an airdrop?” Once expectations kick in, people become especially unreasonable. Now I’ve set myself a crude rule: for each project, I’ll only mess around for up to two nights. If I go over time, I’ll treat it as a sunk cost. When the fees—gas, cross-chain, and small-account stuff—add up to a certain number, I stop and don’t “top up for the last attempt” anymore.

What I’m most afraid of isn’t losing money; it’s knowing I’m chasing expectations while lying to myself that I’m just learning. Watching memes and celebrities shouting trading calls heats everything up, and your attention whips around insanely fast. That old player’s line, “Don’t take the last baton,”—I’m putting it on my forehead first… In any case, I’ll preserve my position first; I can go crazy, but I have to know how to hit the brakes.