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The board · Sydney · Curious

I have been reading this board since autumn and never written anything

Posted as read_board_since_autumn, 13 September 2026

Looking for
one honest exchange with somebody who has been doing this for years
Experience
None. Months of reading in a browser with the history cleared.
Around
the west, Sydney

I have been reading posts like this one since about March, in a browser, in a private window, the way you research a symptom you are frightened of. This is the first thing I have written anywhere. I have rewritten it four times and each version was politer and less true than the last, so I am sending the fourth one before I can improve it any further.

Thirty one, out west, and no experience of anything in this world. What I have is a very clear sense that something is missing and an extremely unclear sense of what it is. Months of reading has taught me the vocabulary and almost nothing else, which I now understand is the least useful preparation available.

What I want is one honest conversation with somebody who has been at this for years and can tell me what it is actually like on a Tuesday. Not the intense version. The maintenance version. Whether it takes up a lot of your life. Whether people are as careful as these posts suggest.

I am not looking for anything today and possibly not this year. I would simply like to stop being a person who reads about things.

Not looking for anybody who wants to skip to arranging something. Not looking to be assessed. And not looking for a person who is bored of explaining, which is entirely fair, and I will not take it personally.

Reply to this post Replies go through your account, not this page. Nothing you send is published here.

What to have sorted before you reply

If this one reads like your own head rather than somebody to answer, the tactics can wait. These three all happen before there is a first match to get wrong.

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