Steve is up to something...

[glow]

I think Steve is up to something. He might not be shutting down the forums entirely for the reasons most of us think. He's been throwing hints that he's up to something...

Let's start this Story from the beginning...

Remember Steve's mysterious Mega-project he talked about in 2010...?
This is from his blog post Hacking Reality: Subjective Objectivity. (pay attention to the words in bold)

It’s time to begin a new act.

I’ve already worked out a plan for what I want to do next. I have a lot to wrap up this year, so I probably won’t be too far along with it till 2011, but it’s so inspiring to me that I’ve already been working hard on it. It’s the most kick-ass vision I’ve ever come up with.

So it’s safe to say that I’m at the beginning of another major career transition right now. This is like nothing I’ve ever done before, and like nothing I’ve planned before either. It’s not a traditional career that can be named or labeled in conventional terms. It’s something that’s uniquely me. I’m still not sure how I’ll pull it off. I just know that I must do it. No matter what happens, it will make for an interesting story.

I’m not going to share the details in advance for a few reasons. First, it would be premature. I still have many details to work out, so the core concept is still evolving. I need to spend more time working through this on my own.

Second, I don’t want to get a bunch of feedback about the new direction. If I were to publicly post what my plan is, I know from experience that my inboxes will fill up, and most of the feedback won’t be useful or actionable because it will come from people who’ve never met me and who are projecting their issues onto me. I’ve been through enough rounds of that already, so I hope you can understand why I’m not going to go there this time.

I don’t expect that people will dislike the idea — quite the contrary. They’re more likely to find it too ambitious. I’d expect that the public reactions would be similar to what happened when I told people I was going to graduate college in three semesters. Nothing I’d done up to that point suggested that it was an attainable goal for me. I just knew I had to do it. People didn’t believe I could do it, so they tried to talk me out of it, which I found annoying because I was committed. Even years after I did it, people I’d never met would publicly call me a liar for writing about it. One person even called my old university and got some administrator to verify that I did it. I was surprised the school did that since I figured student academic records were confidential, but at least the caller was able to validate my story. I told that story because I wanted to share how I did it, and I thought it would inspire people, and it certainly did that in many cases. But to talk about such things in advance, at least for me, seems to do more harm than good.

And thirdly, it makes for a better story if I don’t serve up any spoilers. It will be more fun to simply do it and watch people try to make sense of it afterwards. Over the next year, many people will probably figure it out because there will be a shift in my actions that will invariably drop some clues, but for the immediate future, it will probably seem like little has changed for the rest of 2010 at least. I’m not going to suddenly stop blogging this month or anything like that.

I can at least say that unlike my 2004 transition from game development to personal development, this new transition is about building upon what I’ve already done. It’s definitely more of a forward step than a sidestep, and it has to do with expanding my contribution. I’ve never blogged about this before, so if you look to the blog for clues, I’m afraid you’ll come up empty handed.

In a way it feels like I’ve come full circle. You could say that my current mindset is more grounded, practical, and objective than ever. But it’s running on a subjective OS, and that unlocks new possibilities. I see that reality is a simulation, I see that it has a variety of constraints, and I see that those constraints are purposeful. I don’t feel limited by the constraints. I feel inspired by them. The constraints make it possible to create a kick-ass story.

Later that year he commented in the forums to people's guesses of what he was up to with...

Kinda strange seeing everyone's guesses. I will eventually share what it is of course, but now is not the time. Most likely sometime in 2011, but that's really just a guess.

I've never done this before, so I can't predict how long it will take.

It's not about sex, D/s, travel, movies, politics, or social networking. I've blogged about those topics in the past, but as I mentioned in my blog post about this new direction, it involves something I haven't blogged about, nor have I seen anyone mention it here in the forums. So if you read about a certain idea or topic in my blog, that can't be it.

It's a fairly specific plan though, too specific for someone to guess by taking a stab in the dark.

I can say that this is a contribution-based undertaking, one that's intended to affect a lot of people's lives for the better. I believe it has the potential to be significantly more impactful than anything I've done up to this point.

In the meantime it's likely to be business as usual around here, so be patient.

Then came the...

Shutting Down the Forums (Blog)

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Shutting Down the Forums

Now come the main give-away comments...

In recent discussions on the shutting down of forums, Steve said...

I think we can do better than what these forums amounted to. There will be better solutions down the road.

As I mentioned in a blog post a while back, if you can't achieve win-win, it's usually better to disconnect and look for new win-win connections.

And then Steve's reply to a question from Andrew Gubb...

Andrew Gubb: That sounds interesting. Are you planning to be part of those solutions?

Steve: Yes, but not with a structure that resembles anything like this one.

Later...

People who don't really know me well often project a lot of false assumptions onto me (just as you've done above), filling in bits of my imagined personality and character with pieces of their own and mistakenly assuming that I make decisions using frames similar to theirs. This confuses them when I take actions that seem wildly unpredictable to them. But for those who know me well or who think similarly, these actions are much less surprising and may even seem obvious

.

And finally, Steve confesses it himself!

Other's reactions, including yours, aren't a surprise to me.

My behavior is a surprise to you and others though. Some are attributing it to emotionalism and irrationality, which is understandable, but those who know me well know that this is too much of a stretch.

So what logical conclusion might you draw from this?

I must be doing this on purpose.

The missing piece is that I haven't shared what that purpose is. Well, I have in a way -- it's no secret that my purpose is to live consciously and to help others do the same. But I haven't yet shared how that applies to this situation, and it isn't obvious. I will share the full story eventually though, after the forum shutdown is complete.

In the meantime, crazy as it may sound, I'm deliberately making it easy for people to focus their pent-up anger upon me as we go through this transition.

Dr. Wayne Dyer says that when you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice. Why? Because that's what's inside.

In this case I'm juicing negative emotions because we need to squeeze those out first before we can be ready for the next step. We have to bring all of that up to conscious awareness. As we're obviously seeing, there were a lot of repressed emotions here that are now being juiced out. If there was no anger inside a person, then juicing has no effect -- worst case it just tickles a bit.

So it seems the shutting down of this forum may be part of a grander plan that we all are not aware of right now! Now I might be completely of the mark here, but it seems like all this adds up.

Your thoughts Steve...??

[Savage]

These recent events aren't part of any bigger project, but I'm sure they'll help clear up some space.

That bigger project is still in the works, but it's not something specifically aimed at the members of the forums, and none of them are involved in it.

[glow]

Okay Master, if you say so.

[Andreas]

Thanks for mentioning this, glow. And thanks for responding, Steve!

I am still very intrigued at your secret project, and I can't wait to see what it grows into.

I'm ready to change the nature of the dream. Together.

[freddy]

I think this will be helpful for every one to grow in their own personal development. Much more than they could in this forum. Can't wait.