A challenge of mine lately has been endeavoring how to make my story both mine, and yet, not boring. I am a creature of comfort, I am drawn to boring environments - say what they will, I am largely convinced that the women I'm interested in are not and will never be drawn to this. And if I'm being real, I'm not either - I don't want my story to be "the man who had a very comfortable blanket", unless that man... like, went to Ukraine and helped fight some Russian soldiers, because fuck those invader bastards and because he wanted a taste of combat and have a flirt with death by the sword. Despite being a creature of comfort, I kind of went off the rails in 2019 and did some frankly irresponsible things, flirted briefly with an unremarkable death and survived... and it was awesome.

We're men. We do seemingly stupid things, things which both build civilization and destroy it, things which both communicate our regard for civilization as well as our utter disdain for it. To be frank, "going to Ukraine and fighting for rebels" is probably not realistic, but shit, most of us live in this cookie cutter gynocentric society that we really had no hand in building and which our forebears really never bothered to think about the OTHER gender when building it (spare us the "oppressive men" schpiel - most of us weren't kings or business executives, but cogs in the political machines controlled by other men) - so what the fuck do we do? What do you do? We're like the obvious fuckup gender at this point, expected to both be docile well-behaved good little doting betas wise, stoic, and somber thinkers AND ferocious uncontrollable animals, only the frankly less impressive (and certainly less appreciated) side of that dichotomy is valued by civilization.

So guys, what do you do to build up your manliness? How do you contribute yourself to the definition of manhood in a society that mostly spurns it?

I'm thinking martial arts with a somewhat hardcore teacher that lets you figure with your hands. Learn how to use a firearm, and contrary to the doting betas at the New York Times, own one (and preferably have at least one that you've lost in a tragic boating accident). Still though, I would say that being well read in something, preferably something altogether human rather than a practical skill, is important - it is perhaps too much to expect a man to know his place in the universe, but a man should have given thought about it and attempted to understand it. It isn't beta to know about history, philosophy, and science, and to really try to distill the concepts and motivations that drove you to exist. That is the other side of manhood, imo. Your aggression should exist, but be tempered by a robust moral framework that you have dedicated time and effort, life, to fleshing out.

But fuck, maybe I'm wrong - what's your thoughts?