Sunday, August 3rd, 2025
Writing to you from Uruguay
This past week was a pretty decent week.
Not too much to report on, and no super exciting stuff going on, but things are moving forward.
I’m going to start breaking these weekly updates down into two sections…the first section will be an overview and reflections of everything I did in the past week. The second section will be a look into the future: things I need/want to do, what’ll be happening, and any additional ideas that I’ve been thinking about or are relevant to what’s going on at the time.
That way I can hold myself accountable to an even greater degree and transition my thinking towards making the best out of the next week.
One thing I haven’t been fantastic about over these past two years is planning. Whether that be planning what I’m doing next week, next month, or planning several months in advance.
So, this will help me begin to improve on that…
And, at the same time, it’ll give you some more insight into what things will look like, probably be a little more interesting, and give you a better picture of what The Preparation looks like - especially if you or someone you know is planning on undergoing their own preparation.
The 2-Year Mark
I almost forgot…
It’s August of 2025, which officially marks 2 full years within The Preparation.
Crazy how much time has passed and how fast it goes by. These past two years have been great, but I would like to make the next two a whole lot better. I think that’s more than possible
By the way, if you’d like to see a list of all of my accomplishments in The Preparation within the past two years you can scroll down to the bottom of this post to check it out.
What I Did and Learned This Past Week
Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t fantastic and the plane I rent at the flight school I’ve been going to didn’t have many available hours the past few days.
So, I was only able to get one flight in, but that’s better than nothing.
3 out of 4 of my flights in Uruguay have been entirely centered around staying in the traffic pattern for an hour and a half doing touch-and-go landings.
As I said last week, I’ve learned that every flight instructor are just humans and they all teach differently. Gaining a new perspective on things after being a student pilot in two different countries I’ve seen that it really is tough to find a good flight instructor who’s “in the game” every time you step in the plane with him.
I think a good instructor helps you take a step back from the constant flow of things you need to focus on while flying and he helps you calm down, refocus, and gives you one-sentence tips that immensely improve your flying.
The best instructors don’t have to talk a lot.
That’s one problem I’ve had here is that there is constant correction while I’m changing things or just about to make the correction. When you’re having someone correct you so frequently it actually becomes harder to focus on what you’re doing. The plane is still flying and there’s still things to do. Your mind can’t be set on what just happened 5 seconds ago.
So that, coupled with the fact that the instructors here fly differently, it’s tough to get in a flow state.
Anyway, I think it’ll come with time and I have to block out some of the unhelpful stuff and kinda do my own thing to a reasonable degree.
The traffic pattern work that I did in the states was more intuitive, efficient, and clean. So, I’d like to stick to it.
Meteorology
The meteorology course from The Great Courses has been fantastic. Very few things beat the feeling you get when you look around and actually understand what is going on around you.
It reminds me of this quote from Alexander Dumas:
“Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.”
Knowledge (like facts for example) is good, but it should be used for the purpose of coming to an understanding of things.
Anyway…
I am going to give you a full breakdown of the course once I’ve completed it. That way I can try to teach you what I have learned and do it all in one go, which will be beneficial to the both of us because it will require me to truly understand (there’s that word again) what I have learned and relay it to you within one post.
If you’d like to check the course out on your own, here it is: Meteorology Course.
Activities
Spanish practice (3 out of 7 days): I want to improve my Spanish quite a lot. Especially for stuff coming up in the future, which I’ll tell you about soon. I just purchased an Intermediate Spanish Course and will begin that next week.
Worked out (5 out of 7 days): My workouts have been a combination of weight lifting using a Push, Pull, Legs sequence throughout the week and hitting the punching bag. My boxing technique has improved after training kickboxing in Paraguay for a couple weeks.
Guitar practice (3 out of 7 days): Learning guitar is something I’ve been trying to do slowly over a very long time - several years actually. I know different parts of a few songs that vary in their complexity, but I think I’m gonna have to head back to the basics and learn foundational music theory. At least it seems as though that would be a productive thing to do. Any insight on what I should do is appreciated!
What I’ve Been Reading
Finished reading The Go-Giver by Burg and Mann
Continued reading The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Heinlein
Started reading Memorabilia by Xenophon
Things I Published
Article from the 28th of last month:
Essay from August 1st:
Looking Forward
I am going to be transitioning away from flight training being my main focus. Not only does it not take up that much time (now that I’m no longer studying to learn the theory for tests - at least for a little while), but it’s also time to move onto a different cycle of The Preparation.
I’ve chosen to start an Entrepreneur cycle in which I will be starting my own business and putting all my effort into growing it for at least 3 months.
What is the business going to be?
Well, we are still getting everything together for it to work, but I plan on building an agricultural drone business in which I offer to do a multispectral scan of peoples’ property and, if they want to move forward, use a large spreader drone to spray seed, urea, or nitrogen in places where the soil in deficient.
Plus, we would like to start doing that on our own ranch, so it’s a win overall.
After that?
Well, the current plan is to head to Thailand in the beginning of next year to train Muay Thai for a few months.
I have never been to Asia, so it would be interesting anyway, but with a few months of intense training I would walk away as a much more capable fighter. Unique opportunities could come from that as well.
I need to do all of the planning for it, but I see no reason why that wouldn’t work out.
Anyway…
I’m still going to be flying a couple times a week to gain lots of experience. I definitely don’t want to stop that. But, it’ll be more of a background event as other things take its place in the foreground.
2-Year Mark Accomplishments
Below are listed the more notable accomplishments (not exactly in order) from these past two years:
- Learned basic conversational Spanish (and still improving)
- Became a Certified EMT
- Became a certified wildland firefighter
- Read dozens of books on economics, philosophy, sales, marketing and personal development along with essays and historical speeches
- Attended a Wrangler school in Wyoming
- Worked as a ranch hand on a regenerative cattle ranch
- Learned to operate farm equipment
- Learned to shoe horses
-Learned the basics of horsemanship
-Learned how to inspect and treat cattle
-Learned basics of accounting
- Completed Copywriting Course
- Worked for 26 days as an EMT on the 2024 Falls Fire in Oregon earned $600/day
- Regular practice of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and recently added Muay Thai
- Climbed 4 Fourteeners in Colorado (Mount Elbert, Mount Massive, Challenger Point, and Mount of the Holy Cross)
-Climbed most of a Thirteener in Colorado (Mount Guyot)
- Learned how to pack mules and lead them into the backcountry
- Finished closed-water scuba dive
- Did my first (tandem) skydiving jump
- Wrote 40+ essays
- Spent 100s of hours practicing to be competent in chess. Had private lessons with a chess master
-Completed a REMS (Rapid Extrication Module Support) course in South Dakota (Learned how to rappel, create raising systems, build lowering systems, and give and receive coordinates)
-Learned how to tie a variety of knots and hitches
-Became a public notary in Colorado
-Rock climbed for the first time
-Completed a motorcycle driving course
-Worked 2 menial jobs (Office Depot and Westside Pizza)
-Worked for 15 days on the Willamette fire complex in Oregon as an EMT making $600/day
-Completed 4 open water scuba dives and became an open water certified scuba diver
-Studied the basics of regenerative agriculture
-Learned how to butcher a cow
-Interviewed about The Preparation on 4 podcasts in 2024
-Completed the Athens and Sparta course from Hillsdale College
-Completed the Economics 101 course from Hillsdale College
-Raised and sold broiler chickens
-Completed the 21-day Competent Crew course in the Falkland Islands (sailed for the first time)
-Finished a course on pirates from Great Courses
-Learned how to conduct a pre-flight inspection, take off, and land small aircraft
-Passed the FAA written exam (90%)
-Underwent a 5-day Wilderness First Responder course in Cañon City, Colorado and became a Wilderness First Responder
-Took rock samples with geologists in Nevada
-Worked on an Induced Polarization geophysics crew in Gabbs, NV for 12 days
-Trained kickboxing in Paraguay for 2 weeks
-Completed course on Hannibal Barca
-Flight training in Uruguay
Are these updates informative? Are they useful? Entertaining?
Leave a comment below if you’ve got any suggestions or questions for me.
And don’t forget to send this to someone who might benefit.
I’ll see you next week.
-Maxim Benjamin Smith
I am acting as a guinea pig for a program which is meant to prepare young men for the future. This program is designed to be a replacement for the only three routes advertised to young men today - go to college, the military, or a dead-end job.
All of these typical routes of life are designed to shape us into cogs for a wheel that doesn’t serve us. Wasted time, debt, lack of skills, and a soul crushing job define many who follow the traditional route.
This program, which we can call “The Preparation”, is meant to guide young men on a path where they properly utilize their time to gain skills, build relationships, and reach a state of being truly educated. The Preparation is meant to set young men up for success.
What appeals to me about The Preparation is the idea of the type of man I could be. The path to becoming a skilled, dangerous, and competent man is much more clear now. I’ve always been impressed by characters like The Count of Monte Cristo, men who accumulated knowledge and skills over a long period of time and eventually became incredibly capable men.
Young men today do not have a guiding light. We have few mentors and no one to emulate. We have been told that there are only a few paths to success in this world. For intelligent and ambitious people - college is sold to us as the one true path. And yet that path seems completely uncertain today.
We desperately need something real to grab onto. I think this is it.
I’m putting the ideas into action. Will it work? I can’t be sure, but I’m doing my best. I’m more than 60 weeks into the program at this point. So far, so good.
You can follow me along as I follow the program. Each week, I summarize all that I did.
My objective in sharing this is three fold:
Documenting my progress holds me accountable.
I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.
For the parents who stumble upon this log, I want to prove to you that telling your children that the conventional path - college, debt, and a job is not the foolproof path you think it is.
Because you mentioned that you were inspired by "The Count Of Monte Cristo", and wanted to emulate Edmond Dantes, it caused me to re-read that classic book. The question that comes to my mind, is this: once you have gained many skills, and much expertise, then what? At the end of the novel, Edmond was faced with deciding what to do with the rest of his life. Would you be finding yourself in a similar dilemma, or do you have any long-range plans laid out? Just something I have been wondering about. But you're doing great, so keep up the good work.
"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" has one of the most fantastic audio books, complete w/ heavy accents. The best audio book I've heard is the reading of "The Pilgrim's Regress" by C.S. Lewis. The best part for me, knowing something of dialects, was how easy it was for me to picture the man for each voice.
Happy for you to have picked up a small dirtbike! Having found all the shortcuts on my BMX during high traffic hours made navigating Mesa way faster by alley on dirtbike when playing the "avoidance game."
°Cherishº "Fondly remembered, best left unsaid, not unspoken."
Blow more kisses to replace single finger salutes.
{They gave up lipstick for muzzles ;^}> (Will they give up lipstick for ammo? 8^)
Be well, May God nod to ward thee & thine!