Not a Moment of Ease

A Radical Alternative to College

Sunday, February 1st, 2026

Writing to you from Chiang Mai, Thailand

First Muay Thai fight experience in Chiang Mai

Today marks two weeks since I arrived in Chiang Mai to train Muay Thai as part of the Fighter Cycle from The Preparation. Some days go by fast, some go by slow, but overall it feels as though I’ve already been here for months.

Analyzing the whole experience thus far (which is easy to constantly do when going back and forth from training to sitting in a small room) has brought me to the very solid conclusion that this time here, more than anything, is much more mentally difficult than physically difficult.

Let me explain…

You can drag your body along to do things even when you’re tired, sore, and fatigued. It sucks, no doubt, but it can be done.

The most difficult thing is training hard, leaving the gym, and coming back to consciousness about the situation you’ve put yourself in. You’re surrounded by unfamiliarity, swarmed with discomfort, and all your mind continues to do is ask you again and again, “How many days are left?”

I have 27 more days here — that realization was one of the first things that came to mind when I woke up.

The reason why this is as mentally difficult for me as it is is because I’m counting down the days until I see my fiancée again. Every time I think about how much more time needs to pass I feel my face heat up and the pit in my stomach grow heavier. This feeling looms in the background all day every day and only disappears during brief moments of focus on training — or as I’ve been doing a lot of recently — writing.

What to do?

I’ve felt this feeling in the past, probably seven or eight times, but it never gets easier.

How many times have I left do go and pursue something new? I couldn’t count at this point. I was away from her when I learned the foundations of mule packing in Colorado, when I went to work on wildfires in Oregon, when I was learning to fly Cessnas in the states, when I was working on the ranch in Uruguay, when I worked on a geophysics crew in Nevada, when I learned to sail in the Falkland Islands, when I went to a rope rescue course in South Dakota…

Months and months without her throughout our relationship hasn’t made things easier over time in the slightest. It’s only gotten harder.

For some reason, I assumed that my mental ability to not feel the pain (or even dampen it) would have hardened — allowing these times away to be easier.

I suppose it’s a good sign for our relationship that it isn’t easy!

Anyway…

I’m not telling you this to whine, only to write about how things actually are here, that way you can better understand the difficulties you may also experience if you take this path. The Preparation has completely changed my life for the better. Yet, due to the fact that you are engaging with life head-on, again and again, there are many forms of temporary suffering that come with it.

Last note about this: Reflecting back on the past 2 and a half years…the times of progress that were accompanied by suffering were some of the most beautiful.

Moving on…

What to do about this great mental challenge?

I spoke to my father this past week about these mental difficulties that were starting to bubble to the surface yet again. He, as a man who’s always in my corner and absolutely the best man I know, offered a temporary aid for the remaining days I’m here. But, that wasn’t until after he told me about the training he underwent after he signed up for the army many years ago.

There were eight weeks of basic training. All of which, as he said, were hell. Every moment of every day sucks. As he said, “The army has a great way of making the most awesome things suck”. It was constant suffering made worse by the fact that you could only make one call home each week…with no guarantee that the people you love would be home to pick up the phone.

8 weeks of suck.

On top of that, he (after a short break) went off to spend another 8 weeks in Advanced Training after that.

While he was telling me this I was comparing my current situation to the one he faced quite a long time ago. He had 8 weeks of Basic Training to get through…I only have 6 total weeks to get through. He had no agency over his own time…I can choose when and how I want to train, as well as how I’d like to spend the remainder of the day. He could make one call a week to the people he loved…I can be in contact with everyone I love at nearly any time during the day.

Comparison after comparison was passing through my mind and I only began to realize more and more just how much easier I have it.

“All I did to combat the suffering was write. I’d carry around these small notebooks in my breast pocket and write about what was happening any time I had a free moment. To this day I wish I had those notebooks…I’d pay one million dollars if I could get them back”, he then told me.

Writing eased the pain of the moment by causing him to view his situation from “30,000 feet”. All of the pain was transmuted into the writing — at least that’s how he described it to me.

So, his temporary solution for me: Write everyday.

Since our conversation I’ve been writing frequently and will continue to do so for the rest of my time here. I have to say…it’s been hugely helpful for me in terms of viewing the bigger picture and taking things day by day.

Training

Training has been going alright. Monday was the best day by far because I told one of the coaches that I want to fight by the end of February. All of a sudden, he brought a young Thai boy over to punch me repeatedly in the stomach after I’d finish a round on the pads. Then — and I swear they came out of nowhere — 2 or 3 other Thai boys appeared. The guy holding the pads said something to them that I didn’t understand and then told me to hold my hands above my head.

The Thai boys (one on either side of me) started throwing leg kicks to my stomach until I backed away from the pain.

It made me smile.

Other than that I’ve been feeling as though I’m just going through several intense workouts each week and not learning very much. Today I realized that I really only have 3 weeks to prepare for a fight. So, I have to figure out how to learn and improve as much as possible within that timeframe.

I have to train harder.

First Experience

This past week I went to watch Muay Thai fights for the first time.

It shifted my attitude toward my time here because up until then I had only seen what the training looked like. Now, with the ring in front of me, loud music, bright lights, crowds, and people getting hurt I realized what I’m training for.

As a side note, I made a friend here who happens to be a very good guy. He’s also seriously dedicated to training and the art of Muay Thai as a whole. He fought that night and gave me the privilege to film it for him. He went up against a Japanese kickboxer who was a very hard puncher.

In the end, after a flurry of knees and elbows, my friend split his face open and seemed to break his arm in the final round.

The winner was obvious.

Stunned, he climbed out of the ring and walked to a back room where the fighters prepared for their fights. He has given everything he had to the point that he threw up from exhaustion.

To put it plainly, I was impressed.

Although he is a much better fighter than I am, I intend to win my fight in a similar fashion: all out war.

Perhaps I’ll talk about this experience in the future. I’ll see at least a few more fights before I leave and, as I said, participate in one as well. It’s a wild experience and very difficult to describe the atmosphere in an intelligent manner, but I’ll try.

Additional Events

• Met with a subscriber in Chiang Mai for coffee.

• Received some training from my friend to improve my form and movement with blocks/punches.

Reading

• Continued reading Fate is the Hunter by Ernest Gann

This was a short update. Not too much to talk about at the moment. Plus, I have to get to bed so I can train hard and write well tomorrow morning. Much more coming in the future so stay tuned!

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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

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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:

1. Documenting my progress holds me accountable.

2. I hope these updates will show other young men that there is another path we can take.

3. 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.