Tag: Commitment

Categories
Community Startups

Day 1321 and Credit Where Credit Is Due

I can’t get into the details but I learned today that there is an internal metric at an institution based around work I was personally responsible for achieving.

Literally none of the credit has accrued to me because ultimately the thing didn’t really work but the downstream effects of the social credibility I brought really benefit someone I am not sure I’d have wanted to benefit. If I’d had a choice which I very much didn’t. Sometimes your social capital accrues to people you don’t even like.

I like having social capital to spare but I didn’t realize that someone was profiting off of it to such an intense degree till today. Power laws rule everything around me and it’s actually good. Just funny how little credit you month get for something and how much it might benefit someone else.

I don’t even know if I can even politely point it out simply because it’s déclassé to do so. I’ll have to enjoy the the little irony on my own. And believe me I am. Maybe it gets shared in a small circle of folks for whom making money for jerks it’s a fact of life. But I’ll take the credit privately.

Categories
Startups

Day 1318 and Intention

I am experiencing a peace about the future I didn’t fully expect to find. I’ve been lucky enough to have a number of long term efforts start to paint a picture of success.

I began a process of examination of my last several years somewhere in the last half decade as I prepare myself and my work the next stage of growth. I’ve made a number of fairly significant decisions as my idea of where the future is headed and how I myself expect to live in it. A lot of these choices are public and revealed preferences. I don’t make it a secret.

I’ve been considered a doomer only because I think one has to look with calm and clear eyes at the problems in front of you. Only then can you really build optimism about your capacity to improve. Being merely positive isn’t a bad thing, but positivity is only driving you towards success if you are planning realistically. A good attitude is just a starting point.

I’ve taken things slowly. Sometimes it feels painfully so. But the intentions I had to be prepared to live in a more chaotic world means I live a stable life now even as daily uncertainties exist for everyone.

My intention is to approach building the future with optimism. The problems are large but I work with many focused and sober minded people who actually can and do build solutions. Fighting the future won’t do much. But who says it’s got to be a fight? Maybe we can bring on better things.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1314 and Picking Up Good Vibrations

I am so tired. A wave of good news, good startups, good luck and good vibes has been coming my way. Pet Sounds may be Brian Wilson’s best work but good vibrations are a universal broadcasting frequency.

I am choosing to tap into those good vibes even if I’m concerned about well just about everything. There is nothing to be done but work the problems in front of me.

No blackpilling

So I’ll keep nurturing my good vibes. I won’t be blackpilled. I can make a difference and so can you.

If you want to send some good vibes and solutions my way, I’ve got some sort of neck pain from tension in my traps that is messing with me fiercely and I’d like to work through that. That’s the level of problem in front of me that’s solvable. That’s a vibration that can be raised. Maybe you’ve got some stuff you need help with. Hit me up with solutions or problems.

Categories
Finance Politics

Day 1313 and Ridiculousness

I enjoy noting numbers that represent milestones (100, 1000) for my daily writing habit. But I’m really a sucker for the cool dates. Today is day thirteen hundred and thirteen of writing every single day.

1313 is terrific. It’s an odd number. It’s also a composite number. 1313’s prime factors are 11, 7, and 17 so really a fan favorite set of numbers just on mathematical properties alone.

I asked perplexity for a synopsis on the numerology and enjoyed the very woo woo response. 1 represents new beginnings, leadership and self assertion. 3 represents creativity, self expression and embracing change.

I am sure everyone would like new beginnings that have the confidence to embrace. I’ve got so much going right I can almost tune out the ridiculousness of the moment. Ridiculousness incidentally was a 2011 MTV a clip show of licensed viral internet content that somehow ran for 1428 episodes.

Isn’t it funny what has staying power? Sometimes you’ve just got to keep at the ridiculous things in check and keep at the thing no matter how ridiculous it looks to others.

Maybe you unwind some things and rebalance yourself and keep at it. Or maybe you bring a dead bear cub to Peter Lugers. The world is filled with ridiculousness. Don’t let it stop you. Every day is a new beginning where you can lead yourself through change.

Categories
Startups

Day 1311 and Feels Like Winning

I am exhausted. A bunch of wins have come back to back to back and I’m doing the “wait are we winning” dance in my head.

It’s strange dance because I want to enjoy the victories of our crew but it’s always a bit of a whirlwind to wonder and second guesss “is this really happening?”

Startup life is not terribly linear. And almost nothing happens quickly. So it’s easy to question if you’ve made the right calls. I am often quite hard on myself as to whether I am working hard enough or long enough or just being enough in general.

And then when you see some evidence that your work actually is enough it can be hard to accept. Especially if things are otherwise dire for others. Somehow it’s never the reverse for me. When it’s boom times I don’t think “why not me” but when tough and things are going well I will often think “wow is this really happening?”

All of which is to say a lot of stuff is going so well that all I want to do is take a nap. But I’ve been on phone calls, texts and in documents all day because working Saturdays is actually fun for me and the people we work with. Which absolutely feels like winning.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1310 and Zonked

I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Between one thing and another I got about five hours of sleep. Adult circadian rhythms being what they are I still woke at the usual time.

I had a busy morning and afternoon so I pushed through it. Unexpectedly a number of pieces of my investing work were happening all at once. So much for a slow August right?

I was able to get through everything on my calendar but I’m I was starring down a bunch of work even at midafternoon. And I found myself unable to keep my eyes open.

I was zonked. Slept from 2 till I was woken up for a bird dinner. I’ll admit I’m planing to sleep as soon as I can wrap up my evening routine.

I’ve got so much to get through over the weekend. I have two rounds I’m working on (if you like hardtech slide into my DMs), juggling a bunch of inbound, and I’m gearing up for the fall. So maybe I need a little extra sleep.

And to think just a few days ago I was completely despondent over fire season, the sadness of American politics and my own seasonal affective disorder with high summer. If things keep up at this pace it won’t be summer much longer.

Categories
Media Politics

Day 1300 and Close The Loop

The last few weeks or so of history happening has felt agonizingly long. Almost inescapably so. I first wrote about the concept of the long now on Day 326 in 2021 after being inspired by Epsilon Theory.

The pandemic made it harder to believe in the future because the present became a holding pattern. Ben Hunt at Epsilon Theory calls this The Long Now.

The more we put off investing in a future the more the long now stretches on. We borrow against all the things that could build us a better tomorrow. And we fall back.

Being trapped in the long now never serves your own interests. Your priorities shouldn’t be tangled into the frozen fear of a worse tomorrow. Every day we have the chance to close the loop on something in our lives and bring the future we actually want a little closer to reality.

Having now written for thirteen hundred days in a row I have a sense of both my own progress but also a reminder of how long it takes to build something when the world is dragging at your attention at every turn.

Closing the loop in your life means not letting yourself be dragged from your priorities. Setting those priorities should be in your control no matter how much is happening. It doesn’t have to be bigger than your own life but you have more agency than you think.

Categories
Culture Politics

Day 1296 and Mandate of Heaven

If you’ve been educated in the Western Cannon you are probably familiar with hubris. One does not defy the will of the gods.

The evolution of hubris from ancient Greece to modernity has extended our understanding of the prideful ego’s journey to arrogance. To be arrogant suggests a break with reality.

The term arrogance comes from the Latin adrogare, meaning “to feel that one has a right to demand certain attitudes and behaviors from other people”. To arrogate means “to claim or seize without justification… To make undue claims to having”

Who can claim the Mandate of Heaven? To even dare to do in many faiths suggests hubris. The breaching of limits and violations of the natural order suggest that Man should not suggest he knows the will of God.

And yet we push against the natural order all the time. Sometimes it is even demanded by the mythology of our moment. To make bold claims is to be sure you have a right to make them.

Watching the American mood witness invoking the will of any god is heady stuff. It is from the land of myths and those programs run on old operating systems. It’s not very hard to crash systemically when running on old programs. But I’d guess that is obvious to more than a few of us.

Categories
Culture

Day 1292 and Well Heeled

Kayfabe is the art of being a real fake in professional wrestling. You are cast in a role and it is maintained for the audience. Many fans would agree that the most role is the heel.

A heel isn’t exactly a villain but they are antagonists and rule breakers.

 “The role of a heel is to get ‘heat,’ which means spurring the crowd to obstreperous hatred, and generally involves cheating and any other manner of socially unacceptable behavior.”

The Art of the Heel – Baffler.

When we can no longer agree on a hero, it is the heel who moves opinions. A personal mythos is more easily punctured than Kayfabe in the internet age of total recall. You step out of your assigned role and the hero’s journey is revealed to be a fraud. But a heel is always breaking rules.

We are in a well heeled age. Everywhere you turn is an antagonist. Cheering and jeering, we the audience long to see our heat applied. The heel relishes it and we relish their antagonism.

Would you rather be loved or feared? Machiavellians can debate but the audience loves a heel because they fear a world where no rules can ever be broken. His freedom represents their own.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1289 and Gap Lounge Pant

My favorite item of clothing is a pair of cotton straight leg lounge pants from the Gap.

A light but body skimming 93% cotton to 7% elastane blend with a simple tie that never felt constrictive. It retailed for $29 and was sold under their “Love” which loosely merchandised with GapBody.

Gap Lounge Pant in Black

They were perfect. I bought two pairs every year and simply never worried about comfortable home wear. Which was a big deal as I had a few years of being quite sick so these pants were life savers.

Gap seems to have stopped selling them sometime in the past two or three years. The core product number is 539570 if you are curious. The last time I was able to buy any was November 2020 and I purchased four of them.

The holy grail of bought pants

If you click into the old product page you will see 1500 reviews. It was a popular item. People on Reddit are looking for them. Mutuals of mine gave them at friends gift events. Leigh was wearing them when she tweeted me that.

Leigh and her friends love them.

And so I’ve set off on a mission to find out why these very popular pants have stopped being made. I’d happily purchase the pattern from the Gap if I could find the vendor for the fabric. I’d put my own money into acquiring it from the brand if they aren’t interested in booting it back up. I want these pants back in my life. I even went so fair as to email the VP of Merchandising at Gap Inc today. Maybe I’ll get lucky and she emails me back.


I apologize for the intrusion but I thought perhaps as the leader of merchandising at Gap you may be the executive who can answer a strange question. 

What happened to the cotton Gap Lounge Pant? 

They were the best lounge pants on the market. I bought them for over a decade. And they are simply gone. The product number is 539570

I very much want to buy more of them as they are my daily wear and I will pay whatever it takes to get more.  And is there anything I can do to buy any remaining dead stock of it?
Can I help your team
make a case to to bring it back? Is it possible for me to acquire the pattern and fabric from the corporation so I can have them made myself?