Tag: Happiness

Categories
Travel

Day 1340 and Elbow Room

Americans have one of life’s finest luxuries in our protected and ample open spaces. Our cities are bustling economic hubs of opportunity, but unlike in many other countries American has an incredible heritage of publicly owned wilderness.

We may take this access to ample elbow room for granted. Having spent the weekend with a diverse groups of people with interests in how we manage and care for our American ecosystems, it was an incredible reminder of our vast shared inherited wealth.

One friend pointed out that other nations may have become accustomed to the density of a megapolis but Americans come by their space loving “don’t crowd me” individualism honestly. Another friend pointed out that many of us would find ourselves over-socialized in other culture.

Peacefully watching the water go by in the sunlight of late summer

I felt this especially as I’d been socializing with people I enjoy and respect. And even though I had an amazing time I am exhausted from even the love and joy of fellowship.

We’d picked a spacious spot where we had plenty of privacy. It was an intimate group working through topics close to all of our hearts. And yet after a long weekend, I’d like to be quiet and quite alone for just a little. Fortunately I can do just that.

Categories
Culture

Day 1339 and Alienation

I don’t feel strongly alienated from the world. I am not confident I have the right to be at war with my reality. Certainly I’m frustrated with aspects of my reality and I’ve taken actions to feel more at peace with my lot in life.

Perhaps because of this bias towards action, I’m familiar with many flavors of alienation. Those seeking to remedy it are the people who bring change.

Being dissatisfied with the world is the first step in applying your will to solve your dissatisfaction. Some of us will build great things by doing so.

Through that lens, I have had the good fortune to meet many people alienated from and by the world. They don’t wallow in it because the point in the dissatisfaction is to take action to remedy it.

Problems naturally range from daily quotidian ones to full system wide issues. Even small actions are enough to remedy the feelings that arise from feeling separate or out of step with the world. Modernity isn’t a permanent state even in its own age.

Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 1336 and Pick & Pack

It’s possible exposure therapy has worked for me. My worst recurring nightmare always involves packing. And yet recently I’ve come to find packing to be a neutral to even positive activity.

The dream has many forms. Sometimes it’s a permanent move, often it’s about rushing for some type of upcoming unexpected travel like a flight change or worse an “evacuation emergency” like a fire or natural disaster.

My subconscious likes to chew on packing up crucial items and leaving. I moved a lot as a child. My father also valued traveling while my mother and siblings did not.

I assume some of these nightmares are a related to those experiences. Instability is a classic reaction formation process for a child seeking safety. And I’m now as an adult finding that safety to be in reach.

I still have these dreams but I take a lot more pleasure in picking items for travel and packing them up now than I could have imagined. Even over the lifespan of this writing experiment I’ve seen changes in my emotional relationship to packing.

I have whole systems for managing the types of unexpected problems that crop up in modern travel like my three bag cascade. I’ve taken this activity that has had a negative valence for me and turned it into positive experiences.

I travel a lot for work and I can manage that even with health conditions. I have done work on disaster preparedness for myself and for my friends. Always be prepared is a terrific motto for the Boys Scouts and for myself.

Categories
Community Culture

Day 1329 and Monkey See Monkey Do

I finally finished listening to the Joe Rogan podcast with Peter Thiel. I prefer reading and writing but I put it on at 1.5 speed while exercising and eventually powered through

I usually prefer peace and quiet when I workout, but I thought it would be nice to catch up on popular culture. It’s something others enjoy so why not engage in some mimicry. And it did inspire some of yesterday’s writing if only tangentially.

I’m lucky enough to be internet friends with the peerless Luke Burgis. His hugely successful book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life introduced popular culture to philosopher Rene Girard.

I’d first encountered Girard at university and through Thiel’s influence pursued further understanding of the topic thanks to Luke’s scholarship on the topic. A quick orientation on the thesis is as follows.

What Gravity Is To Physics, Mimetic Desire Is To Psychology”

Why do you want the things that you want? Well to get back to the Rogan/Thiel podcast, humans are still “monkey see, monkey do” when taking action and pursuing a desire. Mimicry is a powerful explanatory principle for human nature.

Not knowing who or what to emulate is surely a source of anxiety in our current moment. What constitutes the good and the true seems especially unclear in our long now modernity. Which way western man? As social animals we look to each other. If you want to give others something worth mirroring you have that power. Equally who you choose to emulate impacts others. Choose wisely.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 1320 and Being “You-er”

You may recall the old aphorism about marriage. Men and women have very different goals for the institution and how it will or won’t change them.

“Men marry women with the hope they will never change. Women marry men with the hope they will change. Invariably they are both disappointed”

I don’t recall having any ambitions for changing my husband when we got married ten years ago. I thought quite highly of him when we got married. I still do.

The irony is that we have both changed significantly not because of any goal the other has for each other but because of the work we do together. Fast growing startups simply demand so much emotional change from their people.

A recent piece in the New York Times discussed how coaching has become the hack that drove emotional chances

Venture-backed startups simply must scale faster than all but the rarest of human beings can acquire emotional intelligence. As a result, startup founders and chief executives, many of whom are trained not in management but in software engineering, face extraordinary risk of coming unglued in ways that vaporize immense amounts of capital.

How Coaching Became Silicon Valley’s Hack for Therapy

Acquiring emotional intelligence quickly becomes a “do or die” skill in startups. And most of us do die. Ego death in mediation like jhanna are within reach because failure and rebirth are such common experiences for the technologists that build quickly moving companies.

Both my husband Alex and I have done family systems therapy as well as multiple forms of professional and personal coaching. If Alex didn’t want change from me as his wife then he is surely disappointed. As his wife if I wanted change from him I very much did get it.

Neither one of us is disappointed, aphorisms aside. If anything, as we’ve done more work to acquire the emotional intelligence required of us to growth and thrive in our work, we’ve become more ourselves.

There is a real joy in becoming “you-er” as essential personality, skills and ambitions become clearer. It’s well worth investing in therapy and coaching to become yourself. Being “you-er” is quite freeing. It’s hard to be disappointed by that outcome.

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
Aesthetics

Day 1316 and August Has Its Moments

I wasn’t expecting August to be much fun but I’m on an enjoyable roll through the first week. Maybe the politicians will listen to us and maybe they won’t. But stuff still gets built no matter what the news says so I’m just working what’s in front of me with my people.

We’ve had relatively good luck with weather this week and the fires have blessedly not been blowing into the valley. Which does a lot to improve moods. It’s cool, bright and you can breathe.

Add in a few prime season tomatoes, some fresh basil, a Japanese watermelon at its peak, and you’ve got the making of a great evening. With sunset coming earlier every day I can almost feel like fall might come after all.

The simple pleasures and a lot of work keep the summer from driving you too crazy. But if you need a little crazy might I interest you in some thoughts on ratfucking and campaign semiotics.

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
Startups

Day 1312 and Phew Slow Down

I haven’t been paying too much to the news of the week as there has been too much to do. After weeks of drama in the world of domestic politics I’d like to be doing something more productive than watching. Silicon Valley infighting

I’m always happiest when I’m working with founders and there is slightly more demand than supply at the moment on the Julie . This is a good thing for me but less so for the founders and I’d like more capacity for them.

I’ve been working from my gut (honed from now 18 years in startup land) and the results of our investing honestly so much better than I could have envisioned.

It’s unusual to be able to do real performance driven work in the first 2-3 years of a fund cycle when you are small and pressed but somehow we are here without single zero in even the riskiest of spaces.

It’s all markups and progress and it feels almost too good to be true and I’m so excited to make the case for where chaotic.capital goes from here. But wouldn’t mind being able to catch my breath. Such is the nature of startups. It can be mostly eating glass but we are actually doing the thing.

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.