Categories
Aesthetics

Day 485 and Reality Shows

I’ve been watching Netflix’s reality dating shows this past week. I’m absolutely obsessed with the Nick and Vanessa Lachey properties in which twenty and thirty somethings do preposterous social experiments because they want to be married that badly. I’ve now watched Love is Blind and the Ultimatum.

I’m not typically a reality show person. I’m a yuppie startup bro living in the golden age of prestige tv. I like expensive scripted dramas and the media has provided me with ample options. But I’ve often wondered how much I’m missing out on popular culture by avoiding reality television.

I’ve got girlfriends who are obsessed with the Bachelor but I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to focus on unscripted tv. I admire the hell out of the product empire the Kardashians have built but I’ve never actually watched their anchor television show. There is clearly a deep cultural cross current that reality television has in America and I’ve largely let it pass me by. Well except for having to live through the Trump administration.

I’m particularly interested in how these reality shows reflect our cultural desires. I wrote this week about how the vibe shift is showing an emerging camp of right wing counter culture. The single minded obsession with marriage and traditional family structures in both Love is Blind and the Ultimatum make me think they both reflect the cultural power of traditionalism. Twenty five year olds offering ultimatums to their partners that they must get married now is a bit wild to me as a geriatric millennial. It was considered a bit retro to be married before 30 during the Girlboss new left Obama years. That’s clearly changed.

I’m curious what else is changing culturally that will be reflected in reality television. Love is the most universal so perhaps I’m projecting a bit on the medium. Maybe marriage is easier to transpose onto unscripted television. But I’d be willing to bet there are a lot of other traditionalist vibe camps that will arise on America’s favorite entertainment genre.

Categories
Chronic Disease Startups

476 and Temptation

When I am feeling healthy I love to over do it. Most days I feel basically fine. Which is a significant improvement over even two years ago. I was living a little low. But maybe once or twice a week now I will just feel terrific.

Today is one of those days. I woke up early after a restorative night of sleep. I didn’t miss anything on my extensive wellness regimen. I was just nailing the day.

The sad part about doing wellness because you have to for a chronic disease is that you aren’t even ever hotter for it. Healthy women be doing yoga & taking supplements and practicing wellness and it’s a fucking Instagram campaign. I do all that shit and at the end I’m “ok.” It’s actually pretty demoralizing. I engage in flawless yuppie next generation wellness because it’s actually keeping me alive.

With this context it’s clear that I resent having to take good care of myself. It feels like a burden. So when I have a really good day. When I’m just energetic and focused and, yes moisturized and thriving, I’m also plotting how to undermine myself.

Because I felt terrific I just hand to indulge in it I took a bunch of calls and did a bunch of portfolio work. I went for an hour long creekside walk to discuss some communication strategy with Alex. I was vibing. Until I wasn’t. I crossed some little threshold and realized I needed to pull back the energy expenditure. I recognized I have given into temptation this time.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 473 and Technical Difficulty

I have a long-standing appointment on Monday. It’s had the same Zoom link for almost two years now. A function of pandemic necessity has made this link one of the anchors of my calendar.

It wasn’t working today. I got on at 415pm and was faced with a “host is in other meeting” sign. I thought ok whatever I’ll wait. But then I started to blame myself. Maybe I got the link wrong? I went back to my calendar and clicked in. Still wasn’t working. Let me reboot the application. Still isn’t working.

Needless to say my mind kept winding itself up about all the ways in which this minor technical hangup was obviously my fault. This despite any significant amount of evidence that it was in fact a mistake or error on my part.

And it’s just a fascinating thing to see how much I’m willing to accept all of the blame for something. Even in an instance where I bear no responsibility at all for the outcome. I suspect I’m not alone in this. The feminine urge to apologize is a punch line. Hell it just made it into Saturday Night Live joke this week. Ironic as Lizzo was hosting and she is one of the least apologetic woman I’ve ever seen.

I’d like to think it’s a kind of small narcissism that drives these obsessions with being at fault. To think that we have so much power everything that has gone wrong must be directly attributable to our actions. Except women being gluttons for punishment couldn’t ever enjoy the fun kind of narcissism where everything is a function of your genius. I’d love that on the next lifetime if I’m honest.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 466 and A Painting Without Shadows

I take therapy really seriously. I’d put being emotionally capable of managing myself at the very top of my life priorities. Honestly it should be number one and if it isn’t I need to stop and ask myself why. Being an adult requires an intimate understand of one’s emotions and the capacity to share them with others.

To further this goal I do a weekly session as well as group work. It’s meaningful to me and I recommend to all my founders that they find a way to get into coaching as well as therapy. Taking care of your own inner child is the only way you are going to be able to lead a team. If you want to build a billion dollar company and manage thousands of people you better be able to manage yourself first.

Where I think people can go wrong is treating this process as if it’s one of optimization. Do I think founders who have taken the time to understand themselves do better? Absolutely. It’s pretty rare that someone’s coping mechanisms help them reach the heights of their talents. A chip on your shoulder is great but eventually you learn to transcend it.

I think this is because if you don’t understand yourself you are a painting without shadows. It’s flat. Boring. Doesn’t read as true or trustworthy. Maybe you are really good at showing emotions to get your way. Lots of people are but if they just off enough from genuine then it reads as the uncanny valley of empathy. People just know when you are hiding something. And hiding your dark side means hiding your shadows. Without them you are a flat human.

A painting without shadows wouldn’t be any good. You without your shadows wouldn’t be who you are. The best of you exists because of the worst of you. I really do hope more people are able to see that truth and love themselves.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 465 and One Step Closer

I often start solving my problems by posting them on Twitter. If I need to understand a subject I’ll just ask. If I am trying to get to someone I think I’m only a degree or two removed from I’ll just ask Twitter. There is some powerful magic in asking the group mind to come together for you.

I am an avid participant in this practice of using social media to get one step closer to your goals. When I see people asking questions I try to answer if it’s in my particular expertise. I have an almost reflexive need to check my Rolodex for people. If I think I’ve got a hookup with someone where a little social capital goes a long way I will absolutely ask for favors for other people.

I just think it’s the golden rule. Do unto others. And if you take that seriously (and as a Christian I do) then it’s your obligation to try to pitch in on the global game of making life reflect our values. I do genuinely think this is how luck gets made. If karma exists it’s part of the great game of seeing the human in each other. Empathy is the only true super power. Everything else is grasping to hold a fraction of its catalytic energy. Sometimes a little effort on your part can completely transform someone else’s life.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 457 and Pedicure

I did something today I haven’t done in two years. I got my nails done. And it felt so luxurious and yet also somehow normal. This regular act of grooming had once been a staple self care activity but today felt transformed into a ritual of joy.

I feel free and lucky in this moment. Getting a pedicure done means I have someplace to be where someone will see me. It means I am healthy enough to be going somewhere. It means I have a desire to be somewhere. All this cascading luck mixed to show me that my life was ok. I felt so much gratitude and self love in that moment. I am ok. The ok-ness of the universe in an act.

I know it sounds heady and existential and also a bit ridiculous as I elevate the act of a pedicure. But truly I feel so good about where I am in life that I can get my toes painted coral.

Also it’d worth noting that less glamorously cutting my toenails is hard for me to do on my own because of my spondylitis. So a necessity and a luxury in its own physical way. It is a quality of life improvement. So I’m grateful that this is where I am. May we all get little joys of normal in this chaotic world.

Categories
Travel

Day 454 and Up In The Air

When I first started this experiment in daily writing my schedule was quite predictable. We were in the middle of the pandemic and each day could be relied upon to deliver some consistency. But now that era of at home living is slipping away for abled people, even marginally at risk folks like myself have to contend with new challenges.

In this case, the challenge is writing before being offline. It’s noon in Frankfurt. I’ll be catching a flight back to a Colorado early this afternoon. I’ll land in the late afternoon Mountain Time but for me it will be Thursday already. So I have to consider if writing on the proper day in both Germany and Colorado counts, or if I could leave it till when I land. I decided to do it ahead of time as it is both in the spirit of the daily consistent writing pattern but also I’ll be far too tired to do it after a ten hour flight.

What’s a fascinating to me is that this one big travel block felt like a one off. But once I broke the seal on being up in the air I felt like I could do it again. So I’ve booked a trip to Miami next week. And then Montana in May to spend time with friends working remotely and scouring for homesteads. And from there I’ll be headed to Austin in June. And so the schedule of travel renews.

It’s not exactly the new normal. Travel is still a nightmare. I just had a wheezing fit of tachycardia because of a security line issue and had to beg to have my mask off so I could take medicine and slow my heart. Flying is still a bit of a nightmare. But it feels good to take flight again. I am spiritually ready to be up in the air again.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 448 and Disappointment

I’m feeling disappointed in myself. I want to shake the feeling as I’ve done nothing wrong that warrants punishment. But the feeling of disappointment is lingering which is a double cruelty I’m perpetuating on myself.

I have been pushing myself physically. I know this has consequences. And yet I’m frustrated by my body reacting exactly as I know it will when I run myself down. And worse than that, I find myself negotiating with my body to justify pushing just a little bit more. What if I take this medicine? Will that buy me more time? How dangerous will it be if I just keep ignoring how I feel so I can push a little bit more for a little bit longer? I’m rationalizing what amounts to self harm all because I want my body to be something it cannot be.

I feel like I should know better than to be so cruel to myself. I should let it go of the foolish need to push. What I need is sleep and my routine. I should take my medicine and instead of using the feeling of relief it brings to push, I should use the relief to rest in comfort so I heal and recover.

I hate that I keep relearning the same basic lessons of chronic disease over and over again. But hating myself for being disappointing is of course the pattern I need to break. It defeats the point. The self is not an attack surface. Being disappointed serves no purpose in this moment. It’s not driving me to be better. It’s driving me to be worse. So I’m letting it go. And I’m hoping tomorrow I’ll go a little easier on myself.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 446 and For Myself

Some days I forget I picked up the habit of writing every day for myself. It might feel like an obligation or a burden or even a sacrifice. Today it feels like a sacrifice. I want to be spending my time elsewhere. But I’ve committed to doing this habit every single day for myself. And when my desire to write conflicts with another desire, it’s a challenge to form a good narrative.

I have to ask myself honestly what priorities do I put off so that I can always write every single day? Am I sacrificing other things to give myself this daily writing habit? Of course, the answer is yes. Every act, every decision, every time we apply our focus it is a choice to pick one priority over another.

I am in this moment sacrificing time with someone so I can maintain this habit. I pulled myself away from someone to put finger to keyboard (a much less romantic turn of phrase than pen to paper) so I could prioritize myself and my habits.

And that’s ok. I want to put this habit first for the few minutes it takes me. It doesn’t make me a bad person to pull away to do this for myself. I don’t need to justify it. This is what I choose. Getting comfortable with the responsibility for my choices is the bigger challenge. As it is for us all.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 438 and That’s Enough

I attended a schooling system developed by an Austrian man called Rudolf Steiner. It’s commonly known as Waldorf schools. One of its hallmarks is a lack of comparative grades.

Steiner believed that grades forced teachers and students into a curriculum that taught to the middle of the class. The tyranny of the median student meant slower students felt stupid and frustrated and smarter students felt bored and disengaged. Only the average child did well in a graded system. And no one is ever truly average. A graded system fails us all.

Waldorf schools teach a pedagogy that is holistic and geared to meeting each individual child at their unique level. It uses a variety of techniques like having children make their own textbooks (called main lesson books) so they are never conforming to some idealized medium standard. At it’s highest ideal it means being compared only to your past performance. You don’t compare yourself to other students. There is no ideal grade at which a student will think “I am the best” as that is fruitless. How will the best student ever bother to improve if they always get a perfect score? Grades hamper the cultivation of genius.

This sounds idyllic right? Always improving yourself without external markers that say you are good or bad or even average. That’s the dream. A perfect schooling system. And if I am being honest it absolutely was what provided me with the curiosity and desire to always be learning. It sustains my career now.

But every shining light casts a shadow. A system without grades. A system without comparisons or averages also means you never ever get to win. I never got a gold star as child. I never got an A. I never got a trophy. I missed out on millennial laziness cultural tropes. I would have killed for a participation trophy as a kid.

Because nothing was ever good enough. Because I always knew I could do more. I could always improve. There was no resting on your laurels. I never got a chance to say I was the best in my class. I never got to win. Because I internalized there was no winning. There was only ever improving. I was always improving. I felt like Sisyphus. Except the bolder never rolled down the hill. The hill just kept on going. The mountain had no summit. It was only improving. I never felt like I could rest. I never felt like something was good enough. Because tautologically it couldn’t be.

The consequence of this system for me as an adult is that I never feel like I’ve done well such that I can ever rest. Even if I’m objectively the best compared to others, I remember the ethos of school. The school that said next time you can do better. Next time you can push harder. Next time you can improve even more. If you’ve ever seen the movie Gattaca it’s the scene where the hero wins because he never ever saves anything for the swim back.

I’ve yet to balance the shadow cast by the light of Waldorf school. I desperately want to feel like I’ve won. Not because I need to feel better than anyone else. But because I struggle to stop. I yearn for rest. To have a finish line. To have some mile marker or trophy or award that says I’ve done enough. One day I’d like to give myself that. Maybe I should find a trophy or ribbon store and buy myself something that says “That’s Enough.”