It took me a long time to come to terms with the idea of investing in a home. I’ve moved 38 times over the course of my life. The constant instability in my childhood gave me the capacity to tolerate a lot of uncertainty. It’s an incredible piece of leverage for living life. But it’s a super power born out of trauma.
Give me a place to stand, a lever long enough and a fulcrum and I can move the Earth
Archimedes
When your normal is starting over again and again, eventually you become comfortable living in chaos. I can achieve a lot things fall apart and life starts anew. It’s why I work with early stage startups. The current market and the volatility inherent in the chaos makes me feel safe.
But there are limits to chaos. I can’t live in it perpetually and make gains without some kind of safe harbor. Otherwise it’s just a repeat of my childhood and I’ll constantly be starting from zero. What I really want is a safe home so I can take advantage of the chaos around me. I want a place to stand so I can move the world. While everyone else is out surviving the chaos I want to have a firm ground under my feet.
The world is going through massive changes and constant upheaval. That’s an opportunity of a lifetime. All of those moves I made prepared me to shine during this moment. But if I cannot have some about of safety, the land on which to stand, then I’ll merely be surviving yet another move. And I’m over that. This time the world moves for me.
I love settling into a new home by going grocery shopping. I’ve had the opportunity to be in a new city for an extended period twice now this year. And each time the joy I’ve taken in going to pick up groceries is palpable. Going shopping for food is my happy place.
I’m in Bozeman with dear friends and one of them noticed just how excited I was for the grocery run. We had a mostly empty fridge and I made a beeline to the nicest grocery store in town. It was a hybrid fancy yuppie grocery wrapped inside a big box grocery store. It’s a chain local to the pacific and mountain west called Rosaurs. I highly recommend it.
A grocery store is a powerful space. I’ve written before about my love for the American grocery store. I think it’s unique in its position as a functional and emotional retail space. It needs enough structure and repeatable patterns that anyone can shop a store and have an intuitive sense of where the basics are merchandised. But grocery relies on novelty and newness as much as any other retail store for driving order size and additional Martin.
The presentation of new brands and new products is fraught. The need to display something new competes against the need for repeatability and ease of locating core items in grocery. Grocery can be seen as human nature reflecting core tensions as it balances desire and safety. We yearn to feel nurtured by food but also crave to be stimulated by new tastes.
I spent an hour and a half wandering the aisles filling out my grocery list. I had done meal planning and had specific needs for the weeks meals. But I am also an inveterate shopper looking to feel excited by what was on the shelves.
To this day that I can look at any item in the store and buy it remains a surprise to me. It’s a luxury that never fails to delight me. If I want to get something I can. There is no budget or restriction on me like I remember as a small child. And yet I still couldn’t bring myself to buy a full size Turmeric spice jar. Reflecting back childhood emotions I didn’t even realize I had. A small reminder of how much seemingly mundane acts like grocery shopping can reflect much bigger things.
I usually have therapy on Mondays. I stack all my emotional work into the first day of the week so I can be my most present for everyone in my life. But today I just couldn’t show up for my emotional work. I’m in a lot of pain and a bunch of things are up in the air professionally and personally. I’m just not able to be here.
Thankfully I’m lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are working on deepening their emotional practice. Someone was able to help me see that I wasn’t able to show up even though I physically showed up. They did it with one insight too.
Responsibility is having ability to respond
One insight and my mind was blown 🤯. In that moment I didn’t realize I didn’t have the ability to respond. I was abdicating responsibility. I was reactive. It wasn’t under my control. I couldn’t preserve my ability to today today. I was not preserving my response ability.
I quietly bowed out of therapy for the evening. Well not so quietly I cried a little and shared my disappointment. I needed to take responsibility for myself in that moment. So in order to preserve my capacity to respond I had to make the decision to bow out. I needed to be the adult that would take care of whatever portion of me was incapable of working through the physical pain of that moment. My inner child needed me to parent and I did. Now hopefully I can continue that streak through mealtime, bath time and bedtime so that my adult and my inner child can respond to the best of our ability to tomorrow.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
I’ve been bouncing around a little in the zeitgeist and media frenzy of last few days. I’ve not done a great job of processing the Russian war in Ukraine. I’ve got ambient stresses related to the generally chaotic moment so the acceleration of conflict felt both inevitable and unnerving. And yet we might outrun the apocalypse yet. Doomer optimism has never seemed so apt a term.
But that thriving only occurs when I prioritize myself first. If I can’t parent my inner child through her fears and reactions, than how can anyone else trust that I will come through for them? Mutual trust comes from understanding the motivations in our relationships and what we get from each other. And that starts with being an adult to ourselves.
This idea of emotional responsibility is a simple concept that is surprisingly hard for people. I work on it every week in therapy. Feeling our emotions (often driven by our childhood experiences) gives the capacity to interact with others as an adult. It’s a step beyond professionalism. I’ve found it’s what separates those who are good at the work they do versus being truly great at their profession. The great are present in who they are.
So don’t be afraid to become truly ok. Thrive. Love yourself and your life even when it feels pointless. Even when the world feels crazy. Especially then. You have no need to attack yourself. Remove the self as an attack vector. We do not harm ourselves. The world is hard enough as it is that it needs no help from us. Now is the time to take care good care of yourself.
It’s ok if someone hates me. It’s ok if someone thinks I’m bitchy, stupid, obnoxious and self serving. Hell I’m ok if people think I’m a lesser human being. Which judging by Twitter could be a multitude of reasons ranging from “I’m a woman” to “I’ve got bad taste in tv.”
I am alright with you not being alright with me. My existence is not threatened by your philosophy or personal preferences. My existence is only threatened if you literally threaten me. Call me evil if you like. I’m not offended. Until you take an action against me it’s alright that we disagree. Even if the disagreements are existential.
It’s quite possible this is wrong. I’m open to debate on what constitutes harm. In fact, my entire philosophy centers on that debate being fine. I can take it. I actually pay someone to cuss me out for being stupid and then I pay again to spend time in a group where we regularly tell each other how much the group members anger us. It’s called therapy.
So take that as context when I say I wasn’t particularly personally hurt by Brantly Milligan, aka Brantly.eth aka one of the ENS Foundation cofounders, suggesting women who use contraception are perverts. I’d probably be a lot more hurt if I was a gay trans woman who had an abortion though. But I figure that demo might be used to being called evil by Catholics at this point. Like maybe it’s more of an annoyance than existential threat if you are wealthy and privileged enough to be working in crypto. We aren’t really a population that is hurting
Brantley.eth “homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn’t exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is a perversion. So is masturbation and porn.”
The Ethereum community is experiencing this speech with a lot of pain, hurt and anger. Brantley was voted out of his contract with True Names Limited the foundation that manages ENS Domains. But he remains one of the largest holders of tokens and will obviously have plenty of influence over the future of the platform. The debate has become one of cancel culture versus DAO governance working as intended. But the split on that is not clean and it’s not always clear where people will fall. An informal poll on my timeline is pretty evenly split.
Twitter poll asking if Brantley termination is governance working or cancel culture.
I’m tempted to assign him my tokens as a delegate to be honest. Though I won’t because I think he’s unprofessional. But I want to because I don’t love how any of it played out. Brantly doubled down on telling folks to fuck off compounding the feeling of being hurt. That’s unprofessional and not the kind of behavior I’d expect out of my management team. But I also don’t know that simply holding unpleasant or intolerant beliefs is enough. And it shouldn’t be in a decentralized system. I respect that the right voting and governance may have happened here but I’d argue we all want more control spread out over more people for exactly these scenarios.
I think Brantly basically Shrekli’d himself by doubling down on asshole antisocial shit and the DAO equivalent of the Feds coming for you happened. You can’t attract negative attention and be shocked when bad shit happens to you. But I don’t think being a retrograde weirdo is enough on it’s own to get you booted from an ecosystem.
The entire reason I’m walking you through this sensitive topic today is that I am committing my year to self love. And you might think how does self love and DAO governance overlap. But I really do feel empathy to everyone involved in ENS and the ethereum ecosystem right now. The pain of feeling like you are not seen and loved for who you are is primal shit. This is core human nature “do I belong” to my tribe stuff.
If you don’t love yourself than you are going to have a reactive stance to something that questions your morality and worth. And I’m guessing a lot of people are reactive judging by the uproar. But the thing about self love is that you just won’t be as hurt by assholes being assholes. Because you’ve taken care of yourself first. So whatever the right and just outcome of this ENS governance issue, I think it’s important we all check in on ourselves and why we reacted in the first place. Only then can we get on with the business of design the future and it’s technology.
I am coming slowly into 2022 in its fullness. Perhaps I am living in seasonal time this year. I am feeling the wholeness of what the moment brings and January is about becoming. So it wasn’t surprisingly that clarity of purpose has been sharpening for me. I am ready to commit to self acceptance as the theme of my year.
I felt somehow today that the only thing that really mattered for my success in the world was radically altering any perception I had of myself as negative. That I was here to love even the parts of myself that cause me shame and fear. The only thing that will take me where I want to go is loving myself. That self love was actually the key to all troubles personal and professional.
“You know, loving awareness—even if you haven’t heard the phrase before, you know what it is. Those moments of spacious, calm, thorough, tranquil connection with whatever portion of existence you’re currently exposed to, where nothing is being challenged or conceptualized, but rather is just allowed to appear, in radiant suchness, without resistance or fear.”
I’ve discussed the emotional work I do on the blog at length. The Family Systems Therapy and it’s exploration of the inner child. The shadow work and integrating of the whole of oneself. But I do often reject the crucial step of feeling like I am fundamentally alright. I am ok. I am enough.
I’ve committed to “a bit” where I lavish myself with self improvement and luxuriate in needing to make every measurement better. I’m obsessed with finding metrics to improve. And so I give myself little problems to fix. Maybe I’ll eat poorly so I can feel bad about my body composition. When instead I could just eat what I like and accept that maybe I’ve made other priorities than my figure. I don’t need to agonize over trivial shit.
But equally I don’t need to agonize over big shit. So I’m not a perfectly credentialed super star. I’m more of an eccentric. I don’t live like other people so I see other things. My existence is the selling point. If what I bring to the table is what you want then I am the right partner for you. If am I not then well tautologically I’m not for you. Partnerships are accepting what everyone brings.
So through the end of this year I am going to bring self love and acceptance to my writing here. In letting myself be seen I can more fully bring myself to my partners. Being a startup investor that means I must be present for my founders, their teams, and my own LPs and stakeholders. I’m bringing the full depth of my being because that’s also going to bring the best returns. Because being ok. Accepting the moment and it’s inhabitants? That brings us the creative potential to solve whatever is in front of us without judgement.
