Tag: Life

Categories
Aesthetics Community

Day 650 and Reaching

Yesterday was quite a day. I decided to commit to doing a fundraise for chaotic my fund in public as it was my 39th Birthday

I would like to raise $5m for chaotic.capital’s rolling fund before I turn 40 next year. #5Before40 has a nice ring as a hashtag right?

If you would like to be a part of the fund grab a spot on my calendar and let’s discuss!

But lest you think I only thought about venture funds on my birthday I promise I did some celebrating with my family and friends. One of my favorite girlfriends came up to visit. She went straight from the airport to the food cooperative and stocked our half empty fridge with a full harvest of food.

A well stocked fridge

She then proceeded to cook a gorgeous dinner with grilled chicken and roasted cauliflower along with kale chips and a big mixed green salad with a shallot and fresh fig dressing.

Gorgeous, health and nourishing.

And lest you think the most important part of a birthday was forgot here is a picture of the most impossibly beautiful chocolate cake I’ve ever seen.

A chocolate birthday cake

I had a wonderful day filled with love and support. It’s only taken a couple decades but I am finally feeling like I’ve built a life where I feel secure, loved and cared for by those I’ve chosen to be in my life.

Categories
Finance Startups

Day 649 and Build in Public

People love building in public. The universe loves a specific ask. Today for my 39th birthday, I am doing both.

I would like to raise $5m for chaotic.capital’s rolling fund before I turn 40 next year. #5Before40 has a nice ring as a hashtag right?

Chaotic is the first check into founders and companies that adapt humanity to complexity. Personal flexibility, organizational agility, and societal sustainability.

Our founders capitalize on chaos.

You may have noticed I’m a bit of a doomer. I keep close tabs on the opportunities presented by an increasingly unstable world.

Climate change, distrust of institutions, geopolitical unrest, resource scarcity, rising tides of populism. There are founders who can help us address and survive these pressing issues.

My goal is to raise $500K per quarter via a rolling fund. There is 155K per quarter committed from folk like Joel Spolsky of Stack Overflow and Michael Pryor of Trello so you will be in good company.

With a base like that, I want to do the rest in public here on the blog and Twitter. You can read the fund overview here. Building in public has generally been my preference and it has felt weird doing any of this fund work quietly behind the scenes.

You can sign up on Angellist through the above link or get on a call with me and we can discuss the fund, our portfolio construction and my thesis.

I’ve got big ambitions for accelerating into maturity as I have no intention of letting entropy win.

Humanity deserves progress, and I demand growth for myself. I’d like to make us both money with that. 

______________________

FAQ TIMES

Haven’t you been investing through chaotic before? 

Yes but just with personal capital and an SPV. I want to scale it up as we believe our performance warrants it.

Go check out some of our best investments here. https://chaotic.capital/fund-overview

______________________

Why didn’t you raise more during good times? Why the fuck are you raising a rolling fund at the end of the world?

Did you miss the part where I am a Doomer? We are a bad times fund. This moment is where our thesis matters.

Good times return and you’ll appreciate having written a hedge check or two into weird companies that are designed for the power laws of institutional chaos.

Or if the fear of the moment feels overwhelming you can sit back and die the slow death of uncertainty. Trust me I’ve considered it as well.

But personally, I’d write me $10,000 check and come along for the climb back. Entropy only wins if we don’t fight back.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 648 and Open

I share a lot of myself online. For an introvert with more than a hint of Autism you’d think I’d find it mortifying to be as open as I am online. My therapist would probably say it’s because I like the distance provided by sharing online and it’s hard to disagree. But I like being open to the world. I want to be a little beacon in the storm so that you might find me if you are looking.

But while I am so open to the public online, I am protective of my personal space for a number of reasons. I guard my health and my body as I manage a chronic disease. I prefer to operate from a place of non-reactivity as I like my central nervous system to maintain eustress. And I am not generally energized by spending time with others. I am energized by alone time.

But like any other human I do want to be seen. And I want others to feel like I am seeing them. I prize empathy and openness. Showing my vulnerability and weaknesses with the world is part of how I try to be seen and also let others know I see them.

My efforts to be healthy and my struggles with pain and fat are human problems. Maybe other aspects of my life are less relatable, but being worried about my weight and struggling with physical discomfort is the stuff of being an average woman.

I am perhaps overly sensitive to what I perceive as failures and short comings. I project confidence but it isn’t always natural. But I also recognize that, even if flaws terrify the part of me that is still emotionally a child, these supposed failings are the human condition. Everyone has elements of their bodies, their emotions and their intellect that they occasionally feel shame about. We are all working to let go of that shame.

I want the people I work with, especially the founders who are pouring their lives into their companies, to know that they are psychologically safe with me. Doing new things is hard. Creation is hard. Building is hard. Startups are hard. Shouldn’t your investors and advisors be a safe harbor to share those challenges with?

If you are feeling scared or ashamed or angry about yourself, I want you to know you are not alone. It’s ok to be open about your power and your accomplishments and your unique genius. And it’s also ok to be open about all the things you struggle with as well. You contain multitudes.

So if you see me putting out huge asks online or sharing incredibly embarrassing details, I want you to know it is because I see you and I trust you to see me too.

And if we are meant to be in each others lives then it will because we are capable of seeing the multitudes in each other. And if that is not for you that’s ok too. We all deserve to be loved as we are. I trust you. And I hope you might trust me too.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 647 and Socializing

I thought I was being quite careful this weekend about not over socializing. Last weekend I was hitting up pancake breakfasts and running errands and I thought I was going to pass out come Monday. So I was much more conscious of needing to rest and privacy this weekend.

But no matter how much I dial it back it seems like any amount of interaction is just too much. I backed it down to two hours on Thursday, Friday and Sunday with a recovery day on Saturday. But here I am on Sunday afternoon fighting off a migraine from overstimulation.

Folks bitch and moan about Zoom and how it takes away from the human element of interaction but fuck me if that isn’t the entire appeal of it to me. I myself prefer asynchronous communication to buffer myself even further from the onslaught of audio, visual and emotional inputs. But I’ll take a day full of Zooms as it’s still so much less input.

Perhaps the downside of having the hair trigger central nervous system of an autist is I am simply absorbing more from the inputs than the average person. Every noise, every visual cue, every smell is hitting me. Others may need all those cues but I absolutely do not.

I wish there were a way to articulate this to friends and family that didn’t make people feel rejected. But socializing in person is simply so taxing for me that I need much less of it. And it’s not because I don’t like you. It is just because I’m absorbing way more of you than you think!

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 643 and Courage

My courage is uneven at the moment. I have a specific professional project that I am struggling to push myself on. I tell myself that it is something I want, but if the truism “having is evidence of wanting” is any indication, I am struggling to convince myself I really want it. Except I am fairly sure I do want it and I’m just scared.

I used to love it when people said no to me. I was the kind of “chip on my shoulder” young person that used a no to fuel myself. “I’ll show them” was somewhere between a mantra and a battle cry.

But now I find myself anxious to publicly go out and see just how many people will say no. I don’t know if I find it as motivating as I used to. I tell myself I don’t mind but perhaps some other unexamined element of reaction makes me afraid.

This could all be an elaborate ego protection ruse on my part. Maybe I still love the motivation that comes from no. Maybe I hate it. But I have not really done enough fucking around to find out yet to know one way or other.

My gut instinct is to simply declare in public my goals and a timeline to force myself into it. But then I’ve been working through my tendency to rely on willpower and force to motivate myself. Perhaps a big forcing function will simply send me back into my old coping mechanisms of addictive overwork.

I’ve always punished myself by doing things. If I am anxious I almost always find ways to kick a hornet’s nest to force an action rather than gentle build momentum.

Whatever I do I would prefer I do it with as much gentleness and respect for my inner child as possible. I am prone to abusing my inner child’s feelings by disregarding her fear or her desire to keep distance from the rest of the world. I deserve better than forcing misery onto my inner child.

Categories
Biohacking

Day 642 and Feast

WARNING: I am discussing food and my relationship to food for anyone that has any triggers around food, eating disorders, or disordered eating.

I accidentally didn’t eat anything of substance today. I had some coffee and a banana so just enough to break my fast but not quite so much that I had a meal. The weekend was packed with meals in huge portions due to slightly more socializing and being out of the house than was wise. I really felt it yesterday as we had two very hearty meals planned and I managed to eat maybe a quarter of it.

I have always been a bit of a feast or famine type. Some of this is probably related to some childhood incidents. I’d much rather eat as much as I’d like and then fast for a day or so. I like the feeling of choice and control.

Some of worst parts of having to combat an autoimmune disorder is sometimes being put on medications that need to be taken with food. I hate when any outside force interferes with my body. Even medication.

I also happen to buy into the research that fasting is a a generally positive force for good health. The intuitive notion that we evolved for feast or famine is slowly being proven out. Every major world religion incorporating fast as a component also reassures. Nothing is more lindy than fasting.

But as I come to the end of my day it is probably time to eat a proper meal. My stomach is rumbling. I can feel my focus faltering. I don’t have much of an appetite but I will need to find the middle ground between feast and famine today.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 641 and Recovery

This might sound a little shocking but I sleep at least 9 hours a night. Sleep is one of the obsessions of the biohacker. If I’m lucky I might be able to get to ten. It’s always a sign of me doing poorly if I am not sleeping a TON.

It’s usually the first sign I am not adequately reserving time to bring down my central nervous system into rest and digest. I’ll stay up till 11pm and then it’s a hop skip and a jump to only sleeping seven hours.

The best combination of effort and exertion for me is only adding in specific necessary stressors during the day and give ample time to recovery. Much of my work requires focus and information processing and synthesis. And that isn’t improved by overwork and exhaustion.

Nevertheless I am still carting around a lot of lessons from my childhood about the value of hard work. More is better. More hours is best. And this is a fine and noble thing if you do work intelligently with your goals in mind. Simple exertion is sometimes the best option. But not always.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 640 and Weekend

Maybe it’s a function of having never owned a home before we bought the Montana homestead, but I was never much of a weekend errands person.

Now my weekends are all about errands. It started with doing a weekly grocery run. Now that groceries aren’t just being delivered to us demand by Whole Foods (the closest one is probably a thousand miles away) we’ve got a standing Sunday drive into town to the food coop. We do actual meal planning now.

And if you give a mouse a cookie he’s going to want some milk. If you give a yuppie a drive into town…We just keep tacking errands onto the drive into town. To do list and errands are the milk to the cookie of the drive into town.

We are still in the process of settling in to our house, so naturally Home Depot is heavy in our errands rotation. Today it was floor lamps and scones for the guest rooms. Last week it was a new pump for our hydroponic system. We basically always have something that requires a Home Depot Run.

We also needed a few other sundry items for our elaborate hospitality driven guest room project. We want our friends and family to feel comfortable coming to stay with us so we have dedicated quite a bit of time and resources into designing and planning for turning our upstairs into a hotel. This is going to be ongoing for sometime as furniture is a pain in the ass these days.

To check off design and toiletry items we hit up World Market and then Ulta. We came away remembering that shopping used to be a fun browsable experience and also a little poorer as we picked up an entire screen printed photo canvas we didn’t intend on buying but kind of love. We also got a very nice set up of brushes, anti-frizz hair turbans, and makeup remover towels for the guest bath.

A bathroom cabinet with hair towels, hair dryer, a round brush and a flat brush.
Categories
Community

Day 639 and Act Local

I grew up in a hippie college town that was fond of bumper sticker activism. Showing off your sense of humor and your political priorities was a fun thing to do with your Subaru Outback in the late nineties and early aughts before Facebook and the rise of social media.

A classic of the genre was “Think Global, Act Local.” I found this example on Etsy. And no I’ve got no idea what charity it ties back into.

Think Globally, Act Locally Bumpersticker

Maybe it was just less cringe to have this sort of thing on your car before we all spent half of our days yelling at strangers on the internet. I personally remember thinking Visualize Whirled Peas (a band from Austin) was a hilarious way to protest American war mongering as a teen. Of course, I still wrote Amnesty International letters at the time.

Now I’m not even sure who to donate money to at the end of the year as institutional trust continues to break down. Thinking globally is often the source of much anxiety. Currency collapses and the threat of nuclear war from Russia might be throw backs, but doomscrolling and feeling helpless is too modern. What is old is new again but in more potent anxiety inducing form.

So it was a bit of a relief to enjoy the “act locally” part of the classic bumper sticker this morning. Our local volunteer fire department had a pancake breakfast. Now as an adult my husband and I live outside of a completely different college town in the wider surrounding Gallatin Valley.

The rural (as opposed to city) county fire departments operate with a lot of local good will. They have a professionally trained but all volunteer force and cooperate with other districts through mutual aid frameworks. Practically, that meant a lot of college students taking advantage of living at the fire station to offset their costs while deepening ties to the community. A pretty ideal set up for a tight knit rural community. We get talent and they get skills and housing during their college years.

But calling them volunteers makes it sound less professionally run than the reality. I was impressed with not only the depth of knowledge of the entire department but also just how well maintained all of the equipment clearly was. Sure they probably cleaned stuff before letting their neighbors come in for a visit but everything was so shiny and new. I came away feeling a lot more secure about making a 911 call.

Now maybe that’s just function of meeting the fire chief and chatting with EMTS. And that’s probably exactly why they host these pancake breakfasts. But after two hours of touring equipment, and talking to everyone from the Medivac helicopter pilot to the youngest college kid on the squad, I felt like this was a team that has its shit together.

Now I’m actually excited to vote for a bond issue to get another fire truck or two! But in the meantime we dropped a few twenties into the boot on the table.

Pancakes and a fire boot for donations to the county fire department.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 638 and Environment

We’ve had an unseasonably warm week in the Gallatin Valley. We pulled out our two air conditioners from the window installations and went to Costco to install our snow tires. Both activities felt a little bit ridiculous as the temperatures touched 80 degrees.

But finally this morning the last bits of summer felt like they might be behind us. We had a beautiful warm sunny evening last night and yet we woke up to clouds and a damp chill. I was relieved if I’m honest.

Almost overnight our cottonwood trees began to turn to pleasant yellows. The aspen groves showed some signs of change as well. When I went for a walk yesterday beyond the property line I spotted apple trees with maturing fruit. I had only been gone a week from my usual walking route and was surprised to see so much progress into fall happening what felt like overnight.

An apple tree alongside one of our country roads beginning to show fruit.

With temperatures safely back into the 40s and 50s, it felt like it was time to unpack some of our winter clothing. I spent some of this morning sorting through sweaters, scarves, hats and gloves.

It was dusty enough inside the the moving boxes I started to break out with a few itchy patches of red inflamed skin. I took a Benadryl and hoped a cup of coffee would overcome the anti-histamine’s fatigue.

The environment around me is tugging on my body and it’s control systems. But I’m grateful for the change even, if some of the required activities have brought up the stress of change. I love fall. I love the cold. I’m a big fan of winter too. And I’m excited to see where this weather takes us. Call me crazy but I can’t wait for my first winter in Montana.