Tag: Life

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Internet Culture

Day 382 and Your Truth

I’ve always hated when people say shit like “well that’s my truth” as it gives credence to all kinds of elaborate personal fantasies that make living in civilization almost impossible. But also perception is reality. So while it gets frustrating when people insist on their own set of facts, I can’t really blame anyone for relying on their personal feelings.

I’ve often been afraid to share my personal truths. I’m afraid I’ll be judged for my feelings. I’ve got a number of feelings that are easy to dismiss if you happen to be a fan of many traditional systems of morality.

For instance, I don’t think marriage needs to be about nuclear families. I’m perfectly fine with it being for political or financial power. I think people should start dynasties by combining resources. Which if you go back to really traditional systems of human civilization this take wouldn’t be super shocking. But it certainly sounds shocking to my family and friends that I’m all for multiple spouses. Do I think this works for most people? No, I think paired coupled monogamy is probably right for most normies. But I’m all for people trying shit that isn’t normal if it meets their life goals. Go start your empire king!

Now I’m not saying I’m living this way. Obviously I am a married white woman from the upper class. But I’d be lying if I said my marriage was all about the romance. I do want to build something with my husband!But I think it’s perfectly fine to say different people can live in truthful ways that are different from me. I’m not remotely trad. I’ve got different values than people who marry their high school sweetheart and raise kids. But explaining that makes it sounds like I’m so terminally online normies can’t ever relate. I’m conservative but not trad. Which if that is legible to you I’m glad we are friends. If it’s not then whatever. I hope it’s ok that my truths might be different than yours. Don’t worry I’m a libertarian so I won’t impose it on anyone but myself.

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Preparedness

Day 381 and Homestead Shopping

I just got back from a whirlwind week driving across Montana. I’ve been researching homestead properties for the last year or two but I hadn’t done much scouting outside of Colorado. The Marshall Fire that burned down two entire towns in Boulder County about 5 miles from my house had shook me. My husband and I decided it was time to begin more seriously looking for a safer place to live as climate change continues. So we got in the car and headed north.

Ironically this week we are also closing on a mountain house in Colorado. And yes I realize it’s a bit contradictory to panic about an urban wildfire and then buy a home in the mountains. It was a bit unexpected but we made an offer on a home in a town I happen to love about twenty minutes and an additional 3,000 feet up from Boulder. So basically prime fire country. And strangely I’m ok with the risk as it won’t be our only residence (at least not long term). I decided the desire to live in the mountains was worth pursuing now while we still had the chance. Who knows if in ten years Colorado Rockies will be considered insurable. It’s now or never.

Our current thinking is to use the mountain as our winter home and rent it out during the spring and summer high season. While it’s rented out we will decamp to work on a homestead property in Montana. We know it will take time to fully develop the kind of resilient off grid home we want. It’s a long term project that we suspect will take a decade or more. Frankly we need to make a commitment to buying something while rates are low, we have the free cash, and before inflation gets worse. So we’ve gone from never owning a home to deciding we will own two! It’s great feeling decisive.

Our focus in Montana was finding what areas we liked and where we could see ourselves investing in significant acreage. We want a homestead that has the capacity to get through disasters both natural and man made. That means buying land we can cultivate for both farming and ranching. Well the gentleman farmer style.

Quite frankly I can’t manage the heat in Colorado in the summers anymore so going north was a priority for climate change. Montana is increasingly being viewed as the new Colorado for folks who grew up in a rural Colorado and miss it. But we still want the amenities of a well developed town within half an hour or so. We want Boulder but the kind from 20 years ago that had less climate risk and fewer people. Naturally we checked out both Bozeman and Missoula. I don’t know where we will land but we had a good time exploring. We figured if we could tolerate Montana in January then the nicer months will be a breeze. I’m sure I’ll be writing more about the homestead and preparedness journey. And in the meantime if you want to rent a really nice mountain house in the summer drop me an email.

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Emotional Work Preparedness

Day 380 and Decisive

I’ve felt decisive recently. I’ve been confronting significant and life changing decisions the last few weeks and sailing through them. I’ve never felt more at ease making commitments in my life.

It’s not that I’m particularly prone to paralysis by analysis. Generally I’ve been able to move quickly and without undue agony over my choices. But I think within the last two months I’ve simply got my limit with taking the safe course. Maybe it’s a Covid thing and now that I’ve both been vaccinated and had an infection I no longer feel like I can continue with the same safety practices that the early pandemic did. With the election over and the existential threats of insurrections and instability now existing as a permanent worry, I just put off major decisions. I can’t wait for better times or more information. I need to live adaptability now.

So I bought a house. I committed to the process of buying land in another state for a long term resilience based homestead. I’ve planned trips travel. And not nearby regions like travel. I’m going international. I’m meeting people I haven’t seen for years. In some cases I’m meeting people I’ve only ever known online because socializing has been entirely remote for going on three years. That’s an inhumane way to live for extended periods. Even the most introverted person still needs connections. I’ve started making decisions to live my life. I need to live like a future exists or I will never ever escape. As soon as I made the decision to believe in a future again decisions flowed easily.

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Chronic Disease Preparedness

Day 373 and Picking Up Signals

I missed a signal from my body today. I promised myself I’d rest this weekend as I was feeling the exertion from the week. Which is exciting and great that life is having good energy but you’ve got to make sure to restore and preserve.

But this morning I learned that the Costco that burned in the Marshall Fire was reopening. We’d briefly thought we’d lost it during the chaos of the fires. But somehow they had managed to get it cleaned up and opened within a week. I was running low on groceries because of our own Omicron cases and the after math of the fires kept us at home. I immediately felt like we needed to go to the Costco. Emotionally I needed the Costco run. We needed groceries but I needed to see that it was still standing. That it survived.

Physically it was a mistake. Driving past the new burn scars was surreal. Seeing the remains of Old Town Superior as nothing but rubble was upsetting. But it wasn’t nearly as upsetting as turning into a giant box store parking lot and doing chores in the aftermath of a fire. Like nothing had ever happened.

We bought a bunch of shit in completely apocalyptic settings. Traffic lights were still off but a bunch of chain stores has big signs that said “we are open!” The Costco was running heaters on generators. The HVAC system has smoke damage so it couldn’t be run. But it’s freezing and we just had two large snowstorms so they needed to do something to warm up the warehouse. Life goes on.

I was relieved our Costco was still there. Glad for my bulk raspberries and chai as much as the security of seeing something made it. But fuck did I feel terrible afterwards. My entire body hurt. I’m not sure if it was emotional or physical but I was hurting. I still am hurting. I could barely write this down. I wasn’t listening to my own signals. That maybe I needed rest. That maybe I shouldn’t have gone to Costco. We’ve got to be gentle as we navigate the chaos of our current moment. You never know when you will find a trigger point.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 370 and Grindstone

Today felt like the first day everyone was really back at work after the winter holiday. As much as Americans like to bitch about how Europe takes off August or China takes off January or February or whenever the Lunar New Year lands, we take off much of December. Around mid-month folks drop off the radar and nothing gets done till about Epiphany or so. And they say we aren’t a Christian nation.

So while technically we all came back to work on Monday, today is the first day I really felt like I was back. Maybe it’s because December was such a clusterfuck of a month for me. I had Covid, I tore a ligament, Boulder County burned down. I know this is a petty complaint but I didn’t get a Christmas tree because I couldn’t walk and then I was quarantined. So it was going to take a few days to really shake that off and come into the energy of January.

But I felt back today. Like maybe I could fucking do this. Like all the catastrophic nonsense was shit I could mitigate. And all the optimistic stuff was achievable. And I am going all in on optimism. I’m going to Montana soon to check out towns as I’m just ready to own something more rural. I’m wrapping my head around owning something that is a winter seasonal home. I booked a trip to Europe in a really extreme leap of faith that Omicon will run its course by spring. And I am ready to close some deals I’ve been working on for the last month or so. So fuck yeah grindstone. Im ready.

Categories
Politics Preparedness

Day 367 and Flat Out Grossings

December was a pretty gnarly month for me. I tore a ligament. I got Covid. A fire burned down two entire towns. I’m emotionally burnt out right now and letting myself feel it because tomorrow I go back to work. So apologies if this is even more stream of consciousness than usual.

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a reporter. So I talked my way into an internship at our local television station Channel 8. I loved it. I got to be the assistant for such glamorous events as city council land use meetings. Which is how I happen to have the misfortune of knowing how Boulder became surrounded by suburban sprawl. I don’t have a grand unified theory. I just witness a lot of little decisions that compounded into unspeakable disaster no one could have predicted. Except we did.

There used to be a crappy mall in Boulder. It had a Macy’s and a Foley’s but it couldn’t sustain its anchor tenant department stores even in the late 90s and early aughts. Now big developers and chain stores knew that Boulder was fast becoming a wealthy town and wanted in. Maybe we could upgrade from middle market to premium retail. But Boulder is run by a bunch of hippies and wanted no part of upgrading big box stores. City council meeting turned into an endless parade of “no” to various folks coming in attempting to take over the mall on 28th street. It languished for years.

Eventually the developers gave up. Decided to construct a mall outside of the open space belt outside of the city. You see Boulder is the prototype for NIMBYS. We literally bought up a bunch of land that the town owns and can never ever be developed so no one could sprawl the town. It’s gorgeous and amazing and expensive to maintain and makes Boulder a haven for its natives and an impossibly expensive place if you didn’t buy real estate in the 60s. But I digress. This is about the mall.

The developers called the new mall out on the prairie beyond the town’s open space Flatiron Crossing. It’s an homage to Boulder’s signature feature the flatiron mountains. And the views from up town highway 36 into town driving back from the mall are amazing.

And Boulder honestly felt like it won. The ugly box stores went up around it. Our town was saved from Costco and Chuckee Cheese and Ann Taylor. We all snobbishly called it Flat Out Grossings. We thought it was a nasty money grab. It was wise we let them develop outside the open space band and protected the town.

Except that mall and all the box stores turned into the anchor for all the surrounding towns. We called them the L towns. Well that and Superior. And that’s where the growth happened. That’s what enabled Colorado to thrive. And that’s exactly how an urban fire that was started on Boulder open space ended up destroying so many homes. We pushed out the development thinking we’d done a good thing.

I actually have to stop writing this as I can’t make the point I want to which is that Boulder brought much of this misery on itself. We wouldn’t let the land be developed in town. So someone else did outside of town. And now that land got wiped out from a fire in our open space. And everyone is going to be snide and awful but our policies have consequences and by pushing out our development to Flat Out Grossing the law of unintended consequences has taken over. And I’m sick to my stomach knowing the well intentioned hippies ended up doing so much more damage.

Categories
Aesthetics Media

Day 366 and Auld Lang Syne Motherfuckas

I’ve got a routine with this blog. I’ll write my post. Then I’ll tag it and hit publish. But before I put it on Twitter for everyone to see, I text it to my friend Phil. He doesn’t always respond. I doubt he’s read every single post. Even I haven’t. But he’s the first person to get a link. I’m not entirely sure how I established this routine but it might have something to do with a video series called The Burg. Let me explain.

Back when Phil and I were idiots in our twenties, we lived in Williamsburg Brooklyn. It used to be the hipster neighborhood. And because the creative class is what it is, someone decided to make a short video series about living there because narcissism. Phil and I were obsessed with this series. It was before professional quality had become a worthwhile investment for YouTube content so we didn’t have endless options. The show felt like it was meant for us. Someone actually bothered to script and shoot a show about solipsist hipsters in our own neighborhood.

The show made a special new year’s episode. In it the characters play a game where they do absolutely unthinkably cruel thing to their friends. But it all must be forgiven at midnight because “Auld Lang Syne motherfuckas!” Their tradition is you have to forgive each other no matter what has been done. The song demands it apparently. It’s actually a really beautiful meditation on friendship and the capacity we have to hurt the ones we love the most. Also hipsters are assholes.

Now because Phil and I were idiots as kids, we also did unthinkably cruel things to each other. Just like on The Burg. We had massive blow ups. We didn’t speak for a few years. But somehow we started a tradition of sending each other the Burg’s Auld Lang Syne episode at midnight every New Years. I guess we knew we needed a ritual to find a way to forgiveness. Without it we would have drifted apart. With it we’ve been friends for fifteen years.

We are long past those volatile years thankfully. But we still text each other Auld Lang Syne as the year turns without fail. I went so far as to download a copy of the episode in case the cloud isn’t a safe space for it anymore. I have to have to accessible to send to Phil at the stroke of midnight.

So this is a roundabout way of explaining why Phil always gets the link first. A habit I also started fresh on a New Years Day. He’s the first person I start fresh with on New Years. He embodies the spirit of forgiveness and new beginnings for me. So every day now he gets a link. He probably wishes he didn’t. But Auld Lang Syne motherfuckas! He’s got to forgive me.

Categories
Preparedness

364 and Shower Before The Storm

I’m not sure where I was this particular preparedness tip, but someone once suggested you should go on cleaning spree before a big storm hits. I knew we were going to have a windstorm on the front range of Colorado so I decided to wash my hair and shave my legs. My husband gathered up all our laundry to be washed. We got through one load when the power went out.

We’ve long maintained particular habits around storms. At the first hint of weather we go to Costco and the grocery store. The day before we wash dishes and clean the kitchen. Every room in the house gets vacuumed. We scrub down the bathrooms. The idea is that if you lose power for an extended period you will appreciate having a clean home. In the cold and dark you don’t want to be surrounded dirty dishes. The extra time to feel you live in a clean house is well worth it.

Usually it amounts to nothing. Maybe the power goes out for a day. But you get the pleasure of clean clothes and a fresh hours. You come to appreciate storms for bringing about a better home. It makes you feel more comfortable being prepared for the worst. Because it’s enjoyable. Just a little mental trick to not get overwhelmed by crisis.

Sadly today in Boulder County about 10 miles away a massive grass wildfire went up in flames. I could hear the wind gusts and smell the smoke. We saw the plumes of wire. I was gripped with panic that the winds would change course and head towards us. Sadly our neighbors in Superior and Louisville had to be evacuated. 30,000 evacuated in a rush as the fire leaped a highway. I just watched a press conference where I learned 580 structures were affected. Rumor has it my Costco might have burned. The one where we found the whole Serrano ham. This disaster is happening in our community.

And yet I’m safe. I washed my hair. I did the pre-storm rituals. I’m alright. I spent the morning anxious and sure I was out of sorts. That maybe I needed to do something to fix my bad mental state as there couldn’t be a good reason I was out of sorts. But it turns out that an actual apocalyptic event was bearing down on my neighbors.

Incorporation of the existential horror of a changing climate grass fire the middle of a pandemic while we all go about our work day making money is just normal life now. I took pitch as the evacuation orders went out. Alex was on a Zoom call running numbers. Every day is chaotic at the end of empire. So make sure to wash your hair before trouble. Carry a pink towel for drying off. And don’t panic.

Please pray for Boulder County tonight. The winds have night died down and many are without the safety of their own homes.

Categories
Aesthetics Emotional Work

Day 362 and Round Ups

I’ve only got three more days before I can officially say I’ve written something every single day for a year. I had it in my head I would go through everything I’ve written and tease out some themes. Maybe I could find a few sections and label “best of” posts. But I haven’t done it yet.

Partially I’m too lazy. Digging through tags and trying to make something coherent out of an exercise that has always been about being in the member seems like a stretch. I’m sure there are probably analytics I could look at but I’ve actually only ever glanced at what posts get read and who shares the content. One of the reasons I’ve loved this space is simply because I’ve done so little to cater to anyone but myself. It’s a journal that’s public but with little actual public input.

I know that sounds a little crazy. Clearly I’ve got to be writing this for someone or else why wouldn’t it be in a private journal? I’ve never had a good answer to that. I feel accountable to some kind of existential audience. That by commuting to hit publish every day I’ve promised some “other” I will abide by my commitment. But it never extended beyond the daily discipline of actually doing the writing. I need an outside world to feel the pull of obligation but I’d rather not go further than that. That somehow invokes readers & optimization or god forbid fans.

So I’ve yet to find the roundup post topic that feels like me. But I also feel like I might owe myself some kind of synthesis. Some learning or insight that comes from having engaged consistently and steadily in an endeavor. But it’s on my mind.

Categories
Startups

Day 360 and Have Fun

I’ve got a friend who is a world class talent in their field. I admire what they do. But their ability is fairly is specific to what they do at a startup and doesn’t transfer easily to different stages. They recently took a job at a different stage and I’m a little afraid for them. What if it breaks them? What if they get burnout? I am projecting a lot onto this friend at the moment as I am also a fairly specific kind of talent. I’m an early stage person.

The reason I’m so sensitive is I’ve been broken by being in the wrong roles or working on the wrong problems. I tried to change myself to fit something I was only a 7 at when I knew I could be working on something where I was a 10. I hurt myself to fit in.

The hardest part about startups is they are genuinely life altering. It’s hard to make something new. Every harder to nurture and grow and sustain it. Creativity is fucking hard. Every time I criticize a project I do it with a hitch in my heart. I know even the shitty failures were the honest best work of people who cared. And often when it’s a success it’s not because any of them were better than anyone else. We are all fighting our hardest battles. Sometimes by the grace of God our work gets lucky.

So in the meantime I think we should all be having fucking fun. I only commit to founders who so clearly want to solve the problems in front of them. That passion cannot be forged. Real interest and focus are such potent forces. You feel it in your bones. Doesn’t have to be a huge world changing problem either. You can just really love your little corner of the universe.

So don’t try to fit yourself into a role for money or status. Pick a startup because it’s going to be a blast with people you love. Make sure as much of the work will be your particular brand of fun. Maybe to someone else it would be hard work. But if you pick right it will be fun even if it takes all of you to do it to the standard of your passion. And if you are very lucky sometimes it works.