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Travel

Day 1395 and Not On The Calendar

I am aching from doing too much packing in one day. Somehow a flight didn’t make it into my calendar and I thought I was flying Monday and not Sunday.

I usually take multiple days to pack things not because I’m unsure of my choices or dawdle over it but because the bending and picking up of things is hard on my spine.

I try to do these kinds of activities in 15-20 minute increments with an hour or more of laying down flat to recover.

Presume that packing for women requires extra effort when there is formal wear and cosmetics involved and I need a few hours to dedicate to the effort.

Chop it up into increments and well you can see how it becomes a thing I need to split up over a few days. I don’t think of myself as disabled but requiring breaks to rest my spine probably suggests it.

Alas the work and rest cycle wasn’t possible today as I had to get it all done in one go as my flight is at dawn. I am sure I’ll pay for the strain tomorrow. Which isn’t ideal for flying which is stressful enough without additional pain.

Thankfully it’s done. Now that this is all squared away I am in bed at 6pm and planning to go to sleep as soon as I can dampen the pain. Since I’ve got to be up at 5am a nice long sleep from 7pm seems perfect. And I’ll be adjusted to my new time zone.

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Aesthetics Homesteading

Day 1389 and Fall Circadian Centering

I’m so happy to be home in Montana. While winter is my favorite season here, the Rockies have such beautiful sun filled falls.

Being a bit further north means we have such long days in the summer that our sunny summers can actually be a little too much. I

Perhaps ’m in the minority in this view but daylight till 11pm does make for a bit of midsommer madness.

But in October we are past the fall equinox. Our days are getting shorter. You appreciate sunrises more when sunsets are early enough for you to get a full night of sleep. Night having an edge on day means you appreciate the beauty of the light when you have it.

Sunshine on my windows, makes me happy like I should be.

The temporal pressures aren’t all gratitude journal bliss. There are a host of chores to be done before the first snowfall. We’ve been lucky this year it’s so late but temperatures should be below freezing soon. Alex and a few buddies redid the chicken coop’s roofing this morning. Keeping the hens warm and dry.

A new roof on the coop
Categories
Emotional Work Travel

Day 1385 and Adrenaline

It’s lovely to have the occasional day where you are running on adrenaline. I myself am not a big fan of stress as I don’t see it as a “good” in and of itself so much as a tool to be used to accomplish certain ends.

To that end, I live a mostly quiet life. I love being far off the map in Montana precisely because a routine with its habits allows me to take certain kinds of risks (particularly as an investor) in the wider world. A calm life lets me find early stage investing to be exciting rather than anxiety inducing.

It’s no coincidence that while I called my fund chaotic I prioritized calm in my own life. Why go looking for trouble when your professional life is all about the edge?

But sometimes it’s nice to experience the visceral risks of life. I’m in New York City and running from event to event and meeting to meeting. It’s all smiles and adrenaline and enjoyment for me. I’ll go home to Montana soon enough to my calm life. A little bit of chaos is a treat.

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Emotional Work Politics Reading

Day 1371 and Against The Tides

I don’t swim very much as an adult but I grew up in an era with mandatory swimming tests (even at university).

I was lucky enough to not only learn to swim in the Pacific Ocean but in Colorado I spent a lot of time in our many creek, rivers and lakes. Freshwater has its own appeal and I’ve seen the tides work on the Great Lakes. But little is as magical as the buoyancy of seawater.

I’ve struggled with not having swimming and the joys of warm weather and cool water with some of my autoimmune challenges. A bathing suit I’d never worn came to represent some of that loss.

But today I was able to take a swim. I put on a bathing suit and was able to casually swim with just enough force applied to steady myself in a comfortable place against the increasingly forceful tide coming in. I felt like I’d won even if it was just for thirty minutes. I enjoyed a nice healthful thing in between the chaos of a very busy moment.

I’m not much of a Fitzgerald fan and but the joy of finding the limitations in one’s life as you mature is the relatability of feeling the weight of a one’s years as you push against the tides.

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past

So many decisions cannot be undone and yet we steady ourselves against forces much bigger than we are. Pushing against some of the vastness of a sea while relaxing into its much bigger whole is quietly humbling

I feel good about pushing against the vastness but also not being so sure about my own place in much larger forces. It’s no wonder man yearns for the horizon.

I took a shower and immediately went back to work. But it was nice to be a human doing a human thing while all of this is going on around me. I held my own against the tides. And I intend to keep doing.

Categories
Emotional Work Reading

Day 1361 and Temporal Distortion

I dislike how illness messes with your sense of time. One of the themes of the pandemic was how it affected people’s perception of time. We measure time but our experience of it is harder to pin down.

The COVID-19 pandemic significantly distorted people’s perception of time. Many experienced a disconnection between objective time and subjective time, often feeling that days blurred together or that time moved unusually fast or slow.

Perplexity Recap

Temporal disorientation feels as disorienting as spatial disorientation to me. Getting lost in your own personal time fucks with the reality of consensus reality time passing.

Every time I have a couple of sick days in a row I am fearful. You can reorient if you are lost on a road but the world moves even if you don’t. How do you reorient yourself to time?

We humans live forward. If we somehow find other ways to experience the fourth dimension I’d question if we remain human through that. We understand time dilation but living with time as a concurrent dimension to space and having it be mutable warps the mind a bit.

It’s a rich space for science fiction for a reason. Edwin Abbot’s Flatland is a classic of geometry. As a child I was fascinated by the idea of a tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time. A hypercube is a heady concept for a tween.

All this is to say, I was outside some slipstreams of time and I am slipping back in and seeing if I can flow with the tides.

Categories
Startups

Day 1343 and LFG?

The aftermath of a long weekend is one of my favorite shared cultural experiences. The scramble to reposition yourself back to your work, family and home life always makes the first 24-48 hours back extremely chaotic. The sprint to send reminder emails and respond in kind to others is overwhelming for everyone.

Any number of projects, financings, fundraises, and other sundry needs and obligations are percolating back into my inboxes.

First it was the three day weekend folks. Then today the “extra” four day folks. And yet the materials I need most are still in that liminal space of “not quite back to the office” just yet.

I was at our normally quite sleepy local airport today and it was packed. People leaving Yellowstone and Big Sky with a few folks returning home. A milieu of campers and and millionaires all navigating back to reality.

The next 10 weeks or so are some the best of the year to fundraise if you are an entrepreneur. It’s the season of “let’s fucking go” even as the chaos of the American election season has everyone on edge. Rightfully so as nothing roils markets like uncertainty.

Summer has activity but August tends to be dead and this first week back is when we all shake it off and return to work. The other seasons to raise are January through March with spring break and Easter as the first cut off. Then it’s best to try to finish your fundraising before the end of May or at least by mid-June.

So if you are ready to be back and are a founder fundraising (or considering it) just slide into my DMs on Twitter.

Categories
Chronicle

Day 1327 and Circling

I feel like I’m going backwards with my daily project of writing every single day. Maybe backwards isn’t the right direction so much as in circling round into comfortable spaces. No one wants to find themselves floating in solipsism.

I’ve given myself a lot of flexibility in capturing a mood or a tidbit or a theme from the day and running with it. Interiority is a perfectly acceptable vantage for personal writing but I want to connect to a wider perspective with it.

But I don’t know if I’m progressing in any real direction with this experiment as of late.

I could be speaking from the August doldrums (it’s more August exhaustion as I’ve been working a lot). It’s possible I will have a streak of great essays just around the bend. But it’s safe to say that day isn’t today.

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 1310 and Zonked

I didn’t get enough sleep last night. Between one thing and another I got about five hours of sleep. Adult circadian rhythms being what they are I still woke at the usual time.

I had a busy morning and afternoon so I pushed through it. Unexpectedly a number of pieces of my investing work were happening all at once. So much for a slow August right?

I was able to get through everything on my calendar but I’m I was starring down a bunch of work even at midafternoon. And I found myself unable to keep my eyes open.

I was zonked. Slept from 2 till I was woken up for a bird dinner. I’ll admit I’m planing to sleep as soon as I can wrap up my evening routine.

I’ve got so much to get through over the weekend. I have two rounds I’m working on (if you like hardtech slide into my DMs), juggling a bunch of inbound, and I’m gearing up for the fall. So maybe I need a little extra sleep.

And to think just a few days ago I was completely despondent over fire season, the sadness of American politics and my own seasonal affective disorder with high summer. If things keep up at this pace it won’t be summer much longer.

Categories
Homesteading Travel

Day 1265 and Fair Forecast

It started snowing last night before sunset in western Montana. At first it seemed like it might be hail and sleet but soon enough fluffier condensation was coming down.

While the rest of the world is suffering under heat domes and excessive weather warnings, things are cool in the Rockies. So much so I wonder if any agriculture may suffer. Our chickens seemed no worse for wear but we didn’t plant much this year.

As I was looking at the forecast in the Apple weather app I noticed in the average table a surprising -14F below the seasonal norm.

Seeing snow on the mountains is always a relief. Dry summers lead to wildfires and no one wants that. I consider this to be a fair to pleasant state for the weather.

I have a day trip planned to the capital shortly and I’m wondering how to pack given the cool. Layering is a fair technique until you have a fierce high altitude storm sweep over the pass.

Wearing linens and light sweaters seems fine for June until a freak snow storm has you wishing you’d packed boots and a puffy coat. Whatever the forecast I hope I’ll be prepared.