Tag: Stream of Consciousnesses

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 409 and Glass Cannon

I’m one of those “life optimization” types. I spend a lot of time on various wellness applications. My health stack is deep. Over the years I have attempted to integrate more productivity applications into my life. But beyond a basic “to do” list I’ve found myself failing to maintain anything more complicated than ToDoist task list.

I think my failure is related to the challenge inherent in optimizing deep work. A lot of what passes for work in regular jobs isn’t a big part of my work. I don’t have a ton of alignment meetings because I am accountable to my LPs and my founders but not horizontal stakeholders. I don’t have tons of reporting as again the buy-in is pretty contained.

Ultimately I am only responsible for outcomes. And my outcomes will take years to materialize. I’ve got to get conviction on a decision largely on my own. I am responsible for my own success. And yes it’s a little bit scary to realize I’m in control.

This means I can’t fixate on signifiers of work. Which is largely what productivity apps track. The representation of the work is usually what gets tracked and measured. Arguably I can have my own OKRs (objectives and key results) but I’ve not encountered any personal productivity apps that work well for that framework. It basically boils down to the harsh truth that most of my work is deep work and it’s harder to measure. Deep work is the stuff of slow integration and accumulating knowledge up until it turns into catalysts, breakthroughs and ambush predation.

A gamer friend called me a glass cannon. I’d never heard the term before. It basically boils down to a character that has impressive offensive work but little stamina or defensive work. When they hit crit they go off. Boom! When facing a glass cannon you’d better hope you kill them before they rock your world as if they cycle back for another hit you are fucked. Glass cannons are hard to kill despite the appearance of weakness.

I spend my time preparing for action. Integrating knowledge. Widening my horizons. Intaking potential opportunities. None of which is easy to measure and moderate in traditional work culture. But when I go off you know I’ve made a move. It’s clear. Decisive. But the intervening time between? I’m preparing to go critical. You don’t know when or how but then it’s all in. A glass cannon may be the ideal archetype for venture investors.

Categories
Medical

Day 408 and Getting Ahead

My first piece of international travel since the pandemic began is coming up. I’ve not been on an airplane in over two years which is wild. But I needed to get a booster shot for my travel papers.

I was a bit nervous about how I’d react. I didn’t have the easiest time getting vaccinated. But I had a mild case of Omicon in December which made me slightly more optimistic about it.

I got caught in a snowstorm getting the booster yesterday. Which is so far the only inconvenience. I slept fine last night. I didn’t appear to spike a fever. I had no aches or pains other than the ones I live with normally. I’m so far enjoying having little to no reaction.

I did however take very good care of myself. I felt a migraine coming on mid-morning and I rushed in with all the good drugs. I wasn’t going to let myself suffer at all. And I am suspecting that keeping any and all stresses away has in fact been excellent for my body. Just another reminder that drugs are in fact good. Loving yourself can often mean mean treating yourself kindly. Removing the option for suffering and maybe all recovery can be this easy.

Categories
Preparedness

Day 407 and Snow Blind

We’d scheduled booster shots for this afternoon. Even though we’ve both recently had Covid, I’ve got travel coming up so I needed to get a booster to get into Europe. I probably have never had better immunity to the disease than I do right now so I’m feeling optimistic about being around people again.

But I didn’t realize it was going to snow today. The forecast said it would lightly snow for an hour or two. So I thought it’s fine to schedule vaccines now. I wanted them right before the weekend so I had maximum time to rest and recover.

But clearly the forecasts were we wrong as we headed into a significant storm to get our shots. An hour later as we wrapped it up we were in driving snow with very little visibility. The roads were accumulating snowfall fast. The normally fifteen minute drive hour stretched into triple time.

Thankfully we made it home safely. And we’ve been shot up for the sake of paperwork. I only feel marginally worse for wear.

Categories
Startups

Day 406 and Like I’m 5

I welcome pitches through my social media channels. I’ve even gone so far as to put together an FAQ for how to pitch me. I hope I do a good job of welcoming founders at even the earliest stages into conversation. But just because I am happy to shoot the shit with you, doesn’t mean I’m capable of organizing your thoughts for you.

Want me to write a check? When you are getting started with me keep it simple. Ground me in the basics so you can take me into the details. Go from whole to parts.

Now I’m not asking you to dumb it down. I’m asking you to do the work to really clarify what you want to make. Maybe it doesn’t sound as impressive in a few sentences, but trust me you must anchor everything in the basics. If you cannot articulate the core product you need to build how in a few sentences, how do you think you will convince me to support your biggest craziest vision?

Now what I am asking you to do is actually quite hard. If you aren’t sure what I mean when I ask for a basic product description spend some time on the excellent Reddit sub “Explain Like I’m 5.” The premise is simple. If you have a complex technical topic that requires expertise you need a way to get it across to a layperson.

You will hire a lot of lay people in your career as a founder. I am just the first one. Educating me on what you are doing is hopefully the start of thousands of explanations you will give on what your company does. Because we both want you to build a big company right?

So while you are welcome to send me your standard 15 page deck, or in depth Notion documentation, or your favorite Substack blog posts, you know I have to explain it to the co-investors, new hires and LPs in a sentence right?

What I don’t want is to dig through dozens of documents and feel even less sure by the end of my diligence of what you are building than when I started. I want to hear a synopsis that excites me to dig in and then go on a journey with you where I learn just how much you’ve thought about it. But if you can’t keep it simple you probably aren’t ready to be fundraising.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 405 and Okayness

I wasn’t in my “okayness” this morning. My focus on self love hit a snag on hormones. I woke up with a migraine and menstruation and I wanted to treat myself as an attack surface. So I asked my Twitter feed to tell me how they got to okayness. And it was beautiful.

I am often struck by how if you share your vulnerability with people they will open up with their own. The joy I get from connecting with you in the fullness of being ourselves gives my entire life meaning.

What seems even wilder to me is that this kind of connection happens on Twitter. It’s crazy that out in some virtual world, the metaverse if you will, the most human needs are met. We can see each other on a phone application. It’s enough to take your breathe away.

I’d encourage you to browse the thread as it’s filled with insight. People take long Lindy walks and do their nails. They lower their standards and raise their spirits. They integrate shadow elements into their identity. They take little risks and embarrass themselves. They imagine the tweet they would send at the end of the day with their accomplishments. But most of all people make things. That even when being a human being seems like an impossible challenge our capacity to build gives solace.

Categories
Internet Culture Startups

Day 404 and My Process

Being sick gave me an investing process. I have ankylosing spondylitis which is an inflammatory condition of the spine. It’s well controlled but still affects my day to day routines. It means I spend a lot of time in bed on my phone online. And this is how I generate alpha.

I spend my entire day on Twitter, in Discord, in DAO governance chats, in news RSS feeds and on Reddit. I’m extremely online. Terminally so. Like a LOT. I’m talking twelve hours a day. Which has turned out to be great for deal flow and diligence.

Being extremely online gives you some significant tactical advantages as an investor.

  • Persistent read of zeitgeist
  • Always online intaking discourse that will move market sentiments
  • Omnipresent availability to founders and ready to interact

Being online and intaking discourse gives me additional time and analysis with emerging trends, personalities and opportunities. By the time something has gained traction I’ve already made a move. I can move fast and confidently ahead of others because I’ve just had more time with the materials.

In somewhat bleaker terms I already live in the metaverse. Having a disability gave me early access to new ways of living online by forcing me to live a lot of my life virtually. If I wanted to socialize I had to do it in bed. I had experience with this before the pandemic. And I’m already been living where the rest of the world will be migrating now. You are gentrifying my neighborhood.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 403 and Hurt

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.

Categories
Emotional Work Startups

Day 402 and The Most Me

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.”

How I Attained Persistent Self Love

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.

Categories
Emotional Work

Day 401 and Clarity

Life is a pretty indecisive process. You go through with, at best, some genetic heuristics for truth and a couple half verified data sets. So when the feeling of clarity hits you it’s hard not to notice. The clarion call of seeing reality (which sounds like me mixing two sense based metaphors) is edifying.

When you know you know. Popular culture loves this phenomenon. You get it. Knowing is head to toes and taint to tip stuff. You just get what’s happening in your gut. Somewhere in the shared brain space of your conscious reality and the microbiology of your intestinal fauna there exists clarity.

Surely there is a reason we describe knowing as a process that isn’t strictly data driven. Sure we can have facts and methods and process. But somewhere along the line we can only know if our biology agrees. Your gut knows what I mean.

I had a bit of that feeling earlier today. I got some feedback from someone I like and trust. It wasn’t positive feedback. Me and mine had fucked up something in our approach. But then I had clarity. I knew what we needed to do to fix it. I saw the path that would lead to our success together. And I just knew it. In every part of me. And the best part is when I share it with my partner they will get it too. In their mind and body. That’s clarity.

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 400 and Consumption

I’m excited to be hitting my first year two posting milestone today. Four hundred straight days of writing is the kind of habit that has got clear staying power. It’s funny that today I celebrate the power of creation when my topic for the day is consumption.

Pandemic living cut down a lot of consumption for me. Travel, dining out, cosmetics and fashion used to be huge parts of my life. Style played a prominent part in my career. I loved being a part of a creative profession. People made things. We worked on items that existed in the physical world meant to be appreciated in the here and now. But we also made things to be consumed. We created in service of consumption.

I love the intersection of art and commerce. It’s really where humanity tells on itself. Just raw unadulterated power dynamics on display. But also sometimes consumption means wanting to be seen and liked by someone else for sharing in-group affinities. I get it. I pride myself on knowing a bunch of ephemera so I can wow just about anyone at a cocktail party. Being included is a powerful safety drive and I think it’s nice to cultivate it for each other.

So I guess I’ve missed I missed some of that. Being at home I’ve done so little to engage with the current moment’s aesthetics except as they manifest inside internet culture. I’m up on all the zeitgeist in the chattering classes but I’m not hip to what’s being bought.

Maybe this is what happens when you haven’t been on Instagram since Trump got elected. I’ve got no idea where to shop anymore. My instincts remain but the specifics of the moment were a blank. So you want to know what I bought? Hand to fucking God I bought some of Kim Kardashian’s loungewear. Because why not go right into the Kierkegaardian soul sickness. If I’m starting my fresh might as well go right to the common denominator.