Reality Laughs

Let’s do this.

Step 1. Pick a thing. Any thing.

The big book/whatever it is thing.

Step 2. Do the work.

On it. Yesterday I standardized a majority of the eleven episodes of the videos. Same file set up. Same writing templates. I had started multiple episodes and was flailing around. Systems now exist, Pozen style.

Step 3. Get the life you want.

I can’t draw a straight line from here to there. But this project is definitely an accelerant. So go for it.

It’s not realistic to guess that this thing is the end state of evolution. But it’s a starting point for evolution. And the end state is vague too. But directionally accurate. Less client, more customer — to use a business analogy. That’s the desired payoff space. Within that space who knows what I will find.

At 2 am because why TF not. I’m awake.

What would I rather produce? What would I rather do? What does the world want from me?

Mastery.

In face to face interactions with people in my chosen trade.

Mastery.

In writing about my chosen trade in such a way as to help others do what they want to do. Training, practical. Help them by making resources useful to them.

I’m not sure if the immediate desire is there from my fellow humans for this. Or whether this is me and what I want, with self-indulgent prose. To be determined in the next year.

Yesterday had a difference in it: go for a run at lunchtime.

Change is made of a thousand differences.

It is a five Zoom day today. Do I like this? No. They are a necessary means to an end.

Four of the five Zoom calls are transactional. Only one builds our collective abilities as a group. And that collective ability is what allows me the space to achieve personal change.

It’s either build the organism and reap the results or let it all drop to the ground and hope that good results happen from that.

I’m hedging my bets on that at the moment and doing both. “Let it all drop to the ground” will lead to different results. Less money certainly. Better life? Who knows.

So “let it all drop to the ground” is a marketing effort for the organism at the moment. I can spin it up and spin it off later.

Is it sufficient to know that you don’t want this? Or do you need a that to aim at?

Asked again today. The answer is still the same.

What must change? Publish more. (Reason: it tests the ideas by exposing them to other minds).

Continue with the writing. Do it by first writing the video script, because that reveals the story. Tell this element first, then tell that element next.

Take the overview and add part 2 and part 3 to it, then publish it as a marketing piece. Give it to the platform to put up—if they want it.

I’m fighting a war on three fronts. First, tread water. (Get daily revenue work done). Second, build the fortress (systems and people). Third, plan and execute the Escape. (The publishing thing).

Fourth, mix more metaphors. 😀

The publishing thing is a “start where you are and keep moving” activity at this point. A “build it and they will come.” Who will come? What am I building? Come to where or what? All of these are unknown.

The usual answer returns when I ask the question. “Hell, no.”

The answer pulls me forward.

So I’m going to do today what I would want my last day alive to look like. It’s replicable.

The day starts. Coffee with my wife, with an inspiring discussion of an idea she found.

(From that conversation, a decision was made. Something we will do together less than a year from now.)

Then the rest of my day is determined, too. Vigorous exercise. Reason: feels good, man. Write. Reason: the result I want will come from what I publish. Everything above that is gravy.

T

The answer continues to be “This is not how I would spend the last day of my life.”

What can I change today?

Short term thinking: get out of the office after the second appointment. Go somewhere (I already know where). Have lunch. Then edit and publish the newsletter.

What about the long term?

Until proven otherwise, aim for “publish”.

Aim for “recruit fellow travelers.”

Prompt: the Steve Jobs morning question. first just look at what I’m doing.

Answer: running a business. Why? Well, because it’s an infinite game, basically. Thats fine. It’s fun enough and I can’t think of anything else I’d do for money. None of the jobs I see people do look particularly appealing.

“Fun enough.” That’s an interesting phrase to come out of your head.

Yeah. I think I mean it sincerely as “fun” though, because there is no end point that I’m seeking. I’m just sort of juggling and seeing what I can make and what I can do. So don’t read too much into it, Dr. Freud.

Then why are you asking the Steve Jobs question?

Because it seems heavy. I’m shoveling snow uphill in hell. There are many things I don’t want to do as part of running the business. I want them done but I don’t want to do them myself—I want someone else to do them. And getting other people to get things done is a pain in the neck.

Oh, it’s the Hell is other people quote, is it?

Firstly, apparently that quote is misconstrued. But secondly no it’s not people generally. It’s specific tasks, specific people, specific outcomes. And it’s a discomfort with me not being willing to be an asshole and fire people if necessary. Or chicken. Or greedy.

Asshole because it disrupts their lives. Chicken because it disrupts my life. Greedy because I can limp along like this and be profitable.

But you pay for that profit with your unhappiness, no?

Sigh. Yes. and the price I pay is not worth the profit I reap.

So it’s your own greed that drives things. You want the money and you tolerate your current conditions to get money. And it’s your ego that drives things. The ego of thinking other people judge you by head count.

OK I’d that’s true what’s the indicated change? WWSJD?

He would focus on what’s important. The product. If the product is suffering, he would fix that. And that’s viable for me because I want the product to exist because I want it to exist. No particular reason beyond that.

The money element is there for sure. Probably because I grew up in a home of modest comfort. But the ability to know I did a killer product and it made a difference to someone. That matters.

Ok gotta go now because I’m being torn away to do something I don’t want to do. For someone I do want to help.

For me, the danger of Twitter is that I don’t shut up and sit still long enough to be quiet, all by myself. and I’m not active there. Barely enough to register a sign of life.

Thoughts rattle around in my head. Impressions, really. Thinking implies some kind of coherence. The impressions are Legion, to handwave at the Gospel of Mark.

Perhaps Teh Technology at my fingertips roils the waters.

Twitter is all selling all the time. TBH it’s why I’m there. I’m there to learn how to use the tool to explicitly sell (how do I get you to give me money) or to sell myself (be my friend, please).

It’s time to step back and let the waters still, the sediment settle. Get reacquainted with the Kingdom of God.

This site is basically a daily (I wish) diary, convenient because the WordPress app is on my phone. A blog is a time-organized work of literature—a diary. I use a WordPress driven blog simply because it is easier to write here than in a notebook with a pen.

Considering that nobody sees this and nobody knows it’s me, easy accessibility on my phone may be an acceptable use of Teh Technology. Maybe I can dial it back to an offline writing app on my phone, and if that’s not enough, revert to paper. This is a question of progress, of trial and error.

I have never read Uncle Ted’s manifesto but I have seen snippets. He has some good points. Too bad he felt the need to market his ideas by planting bombs.

What do I take away from all of this? Tear yourself away from grazing the Pastures of Twitter. Sure, there is lush grass here and there. But most of it is calorie-free. The world is a big, big, big place. There are many pastures. And the Inner World is infinite.

There is no rush.

“the main parameters that identify something as a systemic risk are scale and irreversibility”

@normonics

Well, this is a quote of a quote from @normonics, so maybe he said this and maybe not.

The idea that is new for me is the systemic risk idea. “Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.” That doesn’t quite describe it. The Fed tinkering with interest rates is more like it. (To head-nod toward a common and pervasive risk that I don’t understand).

It’s a risk that is so huge you can’t see it, or assume it away, or don’t think about it. It’s part of the baseline, the landscape.

Systemic risks are out of my control and the consequences are profound.

It’s not easy to see systemic risks because they are unlikely to occur. We supply don’t see them all that often.

So this little quote is helps me because I ask the question “What is big?” when looking around me. Identifying something large is a step toward identifying fatal risks. We humans are tiny and fragile, after all.

Another way this helps me think in a useful manner is by asking “What is irreversible?” This can give hints toward revealing systemic risks. Not all irreversibles are systemic, though.

Enough of this blathering. The purpose here is to be resilient, to be able to ride out a storm. If the Federal Reserve and Congress fuck up the economy (don’t blame Wall Street because they are gleefully playing the cards that Uncle Sam dealt) how will I be sure that my family will eat and sleep in a warm, dry place every night? Or better yet, how can I be positioned to thrive and grow if everything goes sideways?

That’s what this little quote does for me. It forces my attention to much larger thoughts, beyond writing an SOP for something at work, beyond the immediate and the familiar.

It’s one thing to simply perceive an unbounded risk. It’s quite another to know how to engineer around it. And of course it’s damned hard to actually do the counterintuitive thing you need to do.

As usual, this is me musing to myself. That’s why this site exists.

One obvious answer comes to mind. I stopped vigorously paying down the mortgage at high speed when inflation jumped up. Keep low interest rate debt. That is the smart thing to do, right?

No. The smart thing to do, at when perceiving and building buffers against systemic risk, is to have no debt at all. It’s time to start up the big monthly pay downs again.

What’s important to my life is no different than what was important to my grandfather. The details are different (as a young man he was busy staying alive at Gallipoli and Passchendaele and obviously survived or I wouldn’t be here) but the underlying reality for both of us is the same.

We live. We die. What makes a successful life is the same for me as it was for my grandfather. And his grandfather. And his grandfather.

This is a reminder to myself. Don’t get distracted by the latest iPhone. Or the latest war. Or the shameless venality of our so-called leaders. Or the willful gullibility and cupidity of those around you.

The old answers are not the right because they are old. The old answers are the right answers because they are right.

Trust God. Clean house (literally and metaphorically). Help someone else, with humility.

An earnest application of a few spiritual principles. That’s all it takes. That’s all it has ever taken to have a successful life.