Not exactly sure when I will get this posted, but I’m writing it as I head to the airport to fly from the East Coast back to Seattle. The last 3 weeks have flown by and I’ve felt very fortunate to spend so much quality time with so many close friends, old friends, weird friends, and even a few new friends. It never ceases to amaze me how valuable it is to cultivate strong friendships with people all over – even with people you don’t see too often there is a lot of richness and experience to be gained and shared. More than I normally think, I think.
Definitely the highlight of this time was spending a week in Maine relaxing and exploring with some my closest friends from Philadelphia days and the small community we have cultivated over the past decade. Just a ton of love shared around, and plenty of interesting discussion as we face the ways we have changed, grown in different directions, similar directions, and the issues we are dealing with and thinking about in each of our lives. Not to mention plenty of hiking, exploring, campfires, fireworks, and gaming.
There were a few common threads that I really took away from these few weeks that are worth sharing:
- Communities/friend groups often seem to initially form around shared interests or perspectives, but over time those seem fleeting – the bonds that endure are more around shared experience and stories we tell each other, (more or less) unconditional acceptance and celebration of each other’s flaws and successes, and willingness/ability to bring new people into the fold and have them feel a similar sense of love and inclusion.
- Deep sharing of diverse perspectives and experiences is really awesome (the irony of saying this while displaying a picture of affluent white people is not lost on me – but still).
- Receiving great hospitality is one of the gifts I enjoy receiving the most – not sure if most people are this way or not. But I could gain a lot by sharing great hospitality to my people more often – so all y’all reading this need to come to the West Coast more!!
During this time I also read Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer-winning novel, The Goldfinch, at Jodi’s recommendation. Really enjoyed it (and spent too long finishing it on Friday night instead of preparing for my DJ set in NYC on Saturday – oops) although I am still chewing through the philosophical implications. My biggest takeaway so far was reinforcing and reflecting on the cyclical nature of good and bad fortune and the idea that so much of satisfaction and happiness is based on internal perspective more than external factors. The protagonist seeks meaning and fulfillment in existence through a series of events that may be interpreted as “good” or “bad” in an immediate lens, but have long-run ripples through his life which aren’t always obvious. The Geography of Thought talked a lot about this as a classic Eastern philosophy as well (symbolized in the Yin and Yang) and I can see it reflected in huge ways in my own life – events that made me very unhappy in a present moment but led to amazing opportunities down the road, or vice versa. For example, my flight troubles in Barcelona leading to my experience of St John’s Night, not getting into MIT and thus becoming a much more rounded and open person at Penn (and much less interested in hardcore software development).
My rough plan was to spend the rest of the summer mostly hanging out, trying new things and building relationships, and then maybe look for some part time work once the days start getting shorter, but an opportunity came knocking about a week ago where I can work part time near downtown Seattle with people I like and respect, learning skills I would need to pick up anyway and with a clear expiration of a few months. So, I decided to jump on it. I have been thinking about my trip in the context of Clayton Christensen’s theory of planning out your [business/life] as I embarked on this journey, so I feel pretty good about myself for applying it successfully in this case. It’s a great way to think about the future, so I will share my recollection of it here, but it’s described more in his book, How Will You Measure Your Life? which is a fairly short read and one that I recommend – not a lot of groundbreaking stuff but some good reminders, models, and tying multiple ideas together in thinking about the self in relation with others and the world, and how to create the life you want.
Christensen (and he may have stolen this from someone else, but I’ll attribute it to him) says that there are two main components to being successful in planning for the future:
- Having clear goals of what you want to achieve, and a general long-term strategy/direction for how you aim to achieve those goals that steadily moves you in the right direction. Going back to the Hunter S. Thompson piece I linked a few weeks ago, there is certainly value in ensuring the goals are not too rigid as to be suffocating, and re-assessed regularly as we all change over time (also internal/”soft” goals in many cases are likely better than external/”hard” goals – e.g. having a “fulfilling and mentally stimulating job” is likely to make me happier than “having a million dollars in the bank”).
- Keeping yourself open and your execution flexible to best handle or capitalize on the unexpected hurdles and opportunities that come our way over time. There will always be unexpected turns in life (being invited to Berlin, a new job opportunity, a cancelled flight, a project being cut, unexpectedly meeting someone amazing). If we don’t leave wiggle room in terms of time/energy/resources, and an open mind to act quickly when these things happen, we are likely to be slower and unhappier in achieving our goals. Of course, a clear view of what the goals are makes it much easier to assess whether an opportunity or hurdle is worth dealing with or ignoring – so these two things reinforce each other.
So, that’s what I’ve been thinking about.
-E
Tunes for this post: This excellent Kartell remix of Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle”. Because I DJed a Renegade Space Prom last weekend and really wanted to play it for prom, but couldn’t get my hands on a high bitrate version. So you should all listen to it now.