Category: Personal
My father Stan and I in our default states.
lsof -ti:3000 | xargs kill -9 2>/dev/null; npm run devI’ve been wandering up to 60 for a while. During my extreme-extroversion around Give First: The Power of Mentorship I described myself as “almost 60” a bunch of times just to try it on.
It feels comfortable.
Several people responded with “60 is the new 40.” Nope. Not even close. I most definitely do not feel like I did when I was 40. On my annual birthday run this morning (at least 1 minute for each year), I just plodded along, even though I comfortably covered 65 minutes. I sleep more (good), I care less about a bunch of stuff (good), but my energy is lower and the fatigue is ever present (bad).
I’ve definitely shifted into a new mode over the past year. I’m still on a bunch of boards for Foundry and deeply involved in several companies. But I’m much less focused on the broader technology industry, uninterested in many of the things that are going on, and tired+bored of the arc the narrative about technology and society has taken.
In contrast, I’m much more interested in people I care about. Not big groups of them, but the one-to-one relationships. My real friends are wonderful. The deep relationships are what have meaning to me.
I recently told Amy that I enjoy all the CEOs I’m working with. While I’ve always been friends with many of them, this is the first time that I can recall feeling a genuine friendship with all of them. I know that something new will be fucked up in my world every day, so that has nothing to do with these relationships. Instead, how we deal with whatever new fucked up thing will happen means everything.
I’m writing a lot. Give First: The Power of Mentorship may be my last non-fiction book. I’ve shifted to fiction and software. I’m having a ton of fun with both, bringing a beginners mind to the mix, even though I have the right kind of muscles for each from my past experiences.
While I haven’t solved my post-exertional malaise issue, I’ve settled into an understanding of it and how it impacts me physiologically. I’m experimenting with a bunch of things, keeping the ones that work and punting on the ones that don’t. And yes, pilates is magnificent.
On to the next decade …
I’m 50% of the way through being out of hibernation and am very looking forward to turning back into a pumpkin at midnight on Halloween.
I’m not traveling in August and have settled into being in one place (Aspen) after running around the United States for the past few months. In hindsight, it was too much. When I was younger, the travel I just did was “moderate.” But, between my actual work, age, post-exertional malaise, and the normal energy dynamics associated with shifting between Brad-introvert and Brad-extrovert mode, it has been physically (and psychologically) challenging.
Fortunately, I’ve had fun and my mental health is excellent. It has also been useful to experience this as I approach 60, as it serves as sound reinforcement that the work-related travel dynamic is not something I want to reintroduce into my life.
As part of a shift, I’ve tried a few different things with friends. When I hibernated the last time, I was very elusive in person, except for when Amy and I were in Boulder. Over the past three months, I’ve had more extended meetings and meals with close friends, including several who’ve traveled to me to simply sit, catch up, and spend time together.
The photo above is from yesterday evening with Bala Kamallakharan. While we’ve had many shared experiences together, precious few have been in person. Our four hours together were delightful, memorable, and great reinforcement for me of how 1:1 time with someone I treasure or with a couple (dinner with Amy + two friends) fills me up regardless of what the topic is. This afternoon I’m doing this again with Manu Kumar.
While it’s also been enjoyable and interesting doing a bunch of podcasts around Give First: The Power of Mentorship, I’m pretty podcasted out. So, I’m now shifting the conversations for the remaining podcasts I have and am trying to incorporate something new, that has nothing to do with the book, into every podcast left before I hibernate again. I’ve got about 30 left and am following through on the ones I’ve committed to, but have shifted back to Default No for new inbound requests.
In September, I have a California trip and a bunch of stuff in Boulder (including Techstars Foundercon and Denver Startup Week). Then I have an East Coast trip in October (NYC and Washington, DC) and have been trying to sneak in an Austin trip (and failing). Other than that, I’m finished.
My “not public-facing” activity (and persona) is more than enough for me at this point in life. I enjoy the work a lot and am fortunate that I have deep, trusting relationships with almost all of the CEOs I work with, regardless of what is going on with the companies. While there are plenty of chaotic dynamics in the world right now, many of the companies I’m on the board of are doing well, and most of them are scaled businesses, which is a different kind of work than all the early-stage stuff I’d been doing for most of the prior 40 years. I’m also very much enjoying my deep time with other VCs we’ve supported as LPs whenever they reach out to me.
I anchored on turning 60 as the unambiguous shift for me into what Amy and I call “the third third of life.” While it is a continuation of the things I’m currently working on and committed to, including Foundry and Techstars, the most significant part of it is the cessation of work-related travel and most, if not all, of my public-facing activities.
My acceptance of the finiteness of life is a big part of this. The experience of the past three months has been powerful, both in terms of my energy level and in reinforcing what brings me joy. While life always has tragedy, hardship, disappointment, failure, and struggle, I embrace that as part of the experience, while orienting as much of my available energy toward things that bring me joy.
As a proud early Gen Xer, I was in ninth grade when Back in Black came out. It was my favorite song for at least a week, and it’s still in my top 10 (something by Rush likely displaced it.) As a teenager, I knew everything about AC/DC (at least everything you could know before the Internet existed.) I wandered around that week proudly telling everyone who would listen that the song was a brilliant tribute to Bon Scott.
Amy and I arrived in Boulder on Friday and will stay for a month before heading to Aspen for the summer. As I emerge from hibernation, I feel the song’s energy. So far, I went to the Nuggets game Friday night, had brunch with friends on Saturday at Tangerine, took a long nap Saturday afternoon to try to reset my system, ran on the Boulder Creek Path on Sunday morning, and had dinner with Amy, my brother, and his wife at Barchetta last night.
Boulder Startup Week (the oldest Startup Week in the world) begins this morning. I’m about to head out to the opening event at Rosetta Hall, about three minutes from my condo, since we live downtown now.
Even though there is enormous craziness in the world right now, I’m bringing my full self to the summer. I hope to see you in person, online, or via email.
I’ve decided to come out of hibernation until at least Labor Day.
While this coincides with the publication of my new book, Give First: The Power of Mentorship, I also have a few things on my mind that I feel like blogging about. If you know me, you probably know that I explore ideas by writing about them, and have always learned a lot when I think out loud by writing in public.
I hibernated in the summer of 2023. I stopped blogging, podcasting, and engaging on all social media. I also stopped giving public talks, both in person and virtual. Sure, occasionally, I’d repost something on my LinkedIn, do a long-form interview like the one I did with NOCD about Mental Health in Entrepreneurship, and I wrote a few blog posts about new books from several friends.
But I stopped engaging. After almost 20 years, I needed a break.
I continued to write a lot. Some of my writing found its way into Give First: The Power of Mentorship and several email lists I’m part of, but most of it was private.
I switched from default yes when asked to do something to a default no. It took a little while to get comfortable with, and a few people were annoyed with me, but it felt great once I got the hang of it. And I badly needed to reset some things.
During hibernation, I continued responding to almost all the emails I got. I’ll keep doing this, as it is the best way to interact with me. I have comments on this blog, so that’s another way to engage. While I’ll be broadcasting stuff on LinkedIn and Twitter, I doubt I’ll engage there meaningfully, but who knows …
I got the following email from Barry Schuler this morning. We’ve known each other for many years, and he’s one of my favorite VCs to work with.
He described exactly how I feel this morning. The fall is my favorite season of the year. By labor day, I’m ready for summer to end. The stretch until Thanksgiving is my most productive time of year.
I finally feel like writing again after a summer off (most of my books come out in the late spring / early summer, so I’m fried and uninterested in writing during the summer.)
My running is almost always great in the fall. I end the summer in solid shape and usually ramp up a lot in the fall. I like shorter days, later sunrises, and early sunsets. I like the colors of the leaves. The cool, crisp Colorado mornings.
Amy and I had a good summer, but I’m ready for cooler weather and a different pace.
“Turn off the TV and go outside and play.”
I expect these are words that have been said in almost every household in America.
Amy and I hit the bottom of the TV barrel last week while watching Army of the Dead. It was so awful it was good. But it was awful.
And … It’s June 1 and I’m done for the summer. No TV until Labor Day weekend. And then, maybe no TV after that.
TV is a weird construct since I can watch videos on my laptop or my iPad. But, that’s a different thing, since they are generally short and a deliberate thing that I’m watching on video, vs. just vegging out in front of the TV watching whatever we found on Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV, or whatever we eventually found surfing around on DirecTV (last night’s movie was Drive.)
While I was totally fried this weekend from the cumulative working and running I had done the preceding few weeks, I would have been better off napping or reading during the movie time. And, while I know there is a new wave of stuff coming out this summer, I’m going to assume that Army of the Dead sets the tone so I’ll wait until the fall in case anything good makes it through and then watch it then.
For now, I’m spending my TV time running, reading, writing, or just enjoying being outside with Amy and Cooper.
Welcome to summertime.
It has been a long winter. Really long. From my perspective, winter has been about 17 months, going back to November 2019. The Covid crisis started just as spring 2020 was beginning. As a result, winter continued through the spring, summer, and fall. And then, well, winter …
I took a half-week vacation last week. I planned for a Q1 vacation, but I had some stuff on Monday and some more stuff on Wednesday, so I just decided to start my vacation on Thursday. I went off the grid, had Amy drive me to Superior, and spent Thursday and Friday running in the mountains back to my house in Longmont. I did an easy run on Saturday and then drove to Waterton Canyon early Sunday and went for a long run there. Between runs, I read a bunch of books and napped.
Being outside on the trails cleared my head and let me completely reset. It’s beautiful in Colorado right now, and even though there continues to be a lot of trauma everywhere, I’m letting my paranoid optimist take over and embrace that we finally are once again in springtime, which is my favorite time of year.
I no longer subscribe to many daily email newsletters, but I’ve kept a few. My favorite to wake up to is Ryan Holiday’s The Daily Stoic.
Today’s headline was It’s Possible to Tune These Things Out but it linked to an older post titled The True Power Behind Stoic “Indifference”.
At morning coffee a while ago, Amy and I had a long conversation about the phrase “I don’t care.” I struggled to explain what I was trying to say and how it was often misunderstood when I said it. Through her reaction and feedback, she helped me better understand what people heard when I said “I don’t care.”
I tried shifting to the phrase “I’m indifferent” instead of “I don’t care.” I continued to feel that I was being misunderstood when I said this. I’d often provide strengths and weaknesses of each option presented but then end with “I’m indifferent.” I knew that this was confusing to some, but I didn’t know why until I read The True Power Behind Stoic “Indifference”.
Of all the loaded words in Stoic philosophy, “indifferent” is one of the most provocative. Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus each tell us that the Stoic is indifferent to external things, indifferent to wealth, indifferent to pain, indifferent to winning, indifferent to hope and dreams and everything else. You hear it enough times and it starts to sound like these people don’t care about anything. Especially since the modern definition of the word means precisely that. But this is a dangerous misreading.
Recently, I got feedback from several people that I was profoundly unhelpful in a particular situation by saying, “I’m indifferent.” I thought about it on a run, which is unusual for me as I rarely focus on one thing during a run but prefer to let my brain go all over the place. In this particular situation, my brain seemed to lock down on the dissonance around this phrase.
The situation in question had two paths: A and B. I had a modest preference for A, but I was good with either A and B. I had explained this, but when asked which I preferred, I said, “I’m indifferent.”
After my run, I explained this more clearly, reiterating that I had a modest preference for A but was good with either A or B. Instead of “indifference,” I stated that I was “tranquil.” After even more reflection, I think a better concept would have been “equanimity.”
Back to the The True Power Behind Stoic “Indifference”.
The Stoics were not indifferent in that sense at all, it’s that they were good either way. It’s not that they didn’t care, it’s that they were good either way. Does that make sense? The point was to be strong enough that there wasn’t a need to need things to go in a particular direction. Seneca for his part would say that obviously it’s better to be rich than poor, tall than short, but the Stoic was indifferent when fate actually dealt out its hand on the matter. Because the Stoic was strong enough to make good of it—whatever it was.
Boom. After reading this, I got the disconnect people were having, which was reinforced by the contemporary view of equating “I’m indifferent” to “I don’t care,” which is very different from “I’m good either way.”
Think of that today, that it’s not about apathy or even a lack of expectation. It’s simply the quiet strength of not needing a preference, because you’re that strong.
Ryan – thanks again for helping me understand myself a little better.
Two of my favorite men on planet Earth have birthdays today.
Happy birthday Dad.
Happy birthday Dave.
I’ve learned an incredible amount from each of you. And, given all the time the three of us have spent together, from both of you.
One of the best things I’ve learned from each of you is a love of wide-open physical spaces. Dad – I’m so glad you and Mom created Woodcreek Ranch.
Dave – thank you for all the 14ers. I hope to climb many more with you.
Even though we’ve spent a lot of time together as a threesome, one, in particular, stands out. We had a Feld Technologies board retreat in the fall of 1987. I remember the date because it was during the Bork confirmation hearing. We spent the time in New Hampshire, drove around looking at leaves, and talking about what Feld Technologies could become now that the summer of 1987, which was full of missteps, was over. We did a huge reset that weekend on what we were doing, which set Feld Technologies on a path where it was profitable every month for the rest of its life. The other path could have been the death of the company, so it remains a potent and formative moment for me.
Happy birthday to you both!