Deep Loafe

Tyler Cowen, on an episode of Tim Ferriss’s podcast from March 2020, said that in order to prepare for an interview with Martina Navratilova he read 50 books on the history of tennis. I cannot, presently, comprehend that attention span or focus on one subject. 

In this interview, he broadly lays out that to know something you just need to read a lot about that thing. His interests are ranging and he seems to have an opinion on most things. It’s why I like listening to him so much. The opinions are not an egoic thing; they are a matter of exposure. 

For example, he thinks that Indian percussion music might just be some of if not the best music in the world. And more, he wondered: “It could be the best music in the world, and I wonder if it’s not related to Indian preeminence in the world of tech.”

The ability to have such a thought is profound. And the interesting thing about it is not whether that connection is even there but what having that thought, and saying it out loud, should tell you about his ability to pay attention and be so curious. 

If I didn’t know who Tyler Cowen was, I’d find that isolated sentence pretty funny and probably smirk while reading it. 

Having listened to several interviews, including his podcast, he seems primarily focused on following his curiosities and seeing what connects. He’s willing to put in the hard work to do it too. 

You know how deep you have go to even find Indian percussion music? How far out from your center to wonder whether it connects to Indian preeminence in tech? 

You don’t get there by reading three books a year or by scrolling Twitter. 

The only way you get there — and there on whatever scale would be useful for you — is by being, in the most general sense, curious. And then act on that curiosity every day. 

And here’s where I’m obstinate at the moment: I want to go deeper and wider but I realize how little I’m working at it. Too much TV at night. Too much Twitter. 

It’s obvious to me that if I want to make more connections and do more things, every day I should read and write. Then, in three years I’ll be somewhere. 

He also talks in the interview about how he made the “weird” decision in 2003 to stop writing in peer reviewed journals and do all of his writing on a blog for free. The weird thing about it was that he was already known and successful. This gamble, to produce economic work on the margin (the internet), was sort of unnecessary.

He said that he thought that if he got 5,000 readers that would be some kind of “utopian” dream. He worked for three to four years before he picked up momentum. 

The blog gets over 2 million views every month now. 

This post turned into more of a review of this podcast episode than I’d intended, but the impression it left on me is unfortunately simple: the way to get smarter and better at everything downstream of my desires is to ready and write every day.

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note: I rarely reread or proofread what I write. If there are mistakes, whatever their nature, they can be attributed to that, at least in-part. 

i've been hacking on Foundation for about 2 months now and released it for folks to sign up just over a month ago. 

for the record, here are some of the core features as of today:

• 75 different blogs (225 essays!) & more all the time!
  • most recent additions are Andrej Karpathy, Dan Luu, Fred Wilson, and more
• Librarian’s Pick button will choose a random essay for you - kinda fun
• everyone public library card page they can share!
  • here's mine
• anybody can make suggestions for new blogs here

I also recently added some symbols to different author's cards to try and give people a way to tell who's who. gem's mean they're sort of legendary, light bulb's mean they're influential but maybe still to be discovered by many more people, and sprout's say something like, This person is interesting and you should pay attention to them even though you might not have heard of them yet.

as of today, the app has 41 users. and i'm having fun working on it. marketing it isn't my favorite thing, because marketing in general is a rather incoherent and bothersome thing to all of us so it's my feelings about marketing rather than the project itself. but, nobody ever got users sitting on their hands. 

just a quick note on a steady observation in the new year. 

i've done Dry January several times, and this year it's having a more profound impact on my day to day. i think this time, it might be because i'm 0) getting older and feeling consistently better (alcohol just has that nagging and lagging energy suck) is something i really want more of and 1) because we just had Goldie and i'm just so happy when i can strip away anything that interferes with snuggles. 

i've been hacking less on Foundation too, but marketing more, and so less of my time has been spent on the computer each day. and the time i have spent has been more impactful. 

i've also been reading! i finally finished Boom which had a fascinating ending pondering the spiritual awakening (with significant Christian imagery) embedded into financial growth. that was fun to picture and think on. 

now, i've started Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. you can just read books about Genghis Khan.

so, it's been a wonderful first 10 days of January. today was especially good! we had a nice little snow and started our first of a new tradition of Friday pizza and movie night with the kids. we watching Paddington Bear (I got to choose first since i'm oldest) and it was a hit. 

i go to sleep with gratitude today. 

for all that is done, i say Thanks.

for all that is to come, i say Yes.

at any point, someone is always losing when viewed against the historical record. 

we seem to be in touch with this historical record and clear minded on what it used to be vs. what it is now too. there seems to be no question about the way things used to be vs. the way they are now and what’s bad about that. 

recently, in the sauna at the YMCA a man comes in and starts with the weather. “that snow last night. sure was windy huh?” the snow was a surprise and felt novel, so I indulged. 

I see this guy around the Y a lot and he likes to chat people up. for him, the gym seems a social exercise as much as anything else. and I’m not judging. i’m here to do the least amount of exercise and then sip coffee while the kids are in childcare. our meta priorities are the same. 

he says he’ll get a quick workout in and then head home to relax by the wood stove and watch whatever basketball or football is on. I mentioned that there were two NFL games on. i thought it was interesting they were playing on Saturday, so I mentioned it. 

“is that your thing? the NFL?”
“No, not really. I’ve been watching college and NFL this year. just whatever’s on.” 

we’d found the historical record of interest. 

“tell you what, it just ain’t what it used to be is it? you got all these transfers happening and kids making a million dollars a year playing college ball.” 

I give a few “uh-huh”s and follow his trail. i find there’s no conversation being had once the historical record is brought up. there is only getting on that train and seeing how fast they want to go. 

“yeah,” I say, “the transfer portal is interesting.” more coal, please.
“yeah kids just don’t have the work ethic no more. you got a team like Arkansas, for example, and with the Waltons and the Clintons paying all that money into the program, kids just make a million bucks and don’t have any reason to be passionate about the game anymore.”

here was a split track: a mention of the Clintons presents either a left staying on “sports” track or a right into “politics” track. thankfully, we stayed left. 

I give a few more uh-huhs. he gets up and leaves. no more coal in the furnace.

here’s the thing: he’s not wrong. things aren’t the way they used to be. 

maybe though, that’s not because the humanity of the kids haven’t changed but because the incentives given to the kids, from the adults upstream - his generation - have changed. 

things are always as good as they’ve ever been to those in their sweet spot - their salad days - and not the way they used to be to those further down the road.

I already do this. i already find things that aren’t the way they used to. “when i was a kid, we played xbox in the same room as each other just as much as we played online,” kinda statements.

here’s my theory on why we do this:

in short, i think it’s victimhood. it feels good to feel like something is against you. 

but really, i think the World (“they things used to be") ends up moving on and forgetting about you. and that sort of sucks. 

it has to. it must evolve - make room for more stories, new “way things used to be.” 

and maybe, after all, the way things used to be wasn't the best (or most interesting) way.

this will be one shot attempt at remembering the year of 2024. just sequential memory in a concise format. at the end, i'll add a summary paragraph of some contextual thoughts. overall, this was an important and hard year. for that, I am thankful.

January

• Sadie and I said that this is going to be our year. on January 2nd, we had a miscarriage in our third pregnancy. 
• the whole month was, from what i recall, a blur and just hard. 
• i made chocolate chip cookies probably 3 or 4 days a week to cope.
• we cried a lot. i looked at Sadie a lot and thought about this promise from our wedding: "I will wait with you in sorrow."
• took Greta on a solo (flying) trip to Mississippi to celebrate my dad's retirement from ~35 years in the Mississippi Highway Patrol. that was beautiful.

February

• after a year of freelancing, gigging, and cobbling together an income, i decided to enroll in a bootcamp for business intelligence.
• it was interesting, but it was also practical. i felt (and still feel) pretty square-peg-in-round-hole with the credentialism of the job market and i thought this would be a way out of that.
• it was right to take an action.
• i was really committed to it. i had lots of free time with freelancing being slow, so i got ahead very quickly. 
• i stopped working on my first entrepreneurial/indie hacking venture, Brain Trust. that project gave me the bug and it hasn't gone away :)

March

• a full-time job opened at my friend's company as a recruiter, something i'd done a mix of in the past, and i took the job.
• not my favorite thing, but a steady income for a while has been a good thing. plus, it's remote and non-intrusive on my life
• we got pregnant again! 
• this was a beautiful gift. we got excited and much more nervous about stability and well-being in those early days.

April

• i can't remember what i remember from April...
• Easter? that was a good day
• Ville to Ville, a relay race i do with my sister in law and some friends from Asheville to Greenville was this month, i think
• i think i also started training for my first attempt at 100 miles

May

• Black Mountain Monster attempt: 24 hour race, i was attempting to run 100 miles. it was a 3 mile looped course that's about a mile from the house. couldn't pass it up! made it 10 hours. my friend Doug really pushed me to get back out there. wouldn't do it haha. this was an awesome day for presenting very clearly to me the fact i have a loving family and really good friends

June

• birthday month! Shepherd first, then me, then Sadie, three weeks in a row. Sadie organized friends getting together for my birthday which was really special.
• really lived up summer. i remember telling everyone that we were loving it. big to-do for Sadie with the kids' preschool being closed and being pregnant and me working.
• i got really into watching short films on YouTube this month and started making some running videos
• i also started a running project to run 12 miles a day for 6 months. i tracked pretty closely until September (coming soon).

July

• again, i just remember "summer"
• going out to parks/brewery/walks after work
• meeting up with friends as much as possible
• farmers market for cinnamon rolls with the kids on Saturday mornings

August

• Oregon to visit grandparents!
• we were there for 2 weeks. it was awesome.
• carousel with the kids
• park with the kids
• running project
• and capped with a baby moon to the Oregon Coast with Sadie. 
• we had such a good time! beach. chowder bowls like every day. outlet malls! haha. Newport history museum. just really beautiful and healing after the miscarriage.

September

• on the 27th, Hurricane Helene hit western NC and really threw life up in the air
• our house was pretty effected. thankfully we could get out, so we went to stay with my parents in MS for an uncertain amount of time.
• ended up being 2 weeks and then we came home. 
• until December 18th, we lived outside of our home at two different friends' houses. 
• it was, again, pretty challenging. 
• for the most part, i was just down in it and discounting my own experience while trying to figure all the details of what to do about our house, find stability for the family, and hoping for Sadie and the oncoming baby to be well. 
• post-September has essentially been a second year inside of this one. 
• i wrote about the hurricane experience here.

October

• back in Black Mountain :)
• halloween! extra fun on Church Street and around town this year
• lots of friends had moved back at this point so it was rich to get back together and begin healing together

November

• Goldie came a month early! 
• she came in a hurry and it was a bit scary on the front end for her well-being and during delivery for Sadie, but we're safe and healthy.
• she was just ready to roll knew we were ready for all teh beauty and wonder she's brought us. we couldn't stand to not have her in the world any longer. 
• thanks be to God for this baby. 
• the 4 days we were in the hospital, cocooned together, were really wonderful and good.
• the kids had a big sleepover with our good friends and that gave us joy too that when it came time for help, our friends were ready to help.
• we moved back into our house for a night before discovered undone work that required us to move out again. not a good experience.

December

• just lots of anticipation for moving back home.
• busiest month of the year too! 
• Holly Jolly in town.
• Christmas plays.
• friends parties.
• grandparents here.
• date nights!
• 3 kids! 
• finally moved home on the 18th and took a deep breath.
• Christmas. that was a beautiful day. 

the through line of this year - the context - is that life is just incredibly dynamic and beautiful. it's begging for you (me) to participate and act on it, not just waiting for it to happen. 

it is true, too, that at times it happens to you. it shoves you around. nudges you. rug pulls you. but, i don't think it's mean. i don't think it's indifferent to you (me). it seems as if it's mostly telling you (me) that you should heavily invest in your community and friendships because they are what will tell you that you're okay when you are shoved around. they'll reaffirm your humanity, your actual physical safety, and will welcome you when you need welcoming. 

i'll be surprised if we ever move out of this valley. it is the best asset i'll ever have. our friendships, our church, my coffee shop, the parks my kids play in. it is everything.

this year brings that to the surface. 

i wrote this when i started Foundation. i think i revised it once. it's something i believe in and am excited about should i have some justification of truth.

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it has never been easier, faster, or cheaper to create something. and, increasingly, anything you want.

but not all creation should be fast. things that last are meant to be labored over. they are revisited in seasons. their worth is measured in years, not conversions.

much of what is shaping our now, and our future, is our ability to think, write, and communicate our ideas. our ideas tell others about who we are. they are our signal to the machine god that we know the way forward because we've written down the past.

the way forward into the future is being shaped by technology that is more like us than anything we've ever created. it makes everything else seem alien in a way. in this future, should we begin to forget who we are, we'll do well to read what has been written - to revist our ideas - and remember that we have imagination and can shape the world.

Foundation is a library of those ideas. they come from some of the more (most?) significant people in tech who brought us here.

treat it like your own library on the internet. borrow whatever you'd like - as many as you like. there are no return dates or late fees.

the Foundation library is growing because we keep writing and working on these ideas in progress. so come back often and check out something new.

there's a funny schism in the mountain biking community over e-bikes. lots of non-e-bikers dislike having e-bikes on the trail for whatever their reasons are. e-bikers push back that there's nothing necessarily different about them and there are, in fact, more benefits. i.e., i can go further and see cooler places than you.

evolutions in categories, industries, and disciplines are often seen as revolutions.
humans, according to our nature, create in-groups and out-groups.

in the case of software development, i'm an e-biker. 

i got into software development in the last ~year because i admire the systems thinking and the infinite creativity and personalization that comes through software. you can make anything you want. or, as x/twitter says, you can just do things.

and, wouldn't you know it, in the last few months AI has electrified software development and made it accessible to the "normies" like me. 

there's at least a casual skepticism from traditional developers that normies can just stand stuff up and build businesses out of it. they're playing their part, though. there should be a tension, a thing to fight against, for the normies to push past. 

of course, we're all just standing on the shoulders of bits.

and after many attempts, i've gotten my first thing online that people have signed up for. i have users. i'm a steward of my software and i need to develop it. 

so does that make me a software developer? i'm not sure. what's the self-accepting moniker of an e-biker? are they a mountain biker or an e-biker, and are those essentially the same? probably.

for me, i find it useful to not really worry about the label and just build. 

day 3/62

my friend jake told me yesterday that i should build a public API for Foundation. that hadn’t crossed my mind yet. and it got me excited because that would mean others could (and would want to) build on top of it. 

this is a great reason to question in public and share half baked thoughts. if i’m only heads down doing my own thing, this probably never comes up. or, at least it takes long. and time is valuable in these 2 months.

there’s not a clear monetization path with Foundation, so the idea for an API makes me happy because it increases the project’s usefulness surface area. plus, it would be a challenge for me and great marketing for the project. not everything needs to be monetized, but a big reason i build and work on ideas is to make money. i just keep thinking about building my way towards freeing up as much of my time spent needing to earn income as possible. software is amazing because it can work while you don’t and you can have many small projects. there’s a sovereignty here that’s also appealing: laptop + internet x creativity = a really fun lever to pull on every day.

focus today: making a concrete plan for building the API

• on marketing: post to instagram and threads. i’m following jack frick’s ~60 day plan here for organic growth and reusing the same template for at least the first week and then i might switch it up a bit
• on x/twitter: on a lottttttt yesterday, but the universe sent me the API idea that way so what are you gonna do?
• on exercise: whooops, didn’t do this yesterday
• on consumption: drinking like 2 or 3 coke zeros a day and a bunch of coffee and seltzer. no alcohol. way more carbonated bevs. and since losing drinking water for like well over a month after hurricane helene (it’s back now) i haven’t been carrying and drinking out of my own water bottle 

on x/twitter: scrolled lots still. it’s hard to not be on there. there’s inspiration and it’s a way to think too
on elevating aesthetics: nothing figured out here on the physical space front. i have a totem in mind, though. and i did find the music that words for me: Hiroshi Yoshimura who just makes very good sounds
on halfway working: Sabaath was very good relaxing time. did most of my work (mostly thinking like i mentioned above) in the afternoon while the kids were napping. still worked while the kids were around and up, but that didn’t necessarily strike me as halfway on both
on exercise: no exercise yesterday

thinking i should do dry december and dry january so that i can solely focus on building and launching online. i’ve got so many different ideas and my build-rate is higher than ever since i started over the last year and a half. but, alcohol disrupts evening flows. it dampens and distracts from one of my core goals: build my way towards freedom.

there is nothing special about “making it” other than effort x consistency and that starts with eliminating the things that stand in competition.

there are a couple of other things i need to do to come out of these 2 months having something at the end. mainly i mean: i need to significantly reduce distractions in order to clarify my work and produce the thing i am circling around.

• way less time on x/twitter just scrolling: only be there if i’m posting
• create a better work station on my laptop: this might be something i can build for me
• elevate aesthetics: 1. find good music to work to, 2. find a totem that, when present or visible, means i am working and locked in
• no halfway working, halfway with the kids: be fully in one or the other
• exercise: run or walk every day

i too often fall hard to parkinson’s law. i don’t establish a framework, therefore leaving an infinite amount of time do work on something. better, i should be “freed and bound” as wendell berry says.

this, like most things that are irregular or abnormal, is an experiment. we will see how it goes.

but, its purpose is clear: build and ship something by the end of january 2025.