Summer's End

Haleigh went back to work last week and the school year is now in full swing. The mornings are dark and the evenings are getting darker earlier and earlier every day. It's hard to believe Summer is almost over.

Over Labor Day Weekend, I got my Nikon Z8 out and played with the dogs in the backyard for a while. Tango isn't as spry has he used to be, but he can still move fast when he wants to... which usually requires the presence of a treat, a cat, or a racoon. Moby is, of course, a low-flying meat missile at all times.

This dog is so afraid of everything, but her zeal for life in our backyard makes me so happy. We'll never know what she was subjected to in the six months before we adopted her, but that notch in her right ear and the way she gets nervous around big crowds, other dogs, and unfamiliar situations suggests it wasn't pleasant. The thought of it makes my heart break.

But just look at that hound smile.

It's the kind of thing that makes me pause and reflect on what actually matters in life, and it's not the things I tend to fill my days with. I work way too much, and really struggle to disconnect. I have a very high ownership drive and I'm insecure enough that I always have a low amount of anxiety about upsetting, or worse, disappointing someone. Which is ludicrous when you consider that literally anyone in your professional life is perpetually being 2 weeks away from someone you never think about or speak with ever again.

I don't know where that comes from, necessarily. I just know it is. It's probably why I remind myself, often, that there are things worth living and dying for and there are things I get paid to do, but the venn diagram of that is 2 separate and distinct circles.

I have a mentor through a program at Vercel, and I really like her. I'm probably treating our biweekly sessions a little too much like therapy, but it's been incredibly beneficial to have a voice of reason and a person I can bounce ideas off of with no baggage. For the past month, she's been encouraging me to start a podcast and set the stage for becoming a founder after Vercel.

I haven't decided whether or not that's a thing I want to do. I have no shortage of ideas, some of which are public, like veloquent.io and the-moperator.com. Either one of those has enough legs to become a full time thing with the right connections and ground work. Part of me even thinks it'd be a fun and worthwhile endeavor, not just to ship a thing I care deeply about, but to build a company that runs the way I believe a company should be run.

A small part of me knows that's a massive undertaking and I have a hard time seeing past my current state. But it's not a no, so for now I'm just going to focus on the ground game and see where the ships take me.

In the meantime, I'm going to look at both of these photos a lot more, maybe even print and hang them. I need little reminders like this that life can be beautiful if only you embrace the moment.

It's a weird thing to know through several lived experiences and yet still have a hard time doing. As a friend of mine once said, life is about striving.