"Hello!"

"02-22-2025" ·

Publishing content feels like such a profound act that I can hardly bring myself to do it.

It's to say that this - THIS - is what you should spend your limited attention on. Your limited, mortal attention. You only have so much time! And it feels rude of me to take your time when I'm not confident that what I have is worthwhile.

But that is the paradoxical nature
of publishing, and of all activity.

In the beginning there is no skill, and so the activity is lackluster.

But of course, you don't gain skill without activity!

So we are consigned by our mortality to PICK SOMETHING and run with it.

Ok, I've picked several things

Try as I might, I can't just pick one thing to do. When I engage in an activity my mind is both focused on the task at hand and on all sorts of associations that relate to whatever I'm doing. The goal for me is not just to focus on the task at hand but to have "all sorts of associations" that are not noise but are instead complementary.

And so, to cut to the chase, I can't just do a journal. Or a podcast. Or build a Software as a Service (SaaS). I have to feel like I'm doing all of it or the indvidual pieces don't feel worthwhile. Again, this is a paradox! Because you don't come out of the gate doing 5 things at once, nevermind doing them well. You HAVE to start SOMEWHERE. And I really struggle with that.

The reason I struggle with that, I think, is because what I most deeply want is a meaningful life. And a meaningful life is low-noise and high-signal. And to be high-signal is to move from activity to activity in such a way that is maximally complementary. There's something about that - about the synergy between activities - that is so deeply important.

And so, with that being the case, I think I've fashioned a network of activities here that I can bounce around to build up some momentum.

My Journal will be a place for me to freestyle some thoughts, but to refine them before publishing. I don't want to do too much refinement in the beginning because that will just get in the way of producing at all. But, over time, my journal is intended to be a place of extemperaneous but softly edited thought.

Bootstrap, the podcast, is a place of pure extemperanenous thought and no editing. Perhaps I'll cut a segment out if it's noise to the signal, but by and large I want the podcast to be long form and unedited - a place to monologue on my own or to conversate openly with friends.

Orient is a long-term project, which is predicated on self-production. You are a product of your environment, you can alter your environment, and therefore you can participate in your own production. From what I can tell, according to that dynamic, engineering our environment is the name of the game. And so Orient is about mindfully building my media environment, as that is the most distilled activity where I am building myself. A simpler way to put it is that Orient is a way to "save and share your favorite things". But the truth is that I see reflecting on favorite things as the most valuable dynamic in life. And it's not what we have today with social media feeds -- the incentive there is to consume as much as possible (and to behave in a way that the algorithm can predict, which is NOT good because the alrogithm wants to bend your behavior to it whereas it should be the other way around). And so Orient is envisioned to be a way to break out of this cycle of mindlessly consuming media, like sand through our fingers. Instead, I think of Orient as a net, which we drag through an ocean of media and pull out meaningful things. What you want is to fashion your net as to gather the most meaningful things possible, and that is intended to be the user experience of Orient (saving, sharing, and revisiting your favorite things, and using them to fuel a recommendation engine that you control).

Breathe.DIY is a simple breathework app that in alot of ways is the opposite of Orient in that it is concrete and clear (rather than abstract and fuzzy). It is a project that I can pivot to when I just want to execute a bit of software design or development that is straight to the point. As a breathwork app, it helps me with an activity I have otherwise been paying $5/month for (guided deep breathing).

And so I imagine jumping between the Journal, the Podcast, Orient, and Breathe.DIY while I get myself into a cadence of producing content. I think it would be great to also do some of this as a Build In Public project on X and Reddit, and to stream sometimes on YouTube and Twitch to gain exposure to what I'm working on. But.. we'll see! One step at a time.