Category: Thoughts

This post is me taking a stab at outlining a daily routine that feels really good to me right now. To help my mind out, I’m just going to walk through the day describing it, so I can remember what should be in the day. Then at the end I’ll summarize it for myself, and print that out to keep it handy in case I ever find myself early in the morning forgetting what to do – but have to be careful with that part, because if I’m forcing myself to do a routine that I don’t enjoy or doesn’t feel natural, that’s not good. When that happens for too many days in a row then it’s time to adjust the routine. To do that, just look for the flame. It’s possible you might need to take a puff of the pax in the early morning to find the flame. But that’s also for sure not a requirement. Really just depends how well I can calm my mind and focus. Regardless, couple puffs of the pax and I will have basically 100% control of my mind and I can point myself in whatever direction feels right, and basically I can quickly see/feel the flame floating over an idea, kinda how in Zelda the little flame floated over Linxx, its a lot like that and whatever idea that flame is floating over, that activity will feel 100% natural to go do. So basically change things up if I’m ever forcing going through the motions of my routine for too many days in a row – I’m not sure how many days really, but I know it when I see it/feel it.

Waking up: no alarm just telling myself in my mind to wake up at 7:04 a.m. ish before going to sleep last night. That usually works like 90% of the time, and I mean I feel like if I do end up sleeping longer that’s what my body needed anyway. Worst case Ellen will wake me up in time for morning coffee club.

Put on some gym clothes, find my nice running shoes that I love, put Airpods in – it’s life changing to put on noise canceling headphones, and play an album from an artist I love, while also mixing any random songs that come into my head into the song que. That really improves the start to my day, it wakes me up so well!

Next thing usually head into the kitchen, drink water with electrolytes added in, dance around a bit in the living room – not necessarily dancing to the music. Sometimes just do the dance that the titan’s do when they enter the football stadium in remember the titans, or maybe do the Mcconaughey chest bump, or maybe practice self defense moves, or stretch/yoga – really just do whatever movement feels good. Once done with the water, head out and walk or run the infinity loop.

The infinity loop is a place about 100 yards from my house. There is a pond with a couple nice water fountains. Running half of the loop takes exactly 2:56 seconds, that’s my personal record to date at least. Most of the time, walk it though. If I’m out there early enough, the Sun is just coming up over the trees on the east side, and walking on that first curve, walking into the early morning Sun that is warm but not too hot – warms me up so nicely, and feels so nice. It’s especially enjoyable listing to the right song for that day in that moment. With the right song on, all of the leaves and grass are sharper, the world just feels a bit magical or maybe dreamlike is the best description. The right song just kinda changes over time, but lately it’s been where I am, by Maggie Rodgers.

The intro beat just jolts life into me. It wakes my mind up for some reason, it pumps me up basically. Then the line,

I’ve found a reason to wake up, coffee in my cup – start a new day!

That line makes me think about Nara. I think about how that line fits so well. It’s like Nara creates a little jolt in my mind – ok I need to get serious here, she is really depending on me. And then also it’s such a cool thought to think about how happy she makes Ellen, Me, Gina, Kent, Mary, & Shannon – also my parents as well but they have so many nieces/nephews – I wonder if the 2nd kid will cause as much join for all of Ellen’s family? Fingers crossed!

It all works out in the end, wherever you go – thats where I am, boulders turn into sand, wherever you go that’s where I am

That line makes me feel 10 feet tall and invincible. I feel that everything will work for me today, no matter what I try. I think about Al, Andrew, Brian Pohl, Enrique & Micah – wherever we go, boulders turn into sand, it all works out in the end. Most of these guys, we have wanted to work togather for the past 11+ years, we have tried to do it several different times and had some success but ultimately failed to realize our full vision for various reasons. But it all works out in the end, and I think this is the part where it starts to work out. We were missing a couple important puzzle pieces that we now have in the group. We have the business model we need, we have the crew that we need, we are getting the development path mapped out really well – and it doesn’t look like there are any fatal technical hurdles we can’t cross, we are about 70% of the way towards launching our first test site & we have made really significant progress on the total system! We have a big list of clients lined up on a waitlist to build for, and we have a salesmen in the group who is literally chomping at the bit to be turned loose and start selling the system.

Once I’m done with the walk, do hangs + pullups or dips on the outdoor pullup bar then it’s feels soooo nice to jump onto the rowing machine and row 5k, then do 20 minutes of yoga (two 10 minute videos, the hips and hamstring ones that I love). Also feels good even with just one stretch video.

From there feels great to hop in the shower, take my electric toothbrush and water flosser, put the shower water on super cold, it feels so nice because I’m sweating like crazy from the rower, put hot water in the water flosser – then brush and floss my teeth. The hot water runs down the front of my body and feels super nice in contrast to the cold water. It’s important to get my whole head under the cold water, that feels way different, and to stick my face fully into the shower stream holding my breath. Really feels good to do that in the morning, wakes me up a bit more maybe. Then once finished with brushing/flossing – turn the water onto normal hot temperature, and use the weird green rubber small bubbly thing Ellen bought, put soap on it and scrub my whole body. It feels really nice on my skin to do that. Don’t put on any shampoo or conditioner. When playing hockey will shampoo hair after every game, otherwise would smell horrible hahah – but when not playing hockey like right now in the summer, it could be multiple months before I shampoo my hear. And it feels great, my hair honestly does not need shampoo (maybe my hair/scalp is weird?)

Jump out of the shower, wipe the glass door down – try to think and reflect/ enjoy the memory of building that shower. It’s so fun to think about running all the water lines with my Dad, or sodering the shower valves, or taking apart the shower cartridge when it leaked during the pressure test, and realizing the part was defective and getting manufacture to send new one for free, or cutting & hanging the waterproof shower board with Enrique, or waterproofing it with the overkill Schluter Kerdi membrane, and the Ardex 8+9 paint on membrane. The shower seriously should not leak for it’s whole life. Also take notice of the small defects, the tile in the upper right that is not flush with the tiles around it, or the shower trim, or the small little slump near the drain that makes the water take a little longer to drain than if it was perfectly flush. I really learned a lot making this shower, could 100% make a nearly perfect shower next time. Regardless of the small defects, its super cool this shower now exists in my world every day! Also remember back to using that freaking Dry cut tile saw, or that really neat tile cutter from Italy – researching and finding those tools helped improve the end result sooo much!

Once done with the shower, set the bathroom vent to run for 2 hours on the timer – think back to running all of the electrical lines with uncle Steve! That was so much fun + it really helps keep moisture out of the shower, should never have any mould – So glad we wired those timer switches in!

Put clothes on for the day, usually just gym shorts. Typically don’t put on any socks, sometimes it feels nice to just have bare feet on the wood/ground.

In an ideal world, the time will now be about 8:15 or 8:20. Go pour myself a coffee from the fridge, and sit down on the porch drinking with coffee club. Usually that is Ellen, Shannon, Mom & Dad. It’s something we have just recently started, and its really nice! It gives a little commitment to start the day – it’s no big deal if I miss it, and I mean everyone misses from time to time – but it is a nice little activity to look forward to every morning, and its outside. And I like that it’s with our parents/Aunt. So that is the best case, but if I slept in – which is totally fine to do, gotta do what feels right for the body, then do this different iteration.

2nd version: So if I’ve slept in, then coffee club will be the first thing I’m doing in the day, more or less. I’ll have workout clothes and my favorite running shoes on. And will join morning coffee club, but I wont stay as long. If its the first thing, then I’ll only stay for about 15 minutes. If I’ve already finished my workout and shower, I’ll typically stay for 45 minutes or more. I just have a goal to stop and be working by 10:00 a.m. It’s really nice to sit and chill with everyone, and we also kinda game plan around about the day.

From there, honestly I kinda just feel like the day is free to do what I want to. Maybe this needs more thought, and the day needs to be more planned out. But I basically just work from 10:00 a.m. – 5 or 6 p.m. There are breaks in the day. Lunch around 1 ish (which technically a lot of time that is the first time I’m eating any food, so its really more like breakfast). Then sometimes a nap around 2:30 ish for about 20 minutes. I don’t really set a timer anymore, just sleep and end up waking up 10 – 30 minutes later and feel a lot better! Usually feel pretty refreshed

To summarize the daily routine then:

Wake up when body feels like it. Ideal is 7:04 a.m. – latest is 8:15. Ellen waking me up then if I’m not already up works really well, she is up by 8:15 99% of the time.

If up at 7:05, put exercise clothes and my favorite runnings shoes, put on noise canceling headphones, drink electrolyte water & dance/move around, put on Maggie Rodgers “This is Maggie Rodgers Spotify”. Let it play love you for a long time, Light on, and then when “That’s where I am” comes on as the 3rd track, try to time it so that I’m walking around that first bend of the infinity loop when that song comes on. If I don’t time it perfect, just cheat it and start the song over when I get there haha. After walking the loop run for a PR if feel like it. Come home, hangs + pullups on the outdoor bar -> workout – consult my Workout Log for planned exercise, but if it feels right to do something different then do that, like if I feel really overly tired or stiff, do yoga/stretching instead of lifting weights or rowing. But try to stick to the plan, don’t just bitch out, but don’t push yourself too overly hard (it’s not productive to try and get a PR every time! Restraining myself will actually do a better job, get it out of your head that you should always be pushing 100% of the time!). Don’t forget to do J-curl’s on the triangle foam pad things to as part of stretching after workout.

Shower, teeth detail, clothes on – start the day!

Option #2: If not up at at 7:05, start the day with coffee club. Stay till around 8:45 and then go through the same exercise, stretch, shower process. No matter what, I end up staring work around 10:00 a.m. – which feels right.

I know I’m supposed to be a part of a really big and impactful company. If I’m 100% honest with myself, I feel like I’m supposed to be big part of creating that company. And that is exactly what is happening. This is something that I’m supposed to do – that voice of the universe tells me that all the time. I know I don’t have to listen to it, I don’t have to do it, I don’t owe the world anything. I don’t have to life a certain lifestyle. But I have to acknowledge that the world would be a better place if we could bend reality a little bit with the business model of this company. It’s like a big improvement on capitalism – maybe it would push us closer as a society towards having an even more fair economic system. I think capitalism is much better than any alternative so far in history, when there is a group of people as big and diverse as there are in the US. In smaller groups of people with less diversity, that group can agree on more things and more compassionate forms of government seem to work ok sometimes.

The main flaw in the capitalist system is that not everyone starts on the same starting line. Some people start laps ahead, and it is correct to use a sport analogy here. Capitalism is a giant game, and everyone plays the game of capitalism – no matter what – we are all forced to play the game. Some people stick their head in the sand and don’t acknowledge they are playing, most people don’t even end up learning many of the rules, they just get up to the plate and watch 3 fastballs come right down the middle and someone yells your out and they walk back to the bench fuming mad about how unfair the game is (they have no idea why they even struck out up at the plate). Some people get beat down by starting so far back that it feels 100% impossible to make any progress, which is totally legit – that would be amazingly hard! Anytime I see someone who has pulled themselves and their family out of poverty I get so happy, and I’m majorly impressed with that person and the effort and stubbornness they have. I really admin anyone who has done that.

If we can get everyone to start at the same starting line, which would absolutely take generations, but if we can do that – that would be really amazing. Our country would be soooo much better off! I think we can help to do that a little bit with this business model, if we stay true to it. It’s very easy to say what we will do with money before we have that big pile of money sitting there – I’m as close to 100% confidence as I could be that we will stick true though.

And then after that, if we have enough resources to focus on the charity aspect, like if this business model can also fund the charity goals we have, we could could really make an impact. It’s hard to know how much of an impact, but I honestly have the confidence of someone who is new to an activity – so over confidence for sure haha, but thats fine because I feel like we could make a massive impact, and even if we end up only making a smaller impact, it doesn’t matter – we will be bending the arc of society in the right direction and someone else will come along behind us and keep things moving until we get to where society allows for everyone to start on the same starting line.

Have a strange relationship to smoking weed. Growing up never did it, did not smoke at all until I was about 31 years old. I’m not sure when it started happening, but I smoked a handful of times and somewhere along the line I realized I can control my mind more when I smoke.

I’ve always heard the line that we can only control 10 or 12% of our brains, or something like that. And I’m not saying when I smoke I jump to 95% control and I’m rain man solving math problems in my head, but it does feel like maybe I jump up to 16% or maybe 18% control.

I can more or less fully control my focus, what I think about. Normally I can’t really control the lazer focus of my mind. If I can get lazer focused on something, I can usually solve that thing. But typically ideas come floating into my head and that is not really fully under my control. I have to jump on the idea I want to work on once it comes into my head if that makes since. I also have to write ideas down if I want to have any chance of remembering them.

But when I smoke its like boom, I choose what I want to think about. I still need to write the ideas down to remember them long term, but it gets burned into my mind more. Let’s say an idea is generally in my mind for 5 or 6 minutes, but if I smoke I probably have of 5 or 6 hours to write it down – it slows my mind down in that way. I can also choose to control my thinking fully, can block everything else out, can block out literally the rest of the world, I don’t actually see my surroundings. Which this is something I kinda love, and also kinda hate. It is pretty hard to get into this focused zone 100% sober, and when I don’t get into this focused zone I’m never fully happy with the work I complete because I know it can be done better if I fully focused on it.

So then that leads me back to wondering like ok, is weed bad for me or is it good for me. I don’t think ultimately it is a question that can be answered. On the one hand, I don’t really have any bad side effects from smoking. I’d say realistically I smoke like a tiny amount compared to other people, but still for me it just “feels” like it might not be right. I’m not sure if a lot of that is do to misinformation from when I was younger going through a system like DARE.

I can say when I’m 100% sober for lets say 3 or 4 days, and by 100% sober I mean zero cafeene, zero cannibus, zero alcohol – I definitely do physically feel the best and I get the best sleep according to my sleep tracker. But it’s also undeniable that I perform better if I take cafeen via cofee, and take 1 or two puffs of a vaporizer weed pen every day or two.

And another thing to consider is my performance at work when I smoke, it is much higher. I have always felt that I have a pretty solid mind – but definitely not some generational mind. And when your trying to create an online software platform you are competing with everyone in the entire world. It’s like thinking you are good at golf and then going to play a round on the PGA. There are some intellectual freaks in the world! When I smoke and can fully control my mind, it definitely helps me compete in this extremely competitive online world

It has been a long time since I really stopped and tried to fully appreciate Mother Nature, but I did today and there was a really funny thing that caused it.

It was a beautiful day, went for a Full Stroll through the hill with Ellen & Nara which was delightful, and the yearly hill wine walk was going on, which was fantastic. We also stopped and talked with Uncle Frank + some friends who live on the hill + some cousins that were in town – we saw a lot of great people and enjoyed the amazing weather, but non of that is what triggered the focused view at mother nature.

Once we got home I looked out our window and there was a bee, just hovering there. I watched him for a bit, then walked over to another window, and there was a bee hovering there too….. wait what – thats strange. I watched these bees for a while, and realized – oh shit they are trying to find their hive. We had an exterminator come last year and exterminate this massive bee hive. It was really a sad situation, we didn’t want to kill the bees, we wanted to get someone to come find the queen and move her and have the hive follow her. But it was not possible, the hive was inside of the walls in our house, literally inside an exterior brick wall. To get the queen out we would have had to demolish an entire load bearing brick wall – so yea not going to do that. So we called an exterminator and he exterminated the colony.

Now its the next spring and seems like bees are back from somewhere looking for that colony, or possible to make a new colony in our house – lol which not great…. but I mean I’m not scared. The had previously gotten in because the concrete caulking in a window had washed out. But over the last year I concreted caulked the windows and sills on ally 87 windows on the building!!! I know for almost 99% sure that I got all of them, so there is no way for them to get back into the wall…. nice try fuckers 🙂

But yea, that really got me thinking about how amazing this planet is – we have built elaborate shelters for ourselves as we have evolved, so we don’t spend all that much time actually in nature – which is understandable, in dead of winter or heat of summer – its usually pretty unpleasant to be outside lol.

I want to start a company where the main focus is not a relentless march to make more money. We here this quote all the time “we have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders to maximize value”. Some form of that sentence is spoken on just about every quarterly earnings call.

I want to start a company where the focus is on using the money that we make to benefit the largest amount of people that we can. We are going to do this through the products that we build, as well as through the causes that we donate excess money too.

The first product we will build is a platform that allows humans to interface with each other, and where the focus of the business is not the never ending march for more profits. The company will also not be structured so that the lions share of the money ends up being handed out to a small group of board member’s or early employees. No one at the company will ever generate a massive pay day because we will run the company too efficiently, spreading the benefit of the platform to as many people as we can.

The first product we are going to make is a platform that will allow restaurants to interface with their customers more easily and effectively. We are going to take a micro transaction from each order placed on the platform, which will allow the restaurants to have an amazing system because the cost of building and maintaining the platform will be spread out over millions of people (restaurant customers). Restaurants would not be able to afford this system on their own, which causes them to loose out on sales in this post covid word to big chains that can afford excellent apps, and to big silicon vally startups who’s sole goal is to “maximize shareholder value”.

We don’t have to be the first company in the space (were not). We don’t have to have the best technology in the short term. We just have to set out with a lazer focus not on “maximizing shareholder value” but “maximizing value for our systems users and for restaurant owners/staff”. No other company is going to take this approach, and build a tool while not trying to make billions of dollars that we can hoard to ourselves. We are going to make the best possible platform, were going to pay every employee well – including the founders, but everyone including the founders will simply have a very solid salary – ownership and board members will not be making millions per year off this system. We will probably come up with some kind of formula or cap on management salary (current thought is management only gets paid a multiple of employee salaries, like management only gets paid 5x the average salary of all employees). So if all employees on average make 100k, then management would be eligible to make 500k). Not set on the structure of the payment plan but the right setup will show itself as we get this company in motion.

So to summarize; were going to build a platform where restaurants can offer take out and delivery to customers through their own apps. There will also be a central marketplace for consumers to use where they can order from any local restaurant near them. This platform is going to take a micro transaction from each order, making the platform free for restaurants. We will build and maintain their individual apps, including making special one off features for them on their own apps. The restaurants will own their customer list. We will not sell ads on our platform. We will not allow coupons codes on the main central parent app. The company will only generate $ from one source, a micro transaction on each customer order.

After we get this train rolling down the tracks – we are going to attempt to move payments into the blockchain (there will be a separate post outlining the details of this in the future).

I love watching the St. Louis Cardinals, but I am glad that there is a lack of fans showing up to the stadium at the moment.  I realize this might have a slight negatively affect on our players in the short term which sucks – but fan’s are not frustrated with individual players so much as there is a growing frustration about the way the upper management and ownership group are operating. 

This is actually a somewhat common problem in our society where hyper wealthy individuals continue to try and maximize the amount of $ they have instead of looking around and trying to help other members of society out.

Take the cardinals for example: we here it constantly that COVID decimated profits, and before that we heard it year in and year out – we have to keep our payroll down were a smaller market bla bla bla. I don’t understand why local reporters let them get away with that? Fully dig into that statement!  Ask to see their financials or some kinda proof for this, because to the average fan this seems like totally BS.  To the average fan, or at least to me – and I consider myself to be an average, casual fan, this sounds like total BS.  The currently ownership group is making more money off this team than they ever have.  They not only have massive TV deal, they have ownership stakes in the ballpark village complex! They own a freaking massive hotel/condo building + the relatively new and beautiful stadium… I mean I get it – they are running a business like anyone else.  But to me running a sports franchise should operate somewhere between running a standard business and running a charity.  The franchise could do so much good for St. Louis is they turned the dial slightly more 1 or 2 notches to the left and didn’t focus sooo much on making $.  I realize this sounds somewhat strange in America, but they have enough $.  At a certain point does it really matter if you make 300 million dollars or 3 billion dollars? Once you reach into the 10’s of millions of dollars, it’s time to turn around and start looking for ways to lift other people up – you have won at the game we are all playing together.  Making more $ will just be unnecessarily hoarding resources for yourself.  Sure you could buy a mansion or a yacht – or fast cars…. Or whatever! And i”m not saying people should not be free to do this, everyone should 100% be free to do what they want, I’m just saying we should not romanticize that lifestyle. We should be pushing these people with social pressure to help society and the world out as a whole. There is some push towards this with “The Giving Pledge” that Warren buffett has setup – but this falls a little flat.  It’s not that hard to imagine how much good Buffet or other billionaires could do right now if they purchased and re-imaged the goal of the organization they bought.  A really easy example is Buffett could buy a fast food chain –  and chance the payment structure.  They could ensure that the workers at the bottom of the totem pole received an outsized percentage of the profits the company generates.  The company’s mission could change from “maximizing shareholder value” to “maximizing equity in society by prioritizing their poorest workers”.  I’d like to think there are enough rich executives out there that would come work for this chain even thought it would pay them less than they currently make – they would want to be part of this social experiment to try and do better vs pursue unrelenting profits at all costs.  If we could find a balance where this became the main focus, or at least a much larger focus of our society – it would seem that version of capitalism would be the best – most equitable system we could come up with. 

Back to the cardinals front – this ownership group can easily recalibrate the focus of the cardinals, they have more than enough money to do things like: Pay their minor league players a realistic wage, nothing crazy – but just pay the guys like 80 grand a year – that’s not going to kill you.  Sure you don’t need to do it according to the current CBA – but so what the current CBA also doesn’t prevent you from doing this.  It’s the right thing to do. And then at the big league level – spend up to the limit every year trying to make this team as best as you can.  We get it – you won’t hit with every signing, and not every team is going to go deep in the playoffs – but all we want is an honest attempt at putting the players, the city, and all of your fans around the country ahead of trying to generate as much $ as you can for the tiny group of people who own the team.  Your are 100% free to focus solely on $, it’s just deep down I’m sure you know that is a hollow pursuit.  You already have more $ than you could spend, you don’t wan to leave your family so much $ that they never have to work again and become lazy and non contributing members to society.

I hope you consider making some or all of these changes! If