The week before last, we lost a dear friend to cancer.  Deb was an incredibly sweet, caring and giving person.  The memorial service last weekend was held at the elementary school where she taught first grade for the past 15 years.  The room was decorated -- to the hilt -- with hearts, butterflies, and ribbons, all in her favorite color purple, and was covered in notes of love and appreciation from students, parents and colleagues. During and after the service, I was overwhelmed by two feelings: first, the incredible compassion and caring that Deb exuded, in particular towards her family and students.  It was palpable, and hung in the air long after the service was concluded.  And second: the weight of the impact she had on all of the people she touched during her life.  A friend of ours was remarking, after the ceremony, how lucky Deb was to be in a position to connect with, support, and serve so many people during her time here. All of this has gotten me to thinking more about how much most of us get caught up in our own day-to-day anxieties and challenges, and how hard it can be, sometimes, to see over your own dashboard, so to speak.  Myself included.  It's so easy to get hung up in our own personal challenges, desires, frustrations, anxieties and disappointments. The great irony in this, is that one of the best ways to get out of your own shit, is to put yourself in the back seat and focus on serving others. I know Deb dealt with shyness and anxiety herself, and I suspect that this only added to her empathy when it came to supporting her family, friends and students. Every time I have managed to do this in my life, the result has not only been to provide some sort of useful help (I hope), but also to quell the internal drama. In other words, perhaps the best way to escape from our own suffering is to help other people escape theirs. There are lots of ways to do this, many of which come naturally through the course of your day and are just a matter of reframing your own mindset, as opposed to finding something brand new (though that's important too). After Deb passed, we couldn't help but notice her in the wind, and the sun, and the evening mist.  Her energy may have left her body, but it certainly hasn't left the world.  And what I am trying to do is remember the power of her energy, and the importance of using whatever energy we all have, today and tomorrow, in the service of others.

Today is the last day of September, and I'm happy and relieved to see it go. I've been holding my breath. September is a violent month.  That may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but I think there's some truth in it.  Something about the end of the summer and the abrupt change to the fall causes some trauma.  A lot of pent-up energy on the planet.  September is hurricane season, and this one has been particularly bad. A year ago yesterday, my wife's parents were hit by a truck while crossing the street.  The accident happened at 7pm, which in September, in Boston, is dark -- a time of day when it wasn't dark just a few weeks earlier.  My mother-in-law spent 4 months in the hospital, most of that with her skull partially removed to relieve the swelling and hopefully stave off extensive` brain damage.  A year ago today we were in a state of full shell-shock. In the past year, she has had a miraculous recovery, and this month she actually went back to work.  She's driving, and taking care of herself.  If you didn't know her and didn't know about the accident, you'd never suspect anything happened.  It's amazing really.  The doctors have been in awe of the recovery. We're so thankful.  And so exhausted and traumatized from the past year.  And we've been walking on eggshells all month, feeling the season change -- the air getting crisper, the night coming earlier.  Feeling the feelings we felt last year at this time, and having this unconscious expectation of impending doom.  I'm knocking on wood as I write this, that we've made it through. It's also Yom Kippur today -- the day of atonement, the holiest day of the year, and the end of the high holidays.  A time to turn the page, look back at the last year, reflect on our actions, and look forward to the new year.  I like that.  I've always liked formal turning points; somehow they make it easier to find some clarity amidst the mess. I guess I don't really have a point to this post, except to point out the change in the air, and wish everyone the best as they navigate the coming season.

In the world of startups and investing and ideas, things are always chaotic and fluid, and as such a key skill is to somehow cut through the noise and find focus.  That's on a micro level, like what do I do for the next five minutes, and on the macro level, like am I (or are we) heading in the right direction? This may be true in other fields, but I find it to be especially true on the investing side, where situations are undefined, and there are infinity ideas and directions to explore.  On the operating side, things are slightly more bounded, but there are always large questions about direction and focus. So I find myself spending a lot of personal time working on my own mindstate, and trying to find ways to help with this challenge.  One thing I have tried this year is to use a Volt Planner, which helps you structure goals on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I have found this to be incredibly useful, and I can write more that later.  One immediate observation from using the Volt Planner is that I emerge from each session (on Monday each week) feeling a rush of energy, paired with an increased sense of focus.  It's really nice. And that energy is really the important thing.  It's the foundation for all of the moments and decisions that happen, all day every day.  The more of it you have, the better.  It's foundational. So a little more broadly, I've been thinking about how important it is to optimize for energy in life.  I think that is some combination of exercise, diet, sleep, and writing.  Maybe that's obvious, and the first three are things that anyone would tell you are good for your health.  But "health", while obviously good and positive (especially compared to major injury or illness) is a little abstract, and for me at least, a little hard to motivate around on an everyday basis.  I suspect that will change as I get older. Energy is the foundation of doing anything, and it feels like there are compounding / exponential results to having more.  I am not saying I have figured out how to really rally myself behind this idea on a consistent basis (which is why I'm writing this), but I think it's worth figuring out which activities give you more energy and which suck it away.  Worth figuring out.

The week before last, we lost a dear friend to cancer.  Deb was an incredibly sweet, caring and giving person.  The memorial service last weekend was held at the elementary school where she taught first grade for the past 15 years.  The room was decorated -- to the hilt -- with hearts, butterflies, and ribbons, all in her favorite color purple, and was covered in notes of love and appreciation from students, parents and colleagues. During and after the service, I was overwhelmed by two feelings: first, the incredible compassion and caring that Deb exuded, in particular towards her family and students.  It was palpable, and hung in the air long after the service was concluded.  And second: the weight of the impact she had on all of the people she touched during her life.  A friend of ours was remarking, after the ceremony, how lucky Deb was to be in a position to connect with, support, and serve so many people during her time here. All of this has gotten me to thinking more about how much most of us get caught up in our own day-to-day anxieties and challenges, and how hard it can be, sometimes, to see over your own dashboard, so to speak.  Myself included.  It's so easy to get hung up in our own personal challenges, desires, frustrations, anxieties and disappointments. The great irony in this, is that one of the best ways to get out of your own shit, is to put yourself in the back seat and focus on serving others. I know Deb dealt with shyness and anxiety herself, and I suspect that this only added to her empathy when it came to supporting her family, friends and students. Every time I have managed to do this in my life, the result has not only been to provide some sort of useful help (I hope), but also to quell the internal drama. In other words, perhaps the best way to escape from our own suffering is to help other people escape theirs. There are lots of ways to do this, many of which come naturally through the course of your day and are just a matter of reframing your own mindset, as opposed to finding something brand new (though that's important too). After Deb passed, we couldn't help but notice her in the wind, and the sun, and the evening mist.  Her energy may have left her body, but it certainly hasn't left the world.  And what I am trying to do is remember the power of her energy, and the importance of using whatever energy we all have, today and tomorrow, in the service of others.

Today is the last day of September, and I'm happy and relieved to see it go. I've been holding my breath. September is a violent month.  That may seem like a ridiculous thing to say, but I think there's some truth in it.  Something about the end of the summer and the abrupt change to the fall causes some trauma.  A lot of pent-up energy on the planet.  September is hurricane season, and this one has been particularly bad. A year ago yesterday, my wife's parents were hit by a truck while crossing the street.  The accident happened at 7pm, which in September, in Boston, is dark -- a time of day when it wasn't dark just a few weeks earlier.  My mother-in-law spent 4 months in the hospital, most of that with her skull partially removed to relieve the swelling and hopefully stave off extensive` brain damage.  A year ago today we were in a state of full shell-shock. In the past year, she has had a miraculous recovery, and this month she actually went back to work.  She's driving, and taking care of herself.  If you didn't know her and didn't know about the accident, you'd never suspect anything happened.  It's amazing really.  The doctors have been in awe of the recovery. We're so thankful.  And so exhausted and traumatized from the past year.  And we've been walking on eggshells all month, feeling the season change -- the air getting crisper, the night coming earlier.  Feeling the feelings we felt last year at this time, and having this unconscious expectation of impending doom.  I'm knocking on wood as I write this, that we've made it through. It's also Yom Kippur today -- the day of atonement, the holiest day of the year, and the end of the high holidays.  A time to turn the page, look back at the last year, reflect on our actions, and look forward to the new year.  I like that.  I've always liked formal turning points; somehow they make it easier to find some clarity amidst the mess. I guess I don't really have a point to this post, except to point out the change in the air, and wish everyone the best as they navigate the coming season.

In the world of startups and investing and ideas, things are always chaotic and fluid, and as such a key skill is to somehow cut through the noise and find focus.  That's on a micro level, like what do I do for the next five minutes, and on the macro level, like am I (or are we) heading in the right direction? This may be true in other fields, but I find it to be especially true on the investing side, where situations are undefined, and there are infinity ideas and directions to explore.  On the operating side, things are slightly more bounded, but there are always large questions about direction and focus. So I find myself spending a lot of personal time working on my own mindstate, and trying to find ways to help with this challenge.  One thing I have tried this year is to use a Volt Planner, which helps you structure goals on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.  I have found this to be incredibly useful, and I can write more that later.  One immediate observation from using the Volt Planner is that I emerge from each session (on Monday each week) feeling a rush of energy, paired with an increased sense of focus.  It's really nice. And that energy is really the important thing.  It's the foundation for all of the moments and decisions that happen, all day every day.  The more of it you have, the better.  It's foundational. So a little more broadly, I've been thinking about how important it is to optimize for energy in life.  I think that is some combination of exercise, diet, sleep, and writing.  Maybe that's obvious, and the first three are things that anyone would tell you are good for your health.  But "health", while obviously good and positive (especially compared to major injury or illness) is a little abstract, and for me at least, a little hard to motivate around on an everyday basis.  I suspect that will change as I get older. Energy is the foundation of doing anything, and it feels like there are compounding / exponential results to having more.  I am not saying I have figured out how to really rally myself behind this idea on a consistent basis (which is why I'm writing this), but I think it's worth figuring out which activities give you more energy and which suck it away.  Worth figuring out.