Introspection with Juan

Got caught up on business matters with my friend and colleague Juan. During Startical 1.0, I had yet to meet him in person, but he had this lovely message for me back then. Juan and I have lived some difficult entrepreneurial struggles together, and have had shared some unconventional business travels together, so I was very curious how he would respond to the question of how he would spend one extra hour per day if he could use it however he wants:

I would use the hour for introspection, to work on my own shit, to read, to write and to learn.

Juan said he was already making time regularly to do this. He said it's easy to forget to make oneself the priority. I definitely agree. Introspection was part of a key takeaway from Startical 1.0 and is clearly a theme here once again!

Reminiscing about last year's epic rail journey

Last year today I embarked on an epic rail journey from Montreal to Chicago via Vancouver and Seattle. This time of the year is pretty much the only time I can completely escape startup life (and Internet connectivity), and a year ago I seized the opportunity to do something I'd been dreaming of since childhood: take "The Canadian" across Canada. Sat down with a beer and watched my videos from that trip (see playlists below) which brought back very fond memories not only of the trip itself, but also of Startical 1.0 which involved a similarly ridiculous Montreal to San Francisco rail journey. The playlists: "The Canadian" - Toronto to Vancouver by rail "The Empire Builder" - Seattle to Chicago by rail Also reminds me of my Rails and Reels: History, Infrastructure and the IoT blog post from 2013, just after we had become "World's Best Startup". Somehow rail journeys bring out the philosopher in me...

TechNoel

Answers to the question from Vaughn and Noor. Art with Eva...

Reading day

It's rare that I can justify an entire day to reading. Being on the mend from my cold, and not being in a state to be efficient at much else, I was somewhat able to justify taking the time to read Kauffman's A World Beyond Physics just about end-to-end. Although at many moments along the way I felt guilty about all the other things that I was "supposed" to be doing. Nonetheless, the timing of this read was brilliant. I've always been fascinated by evolution and emergence and the broader application of these concepts. I read Kauffman's 1996 work, At Home in the Universe, and this latest (2019) work attempts to add the missing piece in his theory of the emergence of life as we know it. I realise that reading helps me cope with a distinct loneliness I feel. In continuously advancing toward the vision of reelyActive (my startup) I get further and further away from what might be considered the normal or established context. In other w...

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