Timeboxing sometimes seems the enemy of Getting Shit Done, especially when unknowns and risk is high. Somethings take as long as they take. Another compounding problem is that highly exploratory tasks expend much more mental energy. Put both together and you have what I have currently with this website. A desire to take a meager week-long stab at updating it, that got derailed when I broke the shit out of it changing the domain name. I have a goal (update daily with a thoughtful but short blog entry) that was replace by digging around for a solution, being frustrated by my inability to resolve it, generating these wondrous fireworks of feelings of inadequacy, anger, and pressure to manage all of my tasks, goals, and obligations. I forgot what I intended to write about, instead we have this play-by-play of my morning chaos. To make things really interesting, let's also start thinking of my week's workload on this holiday that I am spending "resting and recovering."

In 1999, I largely quit being a musician. I had a few brief stints playing bass in Chicago, but I was no longer self-assessing as a bassist; I became a bookkeeper, a finance associate, an IT specialist, and several other semi-invented titles as I stumbled around my early thirties. Breaking up with music wasn't easy; for a long time I was too uncomfortable to see music live, and over time, I started listening to podcasts instead of music. Until I started learning Japanese, I felt at sea, without some kind of passion. But learning Japanese is a different muscle and it fulfills me in a different way.

My goal is to bring back music into my life, as much as possible. The way I felt listening to music is what pushed me to play. Music can make my heart explode. It was a jarring realization that aside from iTunes, I had no real way of listening to music in my apartment, so I remedied that. I still don't know what to listen to in terms of new music, but I am exploring. WFMU is my new favorite station.

I have a guitar and keyboard now, and bought some monitors that are way too big for my apartment, so I almost have a music studio. It's 8:30 on Sunday morning. I am drinking hot coffee. I am listening to "Nothing But a Child" by Steve Earle. Thinking about San Francisco, Chicago, North Carolina, Japan.

I have many secret internet idols. People I have seen as an inspiration over the years, for various reasons. I would suspect they would be surprised to know this, not only do they not know me, they are most likely going about their daily lives, and just happen to expose some of that to the internet. Well, enough with the secrets, it's time to open the books to the world. The commonality here is that all of these guys I found around 2006.

David Chart: Has been blogging pretty much daily since 2006. You can see his Japanese improve as time passes, and I am impressed at the diligence and discipline. Such focus is something I don't know if I possess, but hope to gain, even still. I have made several attempts at these long term daily practices, but few I can say I have stuck with for years. 

Rich Pav: Another nice fellow in Japan I discovered when I started learning Japanese. His podcast was pretty well known then, and he has since reappeared sporadically. I was excited to hear his voice lo, these 9 years later, as having matured, but even more succinct and dryly funny. I admire how he has stuck it out as a gaijin, made career changes similar to those I have often wrestled with, and has been open and self-aware about the struggles of living and working in Japan, although some are the same struggles I feel anywhere I go.

Techzing podcast guys: They began their podcast as a talk show about bootstrapping, with interviews or just the two discussing different Hacker News stories. Over the years, they have taken and left jobs, started and closed start-ups, invested, advised, and sold other businesses. Watching the incremental changes and showing how something like a blog post or a podcast has taken their lives in a different direction has been interesting. Some of the appeal is simply they are about my age, one has spent time in Chicago, and they are in tech like me.

Jonathan: I remember to check in on his blog every year or so. About the time I was moving to Tokyo to learn Japanese, he had also made the decision to pack up and move to Aichi, Japan with the same goal. He came back around the same time I did, and unlike me, has since moved back to Nagoya. As with David, his dedication to Japanese is inspiring, and not quite as dauntingly prolific.

This is pretty much off the top of my head. Over the years, my empathy has grown for anyone who does customer-facing work. Servers, tech-support, retail, sales -- you are my people. But tech support gets a pretty shitty deal, and I certainly had to look at how I treated offshore help when I needed it. So, this is for me to remember, as well.

1. Whether they are from India or Indiana, they are probably trying their best. That doesn’t mean it is going to meet your expectations.
2. In fact, chances are that person from some other land is working with all their might to feed their family. Don’t assume their life is anything like yours.
3. If they aren’t giving you what you want, it isn’t their fault, they are probably doing what they were trained to do. They are following the rules. Are you worth them losing their job over?
4. A first-level support person may not have the authority to fix your problem. Or they may have asked their boss and were told not to give you what you want. Or they were told to say no, unless escalated. Yeah, sucks but it happens. Don’t take it out on them.
5. In general, don’t be a dick to the person who knows more than you about your broken widget, speaks at least 2 languages, and can stay polite while listening to people rant and insult them all day.
6. When on hold, put on the speakerphone and do something else, if being on hold makes you mad. But give them your attention when it’s time to talk.
7. Don’t shit your pants because you had to explain twice. Do you want them to play telephone and risk not implementing the right fix? Let them hear it from the horse's mouth, every time. There’s a chance you didn’t explain it right, anyway.
8. “It took three people to fix my problem!!” Yay, they fixed your problem! If you were to start a business, you would probably do it the same way. If you tell me that you would put your most advanced person on front-line support, you are naive, or I call BS.
9. The US support delivery model does mostly suck. Go to Japan and they will let you out of a phone contract if you ask, they did for me. The person trying to help you on the phone is not responsible for that.
10. You have the power to make their day. Be the one person that day who joked with them, talked with them, made them smile. It will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

I was added as a co-organizer of a meetup shortly after moving to San Francisco in 2012. I had a few conversations with the organizer, but we never really got it together. When she left the group, I became the default organizer and was inspired to get things moving.

Over the last ten months, I have dedicated about 1-2 hours a week, which besides attending the actual event, includes organizing and promoting the meetup. Organizing entails finding speakers, finding locations, and finding other speakers when things occasionally fall through.

Since I started putting on my little monthly show, the membership has grown almost four times. Attendance at events has similarly climbed, and it currently hovers at around 50 attendees. That big spike in March is when another meetup merged into mine.

Originally, I was having all the meetups at my office, but have since gotten help from various attendees who graciously offer to host. This has made life much easier for my office manager and as a result, me. Setting up chairs, paying for food, cleaning up the messes are all things that I did not think about, but become a drag after a few months.
 

Your Emcee for Tonight

The best part is getting to know the people that keep coming back. I feel like these folks are compatriots, if only that we are all looking for help.
 
I also get to see the networking I help to create. After each meetup, I see activity on LinkedIn between attendees and feel like maybe one of these connections might actually be beneficial to someone's career. Coming up on a year, I feel being of service and providing a regular industry event provides the community with consistancy: a dependable monthly option on a Wednesday night to meet others and maybe learn something.
 
It wasn't my motivation for this to benefit my career in any direct way, aside from networking. But, I have been on a few workshopping calls with VCs, and gotten invited into an event or two for free. I have talked to some founders and done some free consulting, which I have enjoyed. People have talked to me about issues at their current jobs, sought recommendations about changing jobs, and asked for other similar help. This is the best part of doing this.
 

Challenges

My main challenge is giving the people a great meetup. Finding speakers can be a challenge, and I often find myself sweating to find someone to fill the speaking spot. I find it is something I can't let languish and need to put in a few hours a week to reach out to people. Defining the overall theme of a meetup and making tweaks to the format are mostly stabs in the dark. I go to other meetups, looking for inspiration. The ones I have been to range from boring to empty to packed like sardines. My only current goal is to have mostly attendees speak, making it a community event, rather than bringing in speakers to talk at them for an hour.
 
The other challange is promoting the events. Recent speakers who made the effort to tweet and post to relevant groups had noticeably more folks show up. I never think about it and am oddly awkward about posting to groups. I think I am a bit too worried about putting on a good show; I need to promote it like I did when I was in a band and was promoting a show: with unflappable pride. Allocating more time to the group is a bit tough, so I am not sure I can make a big push each month, but I can do better.

I have offers to help from people I have met in the group, and need to take them up on it. I don't feel like I have to do it all myself, but haven't really sat down to plan what I want to do with the meetup over the next year, so I don't really feel prepared or know what do ask. That's something I need to spend a few hours on.
 
All in all it isn't hard, isn't easy. It needs about 5 more hours a month than I am giving it. I often wish there was a meetup for meetup organizers. I would start it, but I can't run another one. Plus, maybe that's a bit to recursive.

I wonder if my journey ever brings me back. My actions would lead me to bet against it.

By abandoning evil, and cultivating good, which the Buddha states are achievable goals, well-being and happiness are a result.

I have always thought the Buddha eschews terms such as “evil,” but not here. It seems as if that’s a general misconception, from my years hovering around Buddhism, but it may be "morally relativistic me" making that assumption. The notes point out that humans have a strong potential for evil, which can be arrested before action is taken, which is our choice, and our power of choice can be strengthened by the cultivation of good.

Even more simply, though we have evil desires, if we are doing good things all the time, we are more able to not realize evil intentions.

At the very least, we will have less time to do evil.

Just got done with Marc Maron's WTF podcast with Mike Judge as guest. Judge is a hero of mine. His journey from Physics major to engineer (at Gallien Kreuger!) to bass player to the animator who saved MTV and defined the 90s is inspiring. A clear difference between him and I is patience. As both an animator and former engineer, you can sense it in his even, low-key demeanor. I like to think I pay attention to detail, but without patience, taking 6 weeks to create a 2 minute cartoon would be a fantasy.

1. Don't be content with where you are
2. Be unremitting in the struggle for enlightenment

Be diligent, Scott. Don't be lazy, don't procrastinate, don't rationalize. Don't delay. Do it like your brief life, and everyone in it, and everything that happens after, depends on it.

You don't have to be a wet blanket or a malcontent. But it's good to check your ideal version of reality to the one that's really occurring. Culture, perception, morale; you can't will it into what you want it to be. It's the actions we make, the small game that make them what they are.