Survivability and Scalability

Been thinking about skills for the future.

And fun things to do now.

Surviving is fun. And a requirement for the future.

Scaling amplifies your efforts.

To do either well, remove all of the steps.

And go straight for the target.

Instead of planning things out, I like to put myself in an environment conducive to the changes I'd like to make.

Letting life live me and instead of me trying to live life.

Humans are good at adapting when necessary.

It's where the saying "if you want a clean house, invite people over" comes from.

I've got friends coming over later.

This morning I picked up the clothes I left on the floor.

Otherwise, my visitors would see the mess I live in.

So to build skills for the future or do fun things now, start at the end.

Survivability

Survival comes first.

There's no point scaling if I can't survive.

Health, relationships, growing my own food, making things with my hands, fighting, knowing myself, communicating, selling.

What would a day look like if I took care of all of these things?

Health

Easy to overcomplicate.

I get up and move.

I rest when I'm tired.

I eat when I'm hungry.

If I'm getting fat, I eat a little less, move a little more.

If I'm feeling grim, I walk in the sun.

Relationships

I talk to the ones I love and let them know I love them and ask them how they're going and listen and let them speak and hear their stories and watch their faces light up when they share what they're excited about.

Their excitement excites me.

Growing Food

I go to the store and I buy what I want.

But I have no idea where it comes from.

And what if the store wasn't there?

Unlikely.

But possible.

Why learn to grow my own food?

Because what if the food one day became unavailable?

I'm not a fan of how divorced I am from the food I consume, what goes into and where it comes from.

So I've been changing this.

By going to a local farm one day per week.

I spend time in the garden, tending to the fields, learning how animals interact with the soil walking over it pissing on it shitting on it, giving life to create life.

I watch the bees fly in and out of flowers facing their petals toward the sun. Like staring at the best painting I've ever seen.

Such a beautiful arrangement.

How better to learn?

More days in the field, yes.

But I'm in no rush.

When I'm in the fields swinging the plough, that's all I'm doing.

Swinging the plough.

Any thought of past or future disappears.

And all of my existence dissolves into the arcing motion of the plough.

I know the lesson.

To learn anything well, nature must be your teacher. Start at the end.

I could read books on farming and I listen to talks and podcasts and I do but none can replicate what it's like to pull your first piece of food out of the ground.

Growing food is creating life.

Creating something from nothing.

What could be more fun?

Making things with my hands

Things break.

If I can repair things with my hands, I can create shelters if need be.

I can build a bookshelf to house the resources I'm learning from.

A solid timber frame filled with the words of my gods.

A table to share a meal with the ones I love.

A seat to sit on in the sun and a bench to rest my feet.

Fighting

I train to fight to never have to.

You can't control what you don't understand.

So I learn to fight, I learn to understand what it's like to use my body as a weapon.

Learn what it's like to inflict physical pain on someone else and the reverse.

Be humbled when I walk into the arena and lose to someone trying to hurt me as much as I'm trying to hurt them.

But hurt is only the surface level goal.

The real challenge is trying to control yourself.

Fighting covers physical and mental.

Sometimes I lose and my body hurts for days.

My mind hurts for weeks.

Last night Jimmy got me. And then I got him. And then we laughed about it after.

Knowing myself

Writing and walking help me learn more about myself. I write about what I'd like to understand more and I walk to figure out what I'd like to write about.

Movement is the opposite of anxiety.

When I feel the demons creeping in, I introduce them to the gods in my head. And I let them hold hands and we walk together and we dance together. Along the pavement and through the fields. I say good morning to the passers by and they say it back and I say nice day isn't it and they say indeed it is.

Understanding oneself involves acknowledging one's good and bad traits. Each gives the other meaning.

How boring would things be if they were always one way?

The ecstasy of life is walking the tightrope between opposites.

I'd like to share such ideas.

Communicating and selling

Knowledge is useless unless you can communicate it.

Shouting from the hills or whispering in someone's ear.

Hello, I've thought of this, I'd like to know what you think.

Oh please, tell me more.

Communicating is a form of learning from nature.

Sounding your ideas off reality.

Do you hear an echo?

Yes, no, maybe so.

If you do, keep going.

If you don't, try again or change course.

Walk in the store. Go to the farm. Try to buy food.

I offer money.

Money the database.

A time delayed archive of skill or resources.

Either way, I must sell.

Communicating and selling go hand in hand.

Learn skill to sell skill to get money to buy food or grow food to learn skill to sell skill to get money.

The circle of life.

Scalability

Now I know how to survive, time to scale things up.

Art, media, video, writing, code, math, business.

Anything inside these realms.

All with the goal of not having to be at a certain place at a certain time.

Yes, the fields need tending, to grow your own food, you need to be there. Location is easy when it's a necessity of nature.

Scalability comes second because it’s not required.

But why not share the fun?

If I can shoot videos and write well I can communicate my ideas and sell the things I make.

I'll get better.

Even if it sends me crazy.

Ha!

Crazy to who?

Make a video once, watch it one hundred times, write an article once, read it ten thousand times, write multiple drafts of a book and send the best version to seven different continents.

Write code that runs on computers around the world to scaffold my business.

What a freedom!

I use the internet to learn in reverse.

The same with learning to farm by being on a farm.

Instead of figuring out the steps to get somewhere I put myself there and let myself figure out the steps while I’m there.

Rather than trying to adapt to an environment?before?being in it, I learn to adapt to an environment?while?being in it.

There's the secret!

If I want to be a successful machine learning engineer, what would I be doing?

Writing and shipping code.

If I want?Nutrify ?to be an app I would use, what would I be doing?

I’d start at the end. Build my machine learning powered app in public and see if it works. Take a photo of food and learn about it. If it works, good. If not, make it better.

If I want to be writing books and see my name amongst the words of my gods on my shelves, what would I be doing?

Every morning. Read words, write words.

If I want to be a good role model to my brothers, what would I be doing?

If I want to be a strong and loving father to my future children, what would I be doing?

A better partner?

Own a piece of farmland?

These are my current questions.

They change over time.

Perhaps the last four are more survival than scaling. Family first.

There's a red thread here...

Work out where to be.

Leverage millions of years of evolution rather than hundreds of years of education.

Easy.

I'll have fun and let it become fruitful.

I'll love and I'll trust myself and I'll take care of my health and I'll fight my training partners and give them my all, I'll spend time in the fields, feel at one with the grand energy, grow food and share it with family and friends and we'll laugh and push each other playfully at the big table when someone says something silly.

I'll write words make art shoot videos write code build businesses, tell stories, sell digital goods on the internet and books at local cafes.

Such a beautiful arrangement.

-

PS I just updated my?now page , it contains a few updates on what I’m doing now.