Hello my luvlies, here’s some upd8s!
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A Long Awaited Return
After almost 5 months away, I’m back at it with BJJ!
I had a nagging knee injury that I couldn’t quite get diagnosed, and knee attacks are easily the most anxiety-inducing part of BJJ. I tried to rest it for a while, but that didn’t improve things much, and I was more unsure of movement than I’d ever been previously in my life! About 3 months in I almost entered a mindset of “welp, I guess I’m OLD now”, but then I saw a good physio and things rapidly improved.
I’ve talked about this to some of you before, but injuries teach so much! In this case, I think it’s added physio, activation, and intentional mobility training to my aresenal - yes, I’ll work to avoid injury, but feeling like minor injuries aren’t the end of the world is definitely a blessing.
Feeling-wise, DAMN did I miss scrapping! I was really happy with how I felt my first day back - my movement wasn’t terribly constrained, and my strength and cardio felt solid given the layoff. I definitely feel like I’ve forgotten most of what I learned, but I just gotta a) review some of my notes and b) trust that it’s in my bones and will come back in due time.
What’s been cool about doing sports as an adult vs as a student is that there aren’t really time constraints - there are no seasons, and you do it for as long as you want! The blessing here is that I felt like I didn’t actually miss much by taking time away to heal from injury and gain new tools - I didn’t “miss the playoffs” or use up a quarter of my Varsity career or anything like that. When the time scope for doing BJJ is something like the next 20 years, 5 months doesn’t seem like a big deal - and honestly, I’d rather learn these injury management tools in my 20s than in my 40s, ‘cause I’m sure as shit gonna need to learn them at some point.
Being A Manager
For the past few months, I’ve been leading a team at Brain Power! This isn’t something I expected to happen - I only work there for 20 hours a week, so I thought people leadership was something I was setting aside for this stint on my career. But we realized we needed to expand our Growth team, that I’m technically Head of Growth, and that our CEO has way too many direct reports already, so here I am!
Much is weird about this - I still feel young (all of my team members are older than me), we work remotely, and I don’t have any training in this. Most of what I’m drawing on are core leadership principles I’ve applied elsewhere, direct feedback from my team, and my experience with being managed. That said, a few things have stuck out!
First - ownership is 100% the way to go. When people have clear boundaries on what they are/aren’t responsible for, what is/isn’t their priority and where they do/don’t have final decision making power, their work becomes way clearer. They know what they need to focus on, what to put their creative energies into, and how they’re contributing to the greater whole. Fuzzy ownership leads to role confusion, everyone doing everything, and an inability to prioritize. Especially at the size of company Brain Power is (~15 people working on the business), where there’s tons to do and no history of processes, these conversations have been really helpful!
Second - this is the first time in my work life where I can’t expect full forthrightness from the people I work with! This is not a criticism of them, just the reality of a power dynamic. No matter how vulnerable, forthcoming, curious, and supportive I am of my team, I’m nevertheless their boss. My small actions greatly affect them, and my opinion of them matters - it leads to inherent performativity, no matter how hard either side tries. This is ok! It just means I need to seek different forms of feedback alongside the direct, and actively look for ways to be better instead of waiting for external correction. But it IS weird and new!
Third - I love working with people who are better than me. Our digital marketing person is a NOVELIST (*fanboys*), our events squad has put on massive events and run stores, etc etc - I’m learning a ton from them. It puts me in a position to lead from behind - there are many details, but all I really gotta do is work with them to set the goals/vision, then clear shit out of their way so they can fly. This has always felt like the best form of leadership to me, so I’m happy it’s translating to the workplace!
This shit was scary when I first started doing it, and it still sometimes is. I often told myself the same thing i constantly tell my team - we’re gonna be so much better at this in 3 months. Well, ~3 months in, I think that’s true - but I think it’ll continue to be true for the next while! This definitely has a learning curve to it, and I’ll likely laugh at the mistakes I’m currently making, but it also feels like something worth getting good at/being conscientious about.
Insight I’m Trying To Implement
So I’m looking to get better at this whole writing thing, but I’ve known for a while that I think best by talking. Instinctive, conversational, in-the-moment creativity is my favourite way to access ideas, and bring them out of others! If anything, writing clarifies my thinking best when it feels like I’m talking to myself, or when I imagine I’m talking to a friend while doing it.
This came up at work - my CEO (Vanessa) said offhand “you know, your first instinct is often your best, which isn’t often the case”. I’m not sure that’s entirely true - I’m a fan of thinking deeply, of questioning the initial gut feeling to understand and evaluate its underpinnings - but I do think spoken words are an easier avenue for my creativity, and I want to give them more play!
If y’all have any ideas on how to use spoken words to think/articulate more, let me know! I can’t be doing a speech every time I want to think something through, and someone’s not always around to talk, but perhaps voice notes? Writing down topics and doing brain burns with friends? Super open to ideas here!
Mind Virus To Overcome
“That’s not a new idea” says my brain every time I sit down to write. I’m getting better at overcoming this, but it’s still definitely there!
Everything I’ve ever done that’s felt novel has started out with what felt like a new creative spark, only to become mundane and derivative as soon as I begin to explore and implement. The trick has always been to trust that that initial creative instinct was real, that there’s something there to be uncovered, and keep exploring. With enough time - and often less than I’d anticipated - that valuable newness was found (created?) again, but this time in a clear enough form to share/be useful to others.
But even if an idea isn’t new - even if some snarky well read fuck could just reduce it to some combination of existing concepts - so fucking what? Would you ever say “that’s not new dude” to musician performing a Beatles song, or a painter painting a river? Of course not! Any art, any idea you’re giving form has inherent uniqueness - it’s done in your style, and for the people near you. Great ideas are worth repeating in as many ways as it takes for people to hear them, and your repetition will doubtlessly be a way that someone accesses said idea.
And even if everything I’ve said to this point is bullshit, it’s still worth creating - because all the work you do, every person you are, is just en route to whatever you’ll make and whoever you’ll be next. That’s a Rick Rubin idea, but also one that’s really helped me take the pressure off of individual things I write/make/do - it doesn’t have to be THE thing, just on the right path.
Talk I Did Recently
I did a talk in January at a thing called Fuckup Nights, and they just put out the recording! Fuckup Nights hosts talks from people (mostly in the startup world) talking about their failures, which I think is generally healthy - though I gotta say, I was expecting a more intimate, fireside-chat style venue and not a keynote speech looking venue with a DJ.
I talked about my straight out of undergrad startup (mis)adventures, and coming to terms with/handling avoidance! Most of you know at least some of this story, but at least now it’s on some form of record.
Watching it back, I’m more or less happy with the talk - though if I were to give myself a critique for future, it’d be to focus more. Sure, I talked for 30 minutes here, but I think there’s a tighter, more impactful 15 minutes in there that could be reached with some refining.
I wanna do more speaking this year! Unlike writing, it takes a little bit more up front setup/coordination to have the opportunity to do so, but it is a skill I want to keep honing.
Songs That Have Been Bumped
This has just re-entered my head multiple times over the last few weeks. Also, I would pay good coin to have been in the room when the label was told that the name of this album was to be Blizzard of Ozz.
Some friends and I saw Burna Boy live last week! I’d never really been into afrobeats before, but it was a fantastic show. He’s got unreal presence, confidence, talent, all of it - it’s cool to see someone doing exactly what they’re meant to do, to the max. Watching him perform at Scotiabank Arena, I had the sense that this is more or less the same thing he was doing when it was 10 people in Nigeria.
This popped up recently, I listened back through the album, and the shit holds UP! Black Eyed Peas was the first music I ever bought, back when I’d drop $0.99 a song on iTunes, and shit was worth every penny. Elephunk is another banger album title.
Also did anyone else see the Song Psychic thing on Spotify? It’s incredibly silly, enough so to share I suppose - but like, does this drive engagement in any way that’s meaningful to Spotify? They get paid by the month, not every time someone opens the app! And if they’re trying to recreate the Spotify Wrapped magic or something, they really don’t get why their own thing worked - I’m not looking forward to Psychic, nor am I keeping my Spotify account just to see what the Psychic says at the end of the year. Truly, in the words of
, it feels like some director told an intern “i need 20 spotify wrappeds on my desk by EOD so help me god”Meme Par Excellence
Did y’all see the news story about the comically shitty Will Wonka experience thing that happened in Glasgow this week?
Basically, someone made AI image posters for this “immersive’ event and then didn’t follow through so good, leading to many disappointed children and angry parents. I’ve got many a problem with recent AI developments, but the screeching here is misplaced - overpromising and underdelivering is a tale as old as time, and the AI isn’t the issue here.
The silver lining to this is it becoming a meme format:
Lastly, the fact that this dude is both Dune’s Paul Atreides and Willy Wonka is wild!
That’ll be all folxsxsxs! See you soontimes 😁