01 The amazing result of slowing down

I took a minute to do something this morning I haven’t in while. Two things actually, now that I think about it.

#1 - I sat down at my table with a pen and notepad and coffee and nothing else. I thought and sketched and wrote on paper. It was lovely. Different, and somewhat uncomfortable to start. But most importantly, it was also very, very helpful.

(#2: Before this, I had gone for a typical dog walk. I made rare the decision to not to wear AirPods or listen to anything. Just full awareness and freedom from any agenda. Now I can't help but I think I got to #1 bc of #2.)

Walking with "full awareness and freedom" sounds idyllic, but there was plenty of mental static I had to let pass. It was the same as when I first woke up, which was the same as when I went to bed last night…

Last night, I was able to see the Artemis II launch from our house. I almost got up on the roof, but decided not to go to the effort of dealing with the ladder. The Falcon 9 and Atlas V are impressive from a distance (we're ~50 miles away from the Cape). They leave a modest trail, and depending on the clouds and angle of sun—can be pretty cool. Especially when the Falcon 9 boosters take 20 minutes to make their decent back down, creating unique clouds of their own.

But the Artemis... damn. So that’s what lunar-bound thrust looks like compared to meager earth orbit. (that pillar hung around like it was made out of styrofoam)

Always the sucker for a metaphor, these launches remind me of one I heard early in my career. "Rocket fuel, if uncontained, is just an explosion. But if you can harness it, it will take you to the moon."

I have to confess the past four weeks have looked and felt more like an explosion than any meaningful moon mission. My energy and effort have been dispersed so fast and broadly that it feels like I’m making no progress. Just scorching my environment with activity and, ultimately stress.

This is the opposite of what I imagined when I left my full time role a month ago. I was a daily catastrophe dealing with multiple explosions. My whole need to leave was based on that. How in the world am I already back in the same pattern already?

I think that particular 'how' can be answered with another—constantly battling the bigger "HOW". How is this going to work? How are are we going to make a living? How are we going to send our kids to college? How are we going to rebuild our savings? How, how, how?

That "how" is what absolutely unravels me from my intent. It happens so fast. How is the fast forward button to an outcome I don't have control over right now. So the only thing it can do is breed anxiety. And anxiety is the worst collaborator.

When I got back from my walk, and sat down with pad and pen. (I flipped past 25 pages of algebra homework to find open space) I set how way off to the side and focused on what. What do I want my day to look like? What do I want my best energy to go toward? What are the things I need to be fulfilled? They're always fleeting thoughts, but I haven't sat with them long enough to let them have any bearing on my life.

So I took my time, gathered my thoughts from the walk, and started to organize them:

Without being overly calculated, I was able to quickly get to the buckets I want to fill my day by. I need to be consistently creating, learning, and connecting. I had decided that much before I got home. If I'm not doing each of those daily, a sense of incompleteness and dread will reside in the shadows. And nothing else will really change.

Creating, learning, and connecting. Hmm...

It's almost like the better way of explaining what I'm trying to do with Honest XD. The pull to create and learn is becoming more magnetic with people from what I can tell. What better reason to connect than to share those things together?

It's been six whole days since I thought of the name and bought the URL. This seems like a good place to drop anchor with the first post. Hope you see you around-

-Justin

Hi {{first_name}} This is the content below the section break