StevenVinson.com

There are countless schools of thought on why nobody sees your video or reads your blog or listens to you in real life. I think about three broad categories:

1. Your content is just not that interesting (variation of He’s Just Not That Into You)
2. You have not done the “meta” work to find those who would be interested in your content. By “meta” I mean finding your tribe, your people, your audience. If you just hit “Publish” and hope for the best, then the odds of interested people finding your work is almost zero. You probably need to get out there and find your people.
3. All of the above

Working on 1 is what I believe I really want to be doing. Working on 2 seems daunting and unfun. Working on 3 will lead to more interesting work and more interested people. And 3 will lead to a more fulfilled life.

Did some shopping at Aldi today. I motioned a lady to go in front of me because she just had like three jars of spaghetti sauce.

She seemed apprehensive so I was a little self conscious and worried that I had embarrassed her somehow.

When she was rung up, her card didn’t go through the first time. So she tried again. And then she tried just two of the three jars, then one. Then she made a call. And it still wasn’t going through.

I think I knew what was going on. But I hesitated. I knew what I should do but I hesitated. I think I thought I didn’t want to embarrass her. Or maybe I didn’t want to embarrass myself?

A guy from the next aisle over came and ran his card through and she nodded and left with her three jars of spaghetti sauce.

I’m glad he did that. And I’m glad she got some spaghetti sauce. I’m also glad that I’ll know next time not to hesitate.

There are at least 1/2 dozen ways to make it not embarrassing for her or for me.

Apparently Jeff Bezos avoids screen time for at least one hour after he wakes up. While I believe Amazon’s business practices ultimately harm many people, Jeff’s screen time deferral technique is something I figure is worth trying.

So far, the 3 or 4 days I’ve tried it have been great. I even find myself doing less screen time during the rest of the day.

It doesn’t hurt that I’ve been off Facebook for a few weeks.

Anyway, what I came here to tell you is that less screen time has led to less knowing where my phone is time. Since I don’t reach for it every 7-1/2 minutes, I am prone to laying it down, spending an hour or two not reaching for it, then not knowing where I laid it down.

Not a bad problem to have, really.

When I get hyper interested in something, I’m like a dog with his favorite toy. That something is currently AI.

I had a wonderful conversation with an old friend about AI. I had asked on LinkedIn how folks thought AI would change project management. Joe (Pi to his closest friends) and I talked about it for an hour and a half. He told me to read The Singularity is Nearer by Ray Kurzweil. I am in the middle of learning how the impact of AI on our society will be much larger than the Worldwide Web’s impact has been. How everyday life will be impacted. How our jobs will be impacted.

This isn’t a book review. It’s a warning that I am going to be talking about AI a lot in the coming months and maybe years. As I told Paul, I am going to be about AI like I was about history when I discovered Dan Carlin’s Hard Core History.

This is also a deposit into a time capsule. Who knows what life will be like five or ten years from now? But it will be funny to look back and read this.

Hey, Future Steve. Say hi to your pet robot for me. Or your Second You. Or whatever kind of thing you have that I can’t even think of sitting here in the BeforeTime^TM.

The finer things club is the most exclusive club in The Office. So naturally I need to be in it. The party planning committee is my backup, Kevin’s band is my safety.

That said, I can read my favorite E.M. Forster novel without being in the finer things club. And so I did.

Surprisingly to me and almost no one else, I loved it.

Here are some quotes I found especially thought-provoking.

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul. (Narrator)

It was really a ruse of Lucy’s to justify her despondency – a ruse of which she was not herself conscious, for she was marching in the armies of darkness. (Narrator)

I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle. (Mr. Emerson)

But if we act the truth, the people who really love us are sure to come back to us in the long run. (Lucy)

Let me know if you read it and we can discuss over some panzanella and a nice Chianti. Jim’s not invited.

What if a person is supposed to be a virtuoso or an influential scientist or an influential poet? And what if middle school and high school crush it out of them. What if the demand for compliance to a norm and the obsession with competitive sports and the active shooter drills and the absolute refusal to do anything about constant bullying squeeze the beauty out of that child? It has been many decades since we set this system up and it’s past time we change it. Maybe school should focus on what the children need from us instead of what we need from the children.

I remember someone once saying not to trust any thought you have about writing unless you are actually writing. I think it was either Professor Barden or my buddy Dave.

Here’s how it happens. I have an idea. I think I’ll remember it. I don’t. Whenever I record a voice memo, it comes out all bungled and not nearly as brilliant as it sounded in my head.

Anyway, here’s the solution. A regular, routine habit of writing. The thoughts are good. Even the voice memo thing is good. But these serve to get the brain going on an idea so it can work on it while you go about your day. Then when you finally sit down to write during your regularly scheduled writing session, the ideas may present themselves from the recesses of your brain. After writing nonsense for 20 or so minutes of course.

Professor Barden said that somebody said don’t be precious about the wood. Do the work. Don’t make it out to be more than it is. Or less. No carpenter wrings his hands for a week and a half before he slaps the wood down on the bench and gets to cutting. Or nailing. Or mitering. Or whatever. They just get up, grab their lunch pail, show up at the job site, and start working. They don’t get all precious about the wood.

*while nothing you just read was true, it was based on an actual conversation with my friend Paul

I deleted my Facebook app three weeks ago. On day fourteen of a planned seven day break, I wished my lovely bride a happy anniversary using the browser version. More than twenty notifications grabbed my attention, just like the algorithm engineers intended. There was nothing there for me. Not really. I shut the laptop and continued my Facebook break. This here blog is a better place to write.

Eli started high school today. I walked to the bus stop with him. Because I wanted to, not because he needed me to. This is how it goes. Each milestone a little different. A little more profound. For weeks I have been imagining him in high school. Walking the halls. Figuring things out. Finding his people. Being himself and changing his people for good. His people being themselves and changing him for good. What a great, fun, exciting, anxious, scary, important time. He stepped onto the bus and into another world.

I walked back up the hill and into another world of my own. As I walked up the hill listening to the birds and to Simone calling down from the deck, it hit me. This is the home-base Eli will return to. But it is not where he will live. He will live “out there”. He will come back to here. Where the birds chirp and the dog greets and the little sister hugs. Where he can recharge, recuperate, gather some guidance and advice (to be used or not), rest. This is the place he will be anxious to leave once he is finished recharging. And anxious to return to when he gets homesick or just needs some home-love. It is also the place that his family will sit and miss him and wonder what he is up to. And the place where we will encourage him to get back out there to experience and influence the world and the people in it.