Let Go and Haul: late to the party, discovering the importance of an unplugged vacation
Week 8, 2018 – Brooklyn
Hi! I’m back! I took a vacation and it was amazing. More on that in a minute.
Journey: where we’re at
I haven’t mentioned some big news that happened in the new year yet: we won a National Science Foundation grant! Gen drove this and made it happen! With the government shutdown last month we were a bit unclear on the status, but it all happened. This opens the door for us to apply for part two of the grant (which is worth three times as much). Fingers crossed!
These past two weeks we made solid progress on the video creation flow – both the design (which is starting to look more “real” now, whee!) as well as how the videos look. I was using the app this weekend while helping a friend shop for a wedding dress, and had a couple serendipitous moments where it made a pretty nice video on the first try for me :) Of course, there were also moments when it didn't do that lol, but hey, progress!
Journal: what I learned
Vacations are amazing! Everyone should take them regularly omg. Founder burnout is obviously a much talked about topic because it’s so real, and I was definitely feeling close to it before I did this. When I went to turn on my vacation responder, the last time I’d had an OOO auto-reply was April 2016, before I started at Vine. Yikes. I mean, obviously I’ve taken long weekends here and there, but I haven’t been able to completely unplug for a long time. I went to the Caribbean with my friend Summer, left my laptop at home, and basically ditched my phone as much as I could and consciously stayed off social media. It was so restorative, and I think better for my mental health (and possibly my friends too) to not be posting beach stories while it’s freezing and gross in NYC.
I came back feeling refreshed and excited to get back to work and use my brain after allowing myself to get completely “bored” laying on the beach for five days. It was like a brain cleanse, but I don’t think it would have been as successful if I hadn’t been mindful and disciplined about unplugging. The first 24h felt extremely weird, it’s wild how addictive these screens are.
A funny thing happened when I returned though, I had a bunch of meetings my first day back in NYC, and I felt almost guilty for saying I’d just come back from vacation, and also somewhere like, nice. I felt like I needed to make a point of mentioning I booked the whole trip on points because like, founder’s salary, I don’t want to come across as frivolous. But also, this trap we play into that founders are supposed to always be hustling and working non-stop…. that’s the expectation (and obviously the reality most of the time) but everyone has to take a step back and clear their minds. I’m definitely way more on top of my game for having done this.
Jams: what I’m into
It’s playlist time! I just added my February Jams to my playlist SISTERS. Get in :)
Speaking of jams: I’m very happy Black Panther won best soundtrack tonight, if that hadn’t happened then idk what even!