Let Go and Haul: love the journey as much as the result
Week 45, 2018 – Brooklyn
Journey: where we’re at
Excited to announce a new expert-advisor on the team, Will Boston! He's assisting with our music strategy and supervision. Will is based out of LA and co-founded the amazingly prescient record label Fade To Mind.
This week Anton prototyped some high risk / potentially high reward product ideas that are feeling really exciting. Lots more to do, but the beginnings are eeeeeee!
Dom announced Byte, as you probably saw. Not sure what it is yet, but if it’s competition that can be a healthy thing. We’re choosing to stay focused and not let this distract us. Related to distractions, thank you so much for not emailing me this week with “did you see...?”
Journal: what I learned
My greengrocer always plays classical radio. Last night as I picked up some veg to prep a quick salad for a Friendsgiving dinner I heard the smooth radio voice say “tonight it will drop to 40º in Central Park” (which besides is a hilariously specific way of reporting the weather) was one of those moments where I had to remind myself oh shit right! I live here! That is cool. It took so much work to get here and remember to “re-merchandise progress back to myself”, something that Scott talks about in the Messy Middle (yep, still reading it – ready for round two of that?)
So hi from chilly New York, it officially feels like winter is around the corner and I’m writing this from my kitchen table in Brooklyn (which is where I do all my work at home). I have a lil view of Empire across the river out my window when I look up from my keyboard. Tonight it’s lit up like one of those astro popsicles (but I think it’s for America) that’s making me miss summer. I have a bowl of homemade chicken soup to help me write this today because with this cold snap everyone is getting sick, so I’ve been staying in and fighting this off. My sister Monika and I are texting about the merits of snowsuits, whether they can be cool(???) if it is practical to wear one in the city (???) and how to stay warm this winter. Queue snowsuits on eBay. You know what definitely is in tho? -> -> Ski goggles <- <- Remember when rappers wore ski goggles in the 90s? That red/green Gucci strap? The yellow ones in Mo Money Mo Problems? I'm positive this trend is coming back this winter and I’m 100% here for it. Sleet at me New York, I have ski dope ski goggles.
That is my winter fashion prediction. Back to the messiness of middles:
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on Scott’s message from 'The Messy Middle' to “re-merchandize progress” especially since the art of merchandising (it’s really just curating) is something I really enjoy (grew up in retail yo), and also because it is SO REAL. We did a team retro on Friday for the first time in a month (we normally do them more regularly than that – every week or two) and it’s so cool to hear all the little win everyone is having and see them pile up on the board in our “highlights” column as motherfucking progress.
It’s made me think deeply about how important it is to love the journey more than the results. I’m super results driven, I’m constantly jumping into problem solving mode (even when I really shouldn’t be), and while it’s a healthy mindset for getting shit done, to be so focused on the end result when the journey takes a long time (like years), I’m not so sure is helpful. Staying focused on the wins along the way is good, but really just learning to love the work itself for what it is is far more important, and the results start to happen without you even having to try that hard.
When I set out to start TRASH, someone asked me if I’d ever played a sport or done something I had to practice over and over again before seeing any payoff. It was a provoking question – the point of it is that knowing how long stuff takes, and not getting demoralized when you can’t do the thing right away is a really important skill that things like sports teaches us.
Quick personal story on this:
Four years ago I slipped two discs in my back and I’d been in and out of physical therapy for years kind of sort of fixing it but never completely. It was super hard to assemble the right team of professionals to help me, and then to carve out the time to see them regularly. Meanwhile, I’m young! I want to move, I want to dance, I especially want to dance regularly. It cleans out my mind. So I kind of kept trying to do these things too… I’ve tried a lot of different styles, but I really like pole, I think mostly because it is super hard and I like a challenge.
Last October my back flared up again really badly after a couple conferences back to back. My body was clearly trying to send me a message: you gotta prioritize yourself, you have to deal with this.
Queue a year of totally changing my habits. Very specific morning work outs. Learning how to wake up at the same time every morning no matter how stacked my week is, consistently doing a ton of super boring exercises (not dancing) to heal. Carving out time to cook for myself consistently instead succumbing to the cheap New York take out which is full of inflammatory foods that always make me feel worse.
But I’m a totally different person now. I get a CSA box once a week. I make all my food for the week on Sunday evening while I watch a movie that is low-key editing research. (I’m saving all sorts of money doing this too, which is great because I’m not paying myself much). I have a morning work out routine that I can do consistently without getting bored, without falling off the wagon, and most of all, is working! But the thing that helped the most, and was the catalyst for forming these habits and sticking with them, is a weekly Sunday night call I do with my close friend Amélie to talk about our health. It’s a quick check-in on how the week went and what our goal is for the next week. It holds us both accountable. Sometimes it becomes a longer, deeper discussion that is also really helpful, but most of the time it’s like a 5 minute standup on our health goals. It reminds me a lot of what the team does when we plan the week on Monday and checkin on progress on Friday even though when we first started doing this call I didn’t think of it that way.
Yesterday I went to back to my first pole class in just over year (fuck yes!) and I’m okay! It was such a slog to get here. Wow, what a messy middle.
Jams: what I’m into
On Friday Amanda and I went to go see Yaeji at Kockdown and she was phenomenal. If you haven't heard her yet, get into these two videos:
I loooooove it when I catch an artist just at that moment where they will never play a venue of that size again. Last year I was lucky to catch Cardi B at PS1 just before she took over the charts, as well as Kelela at Music Hall of Williamsburg right before she dropped Take Me Apart. Two artists that I will also never see at venues of that size ever again. It’s such a magical moment when there is so much love between the artist and their true fans, those ones who have been there since the beginning, seeing this person’s career take off in a major way.
Also, this breakdown by Tom Scott on how to make a music video that Anton found this week. Amazing. (Also makes me miss the London crew so much. If any of you are reading this! Hugs x).