July 31, 2023
News
Ilana and I are all moved into the house. Things are pretty much all set up, what needed to be fixed got fixed, and so far we both are enjoying it quite a lot. There are some downsides, most notably that our new location does not have any little shops or restaurants to walk to. But on the whole we love having more space and a backyard to sit outside. There is more room for grilling, a little home gym in the garage, a video game room + TV room, and we have a few bookshelves filled with books throughout the house. The neighborhood is real quiet.
I saw Barbie. Not a fan. Oppenheimer is up next. We would have seen both on the same day but I wanted to finish the book it is based off of first. I can't imagine how Christopher Nolan made this into a good movie — the book was entertaining, but quite dry. But I'm sure it will be great and I am excited for it.
Kudzu is taking over my yard. It is coming from the Atlanta Beltline property, so legally they are supposed to get rid of it. But I doubt that is going to happen. I want to sue them or something since now I have a good reason to sue somebody and I'm sure that would be exciting. But the first step I think it going to be for me to go out there and hack away at it with a machete. The kudzu and other plants make the path from my house to the Beltline somewhat treacherous, so hopefully my hacking will fix that as well.
I had to get five cavities filled this month. Plus a tooth cleaning. I had never had a cavity before, and have no idea what happened this time. So I am beginning to do a Joe Rogan type 0f research into dentistry. I am sure that there are things I can be doing better to take care of my teeth that the dentist either is not telling me or does not know.
Sports
There is a baseball game on practically every day. This is one of the reasons I am loving baseball now. I can flip it on pretty much whenever I want and there is always a game on. The Braves are so good. I am for sure going to go to at least another Braves game again this year. I also want to go to a Montgomery Biscuits game before the season ends. This is a minor league team in Montgomery, AL that throws biscuits into the stands and has a cute logo of a biscuit person. I was in Montgomery to see my Daddima this weekend but there was no game.
Minor league baseball has got to be huge in the cities where they are. There are minor league teams all over the southeast. Some examples: Rome, GA; Biloxi, MS; Greenville, SC; Pensacola, FL. None of these cities have any other professional of college sports team nearby, so their only options for going to a sports game is to see high school sports or go to a minor league baseball game. I imagine there are some intense fans of minor league teams in these cities.
Business
Ilana is looking into a career change. She wants to do something technical. She is incredibly intelligent, but never applied herself in school. Now she is taking programming and math courses online and finding that she excels. Besides being extremely happy for her and proud, I am curious about how her method of learning will evolve. Learning and practicing complex technical concepts solely on the internet is something that I would think is possible in the abstract; but the lack of collaboration seems like it will be a significant impediment to success. In school, I learned the most when I was doing group projects, and in the workplace most everyone works on a team. Collaboration towards a common goal seems to be the proven formula for learning and doing good work.
Similarly, I have been working on a change that is turning out to be quite slow going. There is no one formula to starting a business and the risk is high all throughout. Mitigating risk and maximizing my time are the two things I know are going to be essential. I think risk mitigation depends on the business model. Time maximization is the tricky thing. I have to determine which skills are most important for me to learn, and learn them efficiently. When I started really working on starting a business I thought that building the product would be the largest hurdle, so I focused my time on programming. But I already knew programming, and was just sharpening this skill I already had. If the product is one half of a business, selling the product is the other half, and I have no clue at all about this.
I'm unsure if my time will be well spent learning this skill. How long will it take me to sell anything effectively... months, years, decades? Then once I am able to do this, I am still working alone, which inherently increases the difficulty of any venture. I think I have discovered that building a product must not, as I previously thought, come before selling it. If I build a product with no customers then I have wasted my time. However, I'm not sure if selling is the first step either. Finding a partner and collaborator might be the first step. This would reduce risk by half by spreading equity, and would double the time available. Perhaps most importantly, working with someone would allow us to push us each other towards harder work and higher commitment to the venture.
In any case, for now I am focusing on learning some basics on prospecting leads and creating a sales pipeline. As always, I have a few ideas I am working on. I've formalized an income goal I want to stick to to keep me accountable and give myself a good challenge. So far I have been able to double my income in double the time I did so previously. So I started working at x salary, one year later I was making 2x salary, and two years after that I was (am) making 4x salary. So four years after that (two and a half years from now), my goal is to have 8x yearly income. I say yearly income instead of salary because I have hit a sort of wall as far as salaried jobs go, so starting a business is going to give me the best opportunity to hit this goal.