Just like the old me, but unconstrained by corporate life.
Parenting full time, as I've been doing since the school year started, has been pretty consuming. Fortunately, we're all healthy (except for the torn calf muscle I got practicing in the park).
However, from just before Thanksgiving until mid-February there was hardly a time when both kids were in school, let alone for a full week.
With that cadence, it was all I could do to keep the kids fed, socialized, and educated. As such, I couldn't commit to creating quality content consistently, let alone around a specific topic (like parenting and technology). Here's a tweet that sums up my situation pretty concisely:
If you want to go fast, go alone
— Joe DiMento (@DiMentor) March 20, 2021
If you want to go far, go with others.
If you want to go neither fast nor far, go with children.
As a result of what I've learned about myself and the demands of full-time parenting, I'm going to be writing for me. Just to get my writing habit back and my brain in gear. I will likely write about a few main topics:
- Parenting and technology along with observations about kids' education and the future of work
- Cryptocurrencies, decentralized finance, and building wealth... writing in a human voice to help non-technical people understand what's happening (what's happening is as fundamental as the shift to online-commerce circa 1999)
- Ghost, the platform I'm now writing-on instead of Wordpress
- Random things that my mind is chewing on, where writing brings clarity or where writing preserves an observation or thought for the future
- I'd also like to share information, unfiltered, on topics that catch my attention
I don't know where this goes. Or how consistent I'll be. Or if I'll even always remember why I'm writing.
I do know that much of what I write is inspired by the conversations I have with people after sharing something with them. So, feel free to reply to any of my messages to let me know if there's something that catches your attention. Or drop me a note in the chat box in the bottom right of any page on the site.
Here are some things I've written lately:
- Develop a different perspective by measuring something different; and the importance of non-technical jargon. A post about building wealth on Celsius by earning yield on your crypto-holdings. I like this post because there's nothing new but the story I tell.
- On Open Banking. I came across a research report that I know people who subscribe would like. I read it, added some commentary, and posted. The research is a 'chewie' (something my brain can chew on) and this post is an example of how I will use 'chewies' to share my perspective.
- A great app to capture memories; where to keep up with augmented reality. Apple's AR glasses/visor is coming. You should care.
- A tip for parents that most technical people know. I was helping my family with a technical problem, and was surprised that my "technique" surprised my wife.
And here are some chewies I'm tracking and would likely share (as I already have via text with many):
- Microsoft remote trend index and the future of work. Good statistics/grabbers in this deck for use in marketing materials.
- Walmart, Banking, and Fintech by the wonderful Tom Noyes.
- On Stablecoins to learn more about stablecoins, and then FEI, a new stablecoin project, run by a killer team.
A final thought on conviction... In the time I spent thinking about what leaving the corporate world means to me and how I got here, I realized that I'm here because of my convictions.
When I leaned into my convictions around mobile, in spite of the pushback I got at my legacy employers like CA and Axway, I did well with Apple stock (while legacy thinkers will still screaming about responsive web pages, and others shouted "But Android is open!"). When I leaned into my convictions around network-embedded trust and disintermediation and what that meant for the future of digital value transfer, I did even better with Bitcoin and Ethereum.
These wins have taught me to recognize a conviction vs an opinion, and to trust my instincts.
I have some convictions about post-covid Earth. It's exciting because it's not just me leaning into those convictions. I have a family that I'm raising, and my wife and I have decided to lean further into the convictions we have about the future. To lean away from the safely worn path of the past.
That's really what I'm writing about.
