Thanks to Tyler J Disney, who has a blog by the same name, for the name/concept idea, though it goes by many names. I will refer to it more abstract here than he does. Great read, you should google him.
Hello again everyone. We’re back in town, for now, post California trip. It really was wonderful. And, as per usual, it caused a lot of thinking to happen with myself and the lovely lady. You must forgive the writing quality on this post, it has been a long series of nights and this post is half written in a hotel the airline gave us last minute.
Thinking about what to do next. Brainstorming. Thinking about why, more abstractly, we do things. Fortunately, both of us have spent time and effort into building multiple streams of work that are incredibly flexible. So we came to the old question of “What do we do with ourselves now that we are free?” The answer, for me, was simple. Follow the stoke.
What is stoke? I’m glad you asked, even though you didn’t. Put simply, it’s “whatever drives you”. Notably, this is not “whatever you want”. “Whatever you want” is often bad for the body and the soul. It’s excessive poor quality food, it’s wasted time on excess consumption, it’s money burned for frivolous reasons. No, stoke is what drives you. So we go for that.
In my case, I feel stoke when I do multiple things. I feel it when I designed our extremely intense workout regime, which has shown results for both of us, and when I laid out the in-home gym. I felt stoke when we considered future places to move to that expand options. I felt stoke when we spent 30 minutes with friends on a beach in LA in the cold trying to get (apparently defect) Walmart firestarters to light using random Bic lighters despite 60 seconds of direct flame seemingly not being enough for these “firestarters”. I felt more stoke when we all died laughing at the fact that the cardboard box caught fire more readily than firestarters within the box.
I felt stoke when taking care of my woman. I feel stoke when she makes me know how much she appreciates that. I felt stoke when she asked if we could go pick up one very specific kind of muffin from the grocery store, and we did it because why not. We also grabbed 2 entirely new American flavors of mountain dew, which tasted like exactly as much cancer as you would expect of them. I feel stoke when I call my parents. When I learn something new. When I create an experience for my friends.
I feel stoke when I lift heavy in the gym, and when my girlfriend and I joke about protein intake. I feel stoke discussing with my mother how the trip went, with my brother how to solve a recent concern of his and him helping me solve one of mine. I feel stoke returning to work, and delving into a whole new kind of work. I feel it arranging to see my friends again after the absence.
It has become immensely apparent to me that, due to the diligence of my past self, I have set myself up to take risks. I have, for the better part of my life, been extremely risk-averse. But this is calculated. There are safety nets for the safety nets. But it is time to jump. You folks will see this reflected here, likely in consistent forward momentum punctuated by random, severe changes in pace. So this is the new plan; this is what I have been doing since arriving back, and arranging since prior; I have been following stoke. Less worry.
More stoke.