"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

In Which I Ponder My Life and Career and Think About Working Out

Spent this past week at this little get-together called Drupalcon. I've done a poor job in general explaining what this "Drupal" is to my non-nerd quadrant of friends, and it's a pretty long story with a lot of angles and beautiful idiosyncrasies. And also now kind of a big deal on these old internets. Like, 3000 people showing up for a conference we organized, with major sponsorships from technology heavyweights and a presentation from the White House.

Yeah.

The first wave of my professional life was very startup-oriented. Silicon Alley from '98 to '01. I never made any money of course, but as a 19 to 22 year old kid it was amazing experience both on technical and business fronts. The second wave was all about politics, but definitely had that scrappy startup kind of vibe, bootstrapping an insurgent campaign and then getting the non-profit equivalent of venture financing to try out some totally unproven ideas, including building a professional space around Drupal and participating in the dot-org boom. After that I took some time off and freelanced, then started a company. While starting ones own company is an integral part of being an entrepreneur for real-real, the first few years of this were a lot of hard learning curve for me, and to be honest it was a lot harder than I thought.

Now, exhausted from an excessively busy week and battling a devilish low-grade cold, I still feel like, once again, the buzz is back. It's a new wave. I'm back to sleeping six hours a night and waking up jazzed.

And with this new momentum, I want to follow it up in my personal space, get healthy generally and re-initiate "Operation Get Very Hot." My pre-professional background in the theater gave me a decent base physique, and more importantly a deep and lasting appreciation for the connection between mind, body and soul. I'm a confirmed believer in mystically ecstatic states and peak performance, and for me the base for all this is the physicality. I am, at my very best, an acrobat of the heart.

However, to be honest the past few years I've been sort of wasting away. Fits and starts in the gym, but more sitting on my ass (at work and at home) than anything else, eating great food and drinking tasty tasty beers. It's immediately pleasurable and I don't plan to deny myself any of that, but I'm really starting to notice how the infrastructure of my being is in decline.

This goes beyond simple gutfat and buttsag — some of which, let's face it, is probably inevitable — and more to things like flexibility, stamina, posture, and how I respond to stress. Five days of conferencing shouldn't have made my back hurt so badly. I shouldn't had a cough that lasts six months. I should have more energy and zeal over the long haul, and not just the nervous spikey energy that comes from high pressure and big potential.

I'm a lucky son of a bitch, and if I'm going to make the most out of all this good fortune that means starting to take better care of myself in general. In a few weeks I'll be turning 31, and where I wind up in a decade depends on choices I make now. It's time again to take the initiative, push forward on several fronts in a dazzling display of personal synergy and virtuosic coordination.

Responses