Recently read Ernest Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”. The main character is a washed up writer on safari with his female companion du jour. One passage in particular hit me incredibly hard.

“He had destroyed his talent by not using it, by betrayals of himself and what he believed in, by drinking so much that he blunted the edge of his perceptions, by laziness, by sloth, and by snobbery, by pride and by prejudice, by hook and by crook. What was this? A catalogue of old books? What was his talent anyway? It was talent all right but instead of using it, he had traded on it. It was never what he had done, but always what he could do.”

I feel like many of us nowadays, myself included, tend to trade on our future efforts as opposed to our past. It is a dangerous game and I personally want to be more careful going forward.

-Matt

I recently reread F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel, The Great Gatsby. There was one passage in particular that really resonated with me and I wanted to share it. When Nick, the main character, meets Jay Gatsby for the first time, his description of Gatsby’s smile is incredibly profound.

“He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on youwith an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

May we all have the great fortune to come across smiles such as these often and do our very best to convey the same in our own…

-Matt

Lake Tahoe, California :: Every year for the past 4 years I’ve taken the month of January to venture out, visit long lost friends, and reflect on life. I’m at the tail end of this year’s journey and felt compelled to write a blog post (my first ever) about some of the things I’ve struggled with and some of the things I’ve learned.

I, like many other entrepreneur types, subscribe to a unique and particularly brutal form of self-reflection. My personal belief is that in order to obtain full understanding (of motives, actions, goals) you must remove the gloves and dive uncomfortably deep. In years past, this strategy proved to be incredibly useful for me. I would dive to a reasonable depth, find exactly what I was looking for, learn from it, and grow. However, this year has been very different for some reason. I dove deep only to come up empty handed. So I kept going… deeper, and deeper, and deeper. 

Eventually I got lost down there, honestly forgetting what the heck my mission was in the first place. How did I get here? What was I trying to accomplish? It very much felt like something out of the movie Inception. Maybe this time there weren’t any quick fixes. Maybe I was just fundamentally and irrevocably flawed in some way. It was confusing, frustrating, and scary!

Then something clicked. It took the full force of my extended brain trust, but finally something clicked! I had become obsessed with finding “my path”, the way in which I would achieve all the audacious, long-term goals that were now so core to my being. I kept second-guessing every potential next step because I couldn’t clearly and precisely see the paved path to my goals.

Finally I stumbled upon an old favorite quote of mine that smacked me across the head and put things into perspective:

“Life passes most people by while they’re busy making grand plans for it” - George Jung in Blow

There is no path! There is no destination! There is only a journey! Especially with startups. This is the life I chose for myself and I chose it for a reason. It’s simply way more fun than any imaginable alternative.

This misperception seems to be an epidemic among my young, entrepreneurial friends. We put so much pressure on ourselves to accomplish, to impact, to succeed. We discuss on gChat, in taxis, at bars, exactly what these terms mean to each of us. We embrace (cerebrally) the positive consequences of failure, but our actions are deathly allergic. As it turns out, our far-sighted definitions are failures unto themselves. 

My friend Miki recently sent me the best definition of success that I’ve seen to date:

…

So now what? For me, it’s all about baby steps. 

Another friend Ilya, in describing his climb of Mt. Kilimanjaro, called it “the most difficult experience of his life”. On summit day he was unbelievably exhausted, the air was dangerously thin, and (being 4am) it was pitch black outside. He couldn’t see the summit, the guides, or the path. All he could do was hear his guide’s voice, continuously saying, “just put one foot in front of the other”. Finally, just as the sun began to pour over the horizon, Ilya accomplished his goal of reaching Kili’s summit. 

BABY STEPS!

Right now my path is dark. I can’t see too much in front of me. However, I need to trust that the steps I take and the people I surround myself with will eventually get me to where I want to be. I need to remember that the only way in which I realize my own failure is through inaction.

With that said, I’ve made a commitment to take the next step by no later than March 1st! Your help in holding me accountable is greatly appreciated. 

-Matt