July 1st is, as you may have heard on 3 Minute Review, Canada Day. As a publicly traded person who has decided that “business” is a great framework for my life1, it’s also the first day of Q3, the 3rd Quarter. A time for quarterly reports, performance reviews, and just a general assessment of how things are going and what needs to be changed.
Since the Shareholder Summit wrapped I have found myself a bit depressed. When I’m depressed I am lucky that Kathryn usually notices the first symptoms, which is sleeping a bit more and playing video games (I have been really enjoying the mathematical beauty of Sudoku and recommend Zach Gage and Jack Schlesinger’s Good Sudoku for iOS). When confronted with her first inkling I am typically defensive and try to double down on productivity, and then slowly realize I have a hundreds of emails and DMs I have not responded to and have been avoiding the computer.
The Shareholder Summit was a wild ride. And then came the January 6th Hearings, the destruction of women’s rights by the radical elements of the Supreme Court, and the ongoing invasion of the Ukraine and general disasters both immediate and longterm. It’s easy to lose oneself in the face of national and global issues that feel awful and inevitable. My sense of injustice flares and then dies in the withering lack of ability to do anything.
The best course of action is to go on bike rides and to talk to people about it all. As useless as that seems it also seems to help. Plus you might get to see a deer.
So, back to July 1st, 2022 and the start of Q3. Back to business…
🧠 Get My Mind Right: AKA Therapy
When I started a job last December I was excited to have health insurance and kicked off the Health + Wellness Working Group. Because America ties healthcare to employment we only just got started before I was unceremoniously fired, barely talking my employer into extending my time there for a week. The page I set up for the Health + Wellness Working Group is just a collection of notes as I started to get serious about my health.
Realizing that I am a bit depressed and also knowing I’m having a hard time reviewing the fireside chats from the Shareholder Summit I suspect there is some real lack of personal examination going on. So my first goal for Q3 is to start therapy.
In addition to helping me, I expect it will have a number of community benefits:
Diving in to why I am the way I am, where it comes from, and how my values have been shaped will be helpful in working on the book project with Kevin.
Building some resilience and tools for dealing with my own sadness and procrastination should result in more productivity.
I think I might have ADHD, and I wonder if some medication would help me.
Part of this goal will also be getting health insurance and returning to the Health + Wellness Working Group. And I’ll try to share any personal insights with the Insider Info group as I’m sure some things will be interesting to talk about but I’d rather not have them be totally public.
🐈 The Great Cat Sit
I’m spending the month of July in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, which is more central than my typical “east side” of LA zone. I’ll be cat/house sitting and there is a great bike path that leads down to the beach from there.
I’m going to spend July digging into what I should be doing next. I have an infinite number of ideas, a dozen or more half-finished projects, and a handful of obligations but I hope to dig into all this stuff, share it with shareholders, and make some sense of what is next.
Expect a few live streams and probably a number of votes about priorities and output. I’m going to dig into the fireside chats and try to pull some insights and next steps from that and try to find the balance between a solid sense of direction vs. feeling trapped by a restrictive system.
If you’re in LA on the west side in the month of July I’d love to hang out and get a coffee.
❓What Are You Doing This Summer?
I’d love to get in touch with shareholders and know what people are working on. Email me, DM me on whatever service, or use the link below to book a zoom call:
🚙 Future Travel Plans
In August I’ll be back in Portland for two weeks, and then Kathryn and I are deciding if we want to drive to Canada to see her parents. Gas is super expensive and Kathryn’s schedule is a bit unknown, so that is all TBD.
We’re also thinking about visiting my parents in Florida, so not sure if that will be another cross country trip or not. And then we might spend some time in San Diego in October.
Drop your information into this form and I’ll reach out if I’m ever in your area!
📉 In Closing
This is a quote I saved from 2020 and it’s basically still true except now the financial markets are also terrible:
Fun stuff.
Whenever I get existential and depressed I think of my interior ‘Dark Michael.’ Dark Michael has been leading the charge for a while now and honestly he seems like the best man for the job recently. But the difference now is that I can recognize when Dark Michael is at the wheel2 and that feels like a big change.
I used to hate Dark Michael and fight any negative feelings, and I still tend to try to drown those feelings in waves of Soduku. But I kind of like Dark Michael now. He’s a useful member of the team and while his ideas are sometimes a little too angry, vindictive, and over the top, he does bring a competitive spirit.
Anyway, more on this over the next month as I cat sit and think and probably send out too many emails and hopefully launch a lot of votes. Look forward to chatting with you all and figuring out what is next for the publicly traded person and the shareholder community.
Profitably Yours,
-K. Mike Merrill
this is clearly not true, but it’s the whole concept of “the show”
or least I can after Kathryn asks me about it and I deny it a few times