Trading Places

A few months ago, I had lunch with my friend Daniel Adamson, who runs the very intriguing (to me, at least) Blue Funds. The company, in short, manages a family of mutual funds that invest in public companies that both ‘act blue’ (meet a list of social and environmental responsibility requirements) and ‘give blue’ (give at least 50% of their campaign contributions to democrat candidates). It turns out – both in historical back-testing, and the first year of actual investing – that these companies handily outperform the S&P. So, they’re succeeding on sort of a triple bottom line.

Anyway, he spent lunch telling me about his company and what they have planned for the next year or so, and I told him about what we’re doing at Cyan, the First Cut Film Series, and some bigger institutional financing things we’re brewing up (both a tax-arb production fund, and a capital-protected distribution fund).

By the end of lunch, we both wanted leave our own companies to work for the other’s. Which, it seems, happens almost every time I meet up with another young entrepreneur.

The reason, I think, is that entrepreneurs tend to thrive on hope, on possibility. We get excited about new ideas, about big-picture innovation. And when you’re hearing about someone else’s projects, all you have to think about is that fun, strategic, high-level stuff.

But then you go back to your own company, where you have to worry about cash-flow and execution and all of the detail that actually makes or breaks a company. Which, frankly, often sucks in the doing, the day to day.

I still haven’t figured out a way to reconcile the two. But I have, at least, penciled in a few times a week for me to sit down and formally re-pitch myself Cyan’s plans, the big-picture fun stuff that we’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t spare me the pain of executing, but it does, most of the time, get me re-excited about why I’m doing it in the first place.

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Footsy

Here’s something I don’t often admit: I was a ballerina.

Okay, technically, I was a danseur. But still.

My mother, who did masters work in dance at Stanford, enrolled me in ballet at a very young age. And I loved it. I was good at it. I danced for years, until, presumably, the fear of cooties contamination from such a female-dominated pursuit caused me to rebel.

Looking back, of course, I realize I should have stuck it out a few more years. Post-cooties, I would have been one of the very few straight guys surrounded by a swarm of lithe women in spandex.

But, anyway, I stopped. Still, to this day, I often look down and catch myself in first position. I have terminal, intractable duck feet.

About a month ago, I badly sprained my ankle. Seeing me hobbling around on crutches and air cast, a physical therapist friend pointed out that my ‘everted feet’ might be to blame. He sent me a copy of the Egoscue Method, in the hopes that fixing my post-ballet posture might save my ankle from a repeatedly sprained fate, and similarly protect my knees – the next joint to go in what appears to be a fairly standard progression.

And, well, I think he might be right. Egoscue’s theory is persuasive, and though I’ve only been doing the exercises for about a week, and so can’t yet vouch much for the results, I already feel better. I’m standing a bit more solidly, with my joints squarely aligned from my ankles up through my shoulders and neck.

His other books, Pain Free and Pain Free at Your PC also seem to have garnered rave reviews. So, if you find you’re not standing how you’d like, or if you have pain in your back, your shoulders, your knees or your wrists, they might be worth a read. I’ll post a further review after I’ve had a chance to do the exercises for another month or two. But, in the meantime, for ten bucks a pop, seems certainly worth checking out for yourself.

Merde!

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With Love

Jess, on reading that I’d be posting regularly again:

“They’re all going to be about me, right?”

If I’m smart, yes.

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Greasing the Groove

As Anne Lamott observed, the best cure for writer’s block is a shitty first draft. Convince yourself you don’t have to write something good – just that you have to write something – and it becomes far easier to get words flowing.

Which makes sense in the world of novels, where authors iterate months or years between first draft and final product. But not in blogs, where the time from idea to post sometimes spans just minutes.

In other words, good blogging requires good first drafts. Which puts the pressure back on a blogger with writer’s block. And as the length of time from one post to the next mounts, that pressure worsens. Drop posting frequency from near-daily to at-best-monthly (as I have of late), and each entry need be Pulitzer-worthy to justify itself.

Yet experience dictates that I blog best as habit – post regularly, day in and day out, and intermittently, excellence emerges.

So, for the balance of this year, it’s consistency over quality. In other words, I’ll be doing my best to accept shitty first drafts. And I hope you will, too.

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