Pete's November 2021 update
Everyone has a book in their stomach
I’m on leave from BlueChilli until January. If someone else told me they were taking a whole month off work I’d be supremely envious and think they must be very successful.
While I’m still wrapping up some other work stuff, this month I’m supposed to be a) writing a book, and b) helping out with renovations at home. Those two things don’t seem very compatible but let’s be optimistic and see how much I can get done, hey?
2021 in review
The world is about to be inundated with “year in review” things so I’m going to jump the gun to get in ahead of the curve.
I didn’t explicitly set goals for this year. A year ago we were living in limbo, waiting to see if we could get into NZ and what life would be like. If I had set goals they would have been something like:
Get to NZ and sort out our house
Find a reliable source of income in NZ
Write a keynote speech
Record nice nature soundscapes
How’d I do?
1. Get to NZ and sort out our house: ✅ and 🐌
We moved to NZ on the first day of the trans-Tasman bubble in April. It was stressful. We had less than 2 weeks to organise everything. We were on edge the whole time because we knew nothing was certain until it happened. I had to give up some workshop facilitation I had committed to, and I hate letting people down. I had a couple of other really interesting offers that I had to turn down. But we got here.
I owe Lucy all the credit for sorting out the house. I’ve been working and haven’t had the headspace to deal with it. Lucy is better than me at making those decisions, anyway. Much more full-on renovations than we ever wanted to do; but they’re slowly getting done. Everything has been slow or delayed, which means we have 4 different things happening over the next few weeks to hopefully get it finished by Xmas.
2. Find a reliable source of income in NZ: ✅
Being able to stay with BlueChilli was a pleasant surprise. And with Monash Accelerator work, and some other projects, I’ve been overwhelmed with work. So extra big tick on this one.
I set up a company here to contract from. Which means more admin overhead and tax time will be interesting but it’s kind of nice to be a business owner. It feels like I have a bit more agency.
3. Write a keynote speech: 🛑💬 but 📖…
“I have some ideas brewing about failure and creativity…” — me in December 2020. I never wrote this talk. I still have ideas, but without an actual outlet it’s very low on my priority list.
But at some point I decided I’d write a book? Because apparently writing books is something that anyone can do, so why not me.
There is a phrase in Icelandic, "að ganga með bok í maganum", everyone gives birth to a book. Literally, everyone "has a book in their stomach". One in 10 Icelanders will publish one. — BBC
On 15 February 2020 I started a word document and wrote at the top:
The First Twelve Weeks
A practical guide to starting a business on a shoestring budget
Making the most of your time, energy and resources.
I’ve written 9.5k words in that doc, and have been ‘building in public’ as a StartupBook.xyz subscription newsletter. My goal is to get a shorter ebook published in January and keep building from there.
4. Record nice nature sounds: 🙉🎙️
I live in a lovely place and go walking at the beach most mornings. There’s no reason I couldn’t be doing this. I’m just not. Maybe one day I’ll get back into it.
November highlights
The Monash Generator Showcase (aka Demo Day) was a great online show. Pre-recorded pitches with some fun interstitial segments, great editing and sound design and animations. It all made for a fun thing to watch.
It was a nice way to cap off the Accelerator, and I’m proud of the work I did with these startups — both as a program and in my role working 1:1 as a startup advisor.Sea-lion spotting. I was at the beach recording a little video for the Monash Showcase when a sea-lion popped up behind me. It cruised up and down the beach looking for penguins. Since then we’ve seen sea-lions every few days. This week we saw a couple walking up and down the sand like a dog in pyjamas.
Wrapped up some projects and started some new ones. Really looking forward to a proper break soon. 😆
I’ve been sleeping well. Since starting the Monash Accelerator with a couple of sleep startups I’ve been very consciously avoiding reading my phone in bed, instead popping in an earpiece and listening to an audiobook or podcast. And there’s a noticeable difference in how I feel in the morning on the few nights I have read something or watched a video in bed.
Edited and published some segments from Startup Comedy Night. Time consuming but rewarding. I’m particularly proud of the sound design, and had fun censoring the swears.
I learned the hard way that Zoom cloud recording doesn’t record the ‘spotlighted’ video layout, so I had to do some creative editing. Next time I’ll ask someone to record to hard drive and save myself some trouble.
Read / Watch / Listen
[Podcast: 58 minutes] The North Pod with Santa Claus. I actually laughed out loud a few times listening to this improvised podcast with Santa and HoHo the naughty elf.
I love the concept of this series, With Special Guest Lauren Lapkus.
It’s Lauren’s show. Every episode she has a guest on, and that guest plays the host of a fictional podcast. And on that fictional podcast, Lauren plays the part of the guest. And the whole thing is improvised.
What I love about the North Pod episode is that it’s two people who are having a fun time messing with each other and making each other laugh. Also Santa just doesn’t give a fuck.[Podcast] Gayest Episode Ever. I never thought about TV shows when I was a kid. How they got made. How they worked. Things like ‘pilots’ and ‘seasons’ never crossed my mind until much later in life when friends started working in the industry and pulled back the curtain.
This podcast is two gay guys (a journalist and a screenwriter) talking about classic sitcoms from an LGBT perspective, breaking down particular episodes that deal with LGBT themes. And in some episodes, like this one about Full House, they pull back the curtain on other topics such as identifying ‘gay-coded’ traits so they can avoid exhibiting them.
They ramble a lot which I usually dislike in a podcast but I don’t mind Drew and Glen going on tangents.[Read: 5 minutes] Paul McCartney, Writing Eleanor Rigby. A look at how they wrote it.
When I started working on the words in earnest, “Eleanor” was always part of the equation, I think, because we had worked with Eleanor Bron on the film “Help!” and we knew her from the Establishment, Peter Cook’s club, on Greek Street. I think John might have dated her for a short while, too, and I liked the name very much. Initially, the priest was “Father McCartney,” because it had the right number of syllables.
[Read: 8 minutes] Wil Wheaton, whenever possible, be the person you need(ed) in your life. I have a lot of time for Wil Wheaton. I got his first book in a Humble Bundle many years ago and didn’t know what to expect from the self-proclaimed Geek and former child star. His writing is very honest and leaves me feeling quite raw and emotional. This blog post is no different, as it deals with kindness (and the mistreatment he experienced from his family).
Work hard. I don’t mean, like, at your crappy minimum wage job you hate. I mean do the hard work that makes relationships work, that gets you ahead in your education, that gets you closer to your goals.
[Read: 2 minutes] Hopepunk is a genre I never knew about.
[Read: 3 minutes] 90s Dad Thriller is a genre I didn’t think about.
And the weirdest thing is that this house
Has locks to keep the baddies out
But they're mostly used to lock ourselves in— Tim Minchin, Not Perfect