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september work session

memo

intending to accomplish more wealth-related work this weekend.

robin - gtm push, sales -> secure first signup, customer this week sf move - find insurance, wealth management, fintech cos to work im - continue endurance activities, long run + lift today financials - credit card, monthly budgeting/prioritizing of expenses

tasks

chores

wealth

health

knowledge

meditations

0706pm

I like building things, but for creativity and expression purposes.

My money-making skills or economically demanded skills are client relationships, advisory and guidance.

1200pm

long runs are amazing - clears your thoughts. incubate incredible ideas. ideal cauldron for synthesis.

personal wealth management services. most importantly, holistically aligned for your personal needs. write blog posts/content to build sales funnel —> attracts like-minded people who believe in the same values.

0700am

am i getting too comfortable operating in my optimal zone?

Finished reading into Inde discussing portfolio, but did not make any investments. I feel kind of weird right now, brain suddenly felt tired, and I went back to sleep and crashed for two hours. I’m not sure why, and then I was having very lucid dreams that were kind of scary and Dali-esque.

Ranging from fishing line fraying, to being unemployed, and re-recruiting, seeing all my other friends meet in Tangen hall for a corporate conference.

I took a break for two days from building, Robyn, the product, engineering and sales go to market push, which I’ve been focusing the past two days on recentering myself, not really doing anything at Carolina Inn, just writing poetry, and exploring Saxapahaw yesterday.

I feel this cognitive dissonance between my inner heart that wants to pursue the beauty of life, art, culinary pursuits, fishing, along with connecting with nature, and a grounded sense of embodied Ness. Then my feed on Twitter, LinkedIn, and I’m being focused on building startups, getting caught up in the whole founder mentality of grinding, execution, and just pushing through.

I’ve been reading several posts talking about how being a founder is extremely hard, where you’re at the verge of dying, you think everything is about to fail, and then you’re suddenly getting traction. People say that you don’t do this for making money, but an obsession with building an idea.

Through this process for the past two years, I’ve come to appreciate skills I’ve gained from the start up. But the points where I feel most alive are when I am exploring the world, writing, these creative pursuits, creating and connecting with people, the human aspects and learning about history. I guess for some people, their Peak existence comes from building a start up and raising millions of dollars.

I am honestly, not obsessed enough with engineering, with building. I’m more fascinated with the human experience, artistry, creation, and expressing oneself. I don’t want to have to do engineering or sales out of fear of losing basic stability in life, as many founders are in SF sacrificing basic needs and are fueled by this incredible vision of their company.

For me, the Startup would merely be a moneymaking tool to quickly enable me autonomy throughout my life, so I can pursue the finer things, and not feel pressured to make money out of my passions and intrinsic interests. I’d rather just boot track and build something that can generate immediate revenue, and solves a pain point, rather than doing exploratory in building something insane like deeptech. However, when I’m about to work on the engineering side along with the sales, I feel this mental stonewall preventing me from working, and my energy wants to go somewhere else.

Going back to the original point, I value the flow state, and I’m very productive and maximally productive when I’m operating within my zone of confidence. I realize that a lot of Startup conventional roles and culture may not fit my ultimate values and definition of success in life. However, I’m struggling with figuring out a “lifestyle business” that brings me a revenue source and enables autonomy for me to live my unique lifestyle.

Saturday, I feel like I was living life to its fullest, even with the constraints of my financial situation. I was able to go fishing, explore really cool, small town called Saxapahaw, bike 16 miles a part of North Carolina I havent before. This is definitely not grinding or working hard towards my vision, or building my business.

However, what puzzles me is that I have already arrived. I am embodying the peak existence and flow state of life in my current state. I don’t need to grind or hustle to get money in order to enjoy the finer things in life. This ties into the cognitive dissonance I’m experiencing, because there’s a dichotomy between these rejuvenating energy, breathing experiences like this past Saturday, and then having to discipline, enforce myself into the groupthink, social pressure from my founder peers and silicon valley founders. Feels like the existential pressure I felt - fear of falling behind, and not building the best product, and losing out on the AI boom is partially driving me to build.

When I prioritize, fishing, biking, and outdoor activities earlier in the day, and by the end of the afternoon, I am exhausted, I feel guilty, that I wasn’t able to execute on the business milestones I set for myself for Robin insurance. This guilt almost evolves into self doubt where I question if it’s the right path for me, given that it’s hard. Doing the engineering is also requires a ton of mental effort, and I don’t know if I’m tricking myself into wanting to like it.

There’s a fear, more long-term, that if I don’t upskills, learn AI-workflows, that I will be left behind in this cutthroat capitalist economy. This fear is rooted in all of my combined 24 years of experience, especially the four years at Penn, and the most recent two years at Agorum.

I want to approach this tension as a dialectic between two seemingly contradictory sides, but meet in the middle, or find a synthesis that actually propels me further towards my destined or inherent path – my personal legend as Paolo Coelho would’ve said.

I’m interested in learning more about saikat chakrabarti - founding engineer at Stripe who became involved in politics, and isn’t brainwashed by the silicon valley/techno-optimists/capitalists cult.

I am drawn to this blend of sustainable capitalism, where people contributing to society deserve a fair livable wage doing what they do best, which energizes them and gives more to those around - rather than playing the capitalist game to accumulate more money.

I face such dilemma right now, where I feel like I’m falling into this trap of playing the capitalist game. Alot of motivating my decisions is fear of future stability and ability to pursue my interests, raise a family etc…

Seeing that building a business is an aligned avenue in doing so makes sense. I like the financial advisory angle, but fear that part of my reasons doing it is for the money.

I think you do need to consider money, because in order to live in this system, you need money. But it erodes my soul thinking about the wellness and lives of millions of people whose abilities don’t cleanly fit into this paradigm.

Like the tweet said, I disagree heavily that tech executives and investors are delivering 1000x more value to society than nurses, teachers, firefighters, butchers, farmers.

No wonder socialism makes sense - and this anti-socialism propogranda by the techno-maximalists is quite concerning.

workspace

—0131pm—

essentials / monthly

health / 2 weeks { nutrition

health / year {

wealth / year {

}

knowledge / year {

Chapel Hill $38k/year

$1.1k - 2 weeks

San Francisco $58k-72k/year

1.9k - necessities (50%)

prompts: Could you analyze this for its alignment with my goals - health, wealth and knowledge. I am flexible with my wants, since they already closely align to my health and wealth expenses.

I want to save 30% for retirement/long term savings each year year.

I’m also willing to spend more on health related expenses, as necessary, such as quality food from farmers markets, personal hygiene, routines, training for an iron man, or any biking or running equipment needed

I already have existing assets such as my flyfishing equipment, most of my hiking equipment, my camera etc…

I am planning on purchasing a $300 evergood backpack which would be my primary work backpack, which I hope to save time, and stress, when traveling and working on the go.

Could you total everything up and give some recommendations on where their strengths are and where it could be improved? If I were to move to the bay, I also think of getting a car, which could be $7000 just for the car and approximately $1000 each year for a car insurance along with one to 2000 per year for gas money.

This would give me an accurate sense of my essential cost for living, sustainable lifestyle, enabling meeting to assess employment opportunities.

Additionally, I am aware that I could get tax breaks if I file a lot of these expenses as business expenses since I do plan on running a side business.

I’m thinking while I have full-time employment, I also will have other streams of income to help offset these cost and allow me to live in San Francisco for a few years.

Can you explain the $75000 minimum gross income - does this account for the 18k in taxes? And if I optimize, could I get away with $70,000 salary?

Could you also forecast how my savings would grow from age 25 to 28 to 30 to 35 to 40, as my base pay would probably increase to 100 K up to 150 K up to potentially 200 K in my 30s. I still want to be as disciplined as possible (I know life gets in the way, and 30% savings is an idealistic goal) - but if I compromised to 25% savings or 20%, how much of a difference would it make in the long-term for my savings from age 30 to 40 and into 50, along with any lasting effects on homeownership or the amount I can save for families education?

Could you try making a model and simulate these projections?