When I talked to Rob he told me that having a co-founder was like marrying someone, and today I really felt that hard. Ivan and I planned on checking-in today about the path to the MVP for the app. But I went into that conversation ready to treat Ivan like my husband. I asked, "what is your 'thing?" and "who are you?" and "do you struggle with identity crisis?" And of course, he often times feels the way that I do right now. We are both living at home and are in some states of re-building. He went on to tell me how good playing a video game could be and how that try 30 times over again until you finally get it can be applied to life. He taught me the word cogitate - and even hearing it defined it made me feel more seen. We talked about concepts like "blackboxing" and "rubber ducking." It felt like I was talking to a friend who has a lens that none of my other friends have. I really appreciated it.
For the app specifically, the reason for the chat, I told him that I know my next step is to apply my learning to the project specifically. I also opened up and let him know that coding really heightened the stakes and that it made me ask deeper questions about what the product actually is and what problem it's actually solving. He gave me a hall pass to go back up the ladder to cloud 9 to dream and talk about what the project is at it's large picture. We agreed that I had gone from big picture to one very small pixel, or LEGO. I look forward to going back up that ladder. I think that I will do more of that later tonight after writing this.

Overall, I am still very much having identity thoughts about myself and my work. Noam took the time to really listen and reflect today. I so appreciate his patience and his reflections. I talked to Kristen later in the day, she said something that was interesting, and with the recent fetish and fascination with the medical field really hit a nerve, she said, "it sounds like your life is open on the operating room table." She was expanding on the fact that being home really opens up the reflection and takes a scalpel to the fatty tissue sitting around, cuts into the muscle where it hurts, makes you need blood and extra oxygen. I do really feel like I'm open on the operating room table, the lights as brights as ever, and I'm the surgeon of my own dissection. Something that Ivan mentioned that I want to think on is the idea of "pillars" that hold us up and make us who we are. I know that one of my pillars is tech: websites, branding, development, UX and UI. I know that another one is wellness: physical fitness, movement, mental agility. I think that the third is something that has to do with expression, like being an artist, it includes this writing that I'm doing now. It is that thing that is more spiritual that just mental and physical wellness. I'm not sure what to call it. Right now, the focus of that pillar is the practice of "showing my work."
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