Author: James David (Page 6 of 20)

Two full days being “on” at a conference sapped almost all of the energy I’d stored up from my work vacation last week. It’s something I’ve decided is necessary for the next phase of building my business, but my introversion makes it a challenge. I do my best work at conferences during the early mornings and in-between times when there are fewer people present. Then I’m able to actually focus on a conversation and not be at risk of mentally shutting down. This conference was no exception.

The sessions themselves were informative. Sure, I run a services business and not a SaaS company, but many of the concepts translate and the better I can speak the language of SaaS the more I’m able to win customers. I took pages of notes that I’ll transcribe and then chew on in the weeks to come. This is a secondary purpose of attending industry conferences, but this conference was better than most as it wasn’t just SaaS companies trying to sell SaaS to other SaaS companies. There was even an excursion portion of the conference where I went and made some biscuits, though the highlight of that culinary experience was the peach marmalade that I had no role in producing.

After each day’s activities finished, there was a happy hour. Happy hours are rarely happy for me. There are usually too many people and it’s almost always too loud. This conference had three. At the first one, I worked the room and had conversations with a few different people. The conversations were a roll of the dice (most people don’t come to a tech conference to talk to a lawyer) but I put in the repetitions. The second one was the busiest and most crowded. I made it a little over an hour until I could no longer tolerate the cacophony and so left for an early dinner. For the third one, I couldn’t even bring myself to participate. I was spent and so just turned around. There was a time not so long ago when I would’ve beaten myself up for that for the next two weeks, but not anymore. I know that I would not have been effective during the final happy hour and that’s okay. I did what I needed to do earlier in the conference and that’s good enough. Now it’s time to consolidate the new connections made and process my notes.

Before last month, I’d never been to Mexico. Now, I’m here on my second trip. I’m staying at a resort adjacent to Puerto Morelos, a little town about twenty miles south of Cancun. This is a very different Mexico than CDMX, one that in many ways is just an extension of the United States with Latin American style poverty tucked away but not quite hidden. There may be a time when I want to see the Mayan ruins that are scattered throughout the Yucatan Peninsula but otherwise I’m unsure why I’d return. The purpose of this trip was to attend a Rhodium retreat, a business community I’m part of that puts on what I consider to be can’t-miss events.

Yesterday was the excursion day, and also the only time I’ll leave the resort grounds until I leave for the airport. It included going snorkeling over a coral reef for the first time since I was in Australia one summer during college with my family. Highlights included seeing a sting ray and not getting sick. I don’t have the greatest track record on that latter point. That part of the day also saw me set foot on the beach to get to the boat dock, so I did technically walk on the beach this trip. We then traveled by bus inland to visit some cenotes and finished the day riding four wheelers through the jungle getting caked with dust.

The excursion activities aren’t the reason I came, though. I came to be around people who have taken similar business journeys to myself. It’s a concentrated chance to take in lessons and glean insights from people who are years ahead and to help those who are going through things I’ve gone through. I also gave a version of what I’ve begun calling the M&A weather report, a sort of market update I give to different groups in which I participate. I feel that’s a meager contribution relative to what I receive from everyone else, but I’ve had multiple people ask me follow up questions so it seems like at least someone found it useful. That’s a marked improvement from when I first started attending these events. I still have the feeling of an outsider that I wrote about after the most recent Rhodium event in October, but maybe now I’m at least contributing more from my outsider perspective.

There was one full day of working sessions on Monday and another today. I will have to make do with less energy today, but I’m still looking forward to it and scrambling to jot down notes that I’ll begin processing once the current round of travel ends later next week.

Within the bounds of needing to be responsive to clients and making sure that work product goes out on time, I am in control of my work schedule. With this modicum of control, I’ve been able to experiment with different workweek patterns in order to find rhythms that work best for certain periods. The normal version of my public availability is half days most days of the week (balanced between mornings and evenings to ensure better overall availability across a full week) with Tuesday being meeting free. Mind you, it never seems to actually work out that way but it looks decent on paper and it’s better than previous iterations.

Currently, Bill is on vacation. To better cover his absence, I modified my public calendar availability so that people could book meetings with me at any point from 9 AM to 5 PM on weekdays. This was an unsuccessful experiment, one that reminded me why I limited my public-facing availability in the first place. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m always grateful for the opportunity to pitch a prospective client. I’m even more grateful when those meetings get batched together as I find it preferrable to have two or three hours of solid meetings rather than to break them up. This week, though, there have been several 30 minute breaks between 30 minute meetings due to more overall availability and that has caused stop-start days. It’s not the worst thing in the world; it just means that I’ve had to push the “real” work to the early mornings and the evenings. If I had more of a social life filled with evening activities, then my current work schedule would be more of a problem than it actually is. Maybe that’s the real reason I’m a little embittered about the whole thing; it’s definitely not the vacation thing. In any event, I’ll have a new iteration of my calendar by May after a few work trips during the rest of April. It is my hope that I’ll return to the path of incremental improvement after this misstep.

In February I wrote about watching some of the short films nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Last week, I watched the winner in the documentary category after I stumbled upon a free showing while searching for evening activities.

That film is 20 Days in Mariupol, a documentary filmed by Ukrainian AP journalists during the beginning of what became a brutal siege of the Ukrainian city. I knew what happened in the city, but I did not know what to expect from the film. The film hit hard. This is not a film for children, those with weak stomachs, or those wanting a relaxing, feel-good story. The filmmakers based themselves at a hospital and filmed what transpired before them. Things also grew increasingly dire at the hospital as supplies ran out and the gruesome injuries kept coming. There were a few poignant, painful images in those scenes but I won’t describe them here. At one point the filmmakers were even behind Russian lines and recorded Russian tanks blasting away at apartment blocks. The filmmakers also edited in some of the Russian language coverage of their footage espousing conspiracy theories about how parts of it were faked, a reminder that information control remains a key part of conflict even if it’s more difficult now than in the past.

The weather that evening was appropriate too. It was an unrelenting downpour that lasted from before I left my apartment until well after I returned. The experience was not uplifting, but it was still a very worthwhile few hours. The whole film is currently available for free on YouTube and lasts about 90 minutes if you want to watch it.

My Mexico City trip last week was the continuation of a travel experiment that has now spanned five destinations over the past couple of years. That experiment has meant spending a longer time in a single place, at least a week, and acting a bit more like I live there rather than just visiting. I’m ready to take this travel approach to the next level, which will mean traveling with other people again. Perhaps it will happen this summer as I have a few ideas turning over in my mind now that I’ve started going to new places again. Unfortunately many of my friends still have more typical corporate work schedules. Come on guys, get with the program.

I also ceded more planning control over this trip than any I’ve taken since I was a child. This was a new experiment in delegation. I did not meet my own high standards in this effort, mainly because I failed to give sufficiently clear instructions. In any event, I’ll learn from it, recalibrate, and do better on my next trip as I find the right balance between delegating and doing things myself. The pendulum is definitely going to swing back towards me being more involved next time. That habit is going to be as enduring as my habit of walking excessive distances when I travel, a habit to which my family can attest citing multiple examples. As for what and when that next time will be, suggestions are welcome. What off-the-wall destinations should I consider in the coming months?

I’m spending this week exploring Mexico City. After several years of not visiting any new foreign places, I decided to change that. I’m doing some of the standard tourist activities (I’ll be touring the National Museum of Anthropology when this newsletter goes out), but I’m leaning hard into the food scene of the city. Americanized Mexican food is not my first or second or third or fourth choice, so that may come as a surprise to those who know me well, but there are different options here and I’ve been able to avoid excessive spiciness and cilantro thus far.

I have not yet booked any cooking classes for this trip. Part of me now thinks I should as I gained a much deeper appreciation for empanadas after cooking them in Buenos Aires and I could use the same for tacos. I’ve already been on one food tour and have another scheduled in a different neighborhood tomorrow. That first food tour was a bit avant garde for me (though it was in the Roma neighborhood famous for being just that) and the simplest dishes were my favorites.

I’ve breakfasted in my hotel almost every morning for convenience and there’s not much to say about that. Lunch has been a mix of things. Yesterday’s lunch was my most adventurous experience yet as I ate at a place inside one of the large open air markets. I was disappointed in what I actually ordered, but that was due to a faulty memory from the day before more than the rustiness in my Spanish.

I’ve eaten at a nice restaurant every night. I’ve largely abstained from alcohol and have opted for an appetizer instead. This means I’ve had a ceviche or a crudo at every place. These are foods I cannot get at home and that the rest of my immediate family don’t like, but I enjoy fish and I love citrus. There is also a magic to the way each bite of a well-constructed crudo hits your mouth with several flavors all at once. Just don’t expect a tremendous quantity of food should you order one the next time you see it on a menu.

The most glaring “problem” about these restaurants is the amount of English spoken by the other diners. Perhaps this is because I’ve largely kept to my normal eating schedule and so eat earlier than most of the locals, but it seems like the restaurants largely exist to serve American tourists and ex-pats. That takes away some of the fun even if the quirkiness of some of the buildings means these restaurants don’t suffer from the sameness that infects restaurants back home. Take nothing away from the food, though. The food has been great.

Tango is the only dance I’ve ever tried to learn. It is also one of the more difficult dances to learn as it is entirely improvised within certain limits. It is an activity with which I have a longer personal backstory given where I was in life the first time I visited Buenos Aires and tried it, but that is perhaps a topic for a different week.

On my more recent trip to Argentina, I actually took lessons once or twice per day for the three weeks I stayed in Buenos Aires after the dove shoot in the north. There were even some group classes in Spanish and a very fun night with that group during which we went dancing together and then had a very late dinner in the heart of the city. I didn’t publish anything about those lessons at the time, though I did take copious notes for a potential writing project that has since collected metaphorical dust on my hard drive.

One of the last things I did on that trip was to purchase a pair of dance shoes. It was a pre-commitment to make myself fall victim to the sunk cost fallacy so that I’d keep up the activity. It didn’t work that way as life took its twists and turns (during 2023 especially), but as I was looking for things to do at the start of 2024 I decided to explore tango locally. For the last couple of months, I’ve been taking group lessons again and attending a few of the other tango events.

Saturday night was the local monthly milonga (social dance), which is about as close as the atmosphere gets to being in Argentina for dancing. Was I any good? Objectively, no. At least I only stepped on one person’s toes. Were there groups of women who refused to even look at me when partners were being formed? Absolutely. Frankly, I was surprised there weren’t more who refused me. If I’d actually been in Buenos Aires, then that is precisely what would’ve happened. It was still frustrating, but it offered a realistic assessment of where my skill level is right now. There is quite a bit of work to get to the point where it can really be fun, but I might just persevere.

On the last two Sundays (and this upcoming Sunday too), I’ve been taking an intensive cooking class. And by intensive, I mean that each class is four plus hours long. The classes were a Christmas present to myself. Since I cook most of my meals, better cooking means a better quality of life. It will take some time to bed in the changes and begin experimenting with new techniques and options, but I’ve begun to implement a few things.

I have a very nice apartment with space to host guests. That is part of why I chose the apartment in the first place. I’ve now been here almost six months, though, and have only had a handful of guests. To help rectify that, I invited a couple from my church small group to dinner on Monday.

The menu was simple but eclectic. I topped the pork chops with berries from Scandinavia, added cherries to the rice like might be done in Iran, and covered the squash in cinnamon and thyme. None of the dishes were new for me; I didn’t want to experiment too much. Where the cooking class came in was in the way I seared the pork chops at a much higher temperature than I have previously done, which was an effective change that added to the flavor.

The conversation was lively and enjoyable. The husband is approaching graduation and the life changes that that will bring for both of their lives. Talking to them about that reminded me of that period in my own life in the final months of law school. If someone had told me what would transpire over the next eight years, I doubt I would’ve believed them. I hope that at the very least hearing about all of the twists and turns I’ve navigated since I finished school will help steel them against the inevitable deviations that will occur—as the proverb goes, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

I patronized a movie theater on Saturday, an older, well-kept theater downtown that is about a six minute walk from my apartment. It was the first time I’d set foot inside a movie theater since before the pandemic shutdowns almost four years ago when I watched Parasite after it won Best Picture and got a broader theatrical release. There were a few years before that during which I watched the live action short nominees and such showings would be the only films I’d watch in a theater for the year. It’s a limited release sort of thing that never existed in the small town where I grew up, but each three of the short-form categories (animated, live action, and documentary) get released as a single category “movie” every year.

One of the benefits of watching a collection of short films is that there is a built-in hedge in the experience. If one of them isn’t good, you only have to sit through a few more minutes before another one comes on. Or you can go to the bathroom without fear of missing anything important. I appreciate that part of the experience as a buttress against the sunk cost fallacy and the prospect of sitting in a theater for two hours watching the same bad film play out just because you spent the money to buy the ticket. I haven’t watched any of the animated ones so I don’t know if they’re appropriate for children, but if they are then it could be a great option if they get restless watching full-length movies.

This year I’ll go at least twice to the movies. I’ve purchased a ticket to see the live action shorts next week, but this was a Saturday matinee showing of the documentary nominees. I won’t review the films here individually, but I will say that I wasn’t that impressed with any of them. I trust that the live action shorts will be better. I’ve already seen one on Netflix (before it was nominated) and it easily trumped the quality of the documentaries. I’m hopeful that the rest will match it.