2024W24: setting the compass
...what if a compass didn't tell you where to go, but you set it so that you won't lose sight of your goals?
Changing relationships
That has been the core theme of the last few weeks, in all areas of life.
New relationships have started, and existing ones are changing their nature.
Some of them are on the way to ending.
🧑💻 Back to writing code
My relationship to writing software engineering has changed and after 5 years of distance, I feel a renewed spark and eagerness to build.
Only that this time I understand business value – being a business owner myself – and am more interested in exploring out-of-fashion technological approaches than learning ever more complex abstractions.
🕯️ Slowly burning my own money
Barring any last-minute miracles, my relationship with my closest friend will acquire another layer: we won’t just be close friends anymore, but I’ll be his employer with all intentions of putting him to work and being a great manager.
With the start of the fall season, that means leading a team of three people:
Käti, factotum par excellence
Mete, taking care of sales, landing pages, storytelling,
and Kadri running and managing ads on Instagram and Facebook.
All of this takes resources, even when there is little business activity like in summer.
💸 Contracting to the rescue
Combining the previous two changes, getting back to contracting as a developer seems like a good move and ultimately that will be the next step.
It’ll happen sometime this year.
And it will mark the end of “being an employee at a big company”.
This time it is different because the income from software development is “just another income stream” of the company, fuel for something bigger.
⛑️ From insurance to community
The time in Sweden transformed my relationship with the house from being “expensive insurance” to “the seeds of something great”.
I’m currently building a community around the house to breathe fresh ideas into Nyland, and sharing the beauty of the High Coast with more people.
Clicking the button does not ask for your credit card information 😉
🔥 Passion and Commitment
As of recently, I’m in a committed relationship again, with a long-term outlook.
And it’s amazing, exciting, challenging, and immensely satisfying because this is a new level of opening up to someone.
I missed the mutual giving and receiving, the strengthening and deepening of an intimate connection over time.
Without experiencing it, it was easy to forget how satisfying this is.
It gives meaning to the smallest of gestures, to the simplest acts of daily life.
It feels like consciously building something amazing.
Exciting times!
Setting the compass
I’m sure you have experienced this in your life: you are in the middle of making decisions that set your course for the future and you are aware that these are course-setting decisions.
It’s the difference between a compass telling you where North, with you having to constantly figure out how to translate that into the direction you need to go in,
and having a compass that shows you where you need to go.
You pick your direction by looking at all the other directions you won’t take.
To go West, you look at the compass telling you where North is.
And the same idea translates to making life decisions, only that you can build a compass that actually shows you the way.
Your moral compass tells you what is right and wrong.
Your value compass tells you what you care about and what can safely be ignored.
This narrows the number of directions but still leaves many open ones.
Finally, you pick one and then stick to it.
Things like:
a particular job vs a particular business venture,
this particular person over all the other people you could be with,
making a home here, not everywhere else
Once you’ve plotted the course, you can follow it aggressively.
Because you don’t need to look at the compass anymore telling you where North is when you want to go West.
You’ve learned that the sun sets in the West.
So all you need to do now is run after the sun before it sets.