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Does anyone know who we really are?
Maybe it was just one of those weeks, but I found myself wondering if the people around me really know who I really am or what I spend my time doing.
It’s a basic human impulse — a retort from a teenager “you don’t understand me!” — and half the time we don’t even understand ourselves, so how can we expect it from others?
My mom recently told me she wasn’t sure what to tell others what I do.
I suggested she say I have a jigsaw puzzle company, which is true and people always perk up when hearing, but doesn’t actually reflect anything that I do right now.
It’s a hologram of what others seem to like.
The other night Emily1 and I were at Houston’s for dinner and she asked “Who in your life would you be proud of, if they were your kids?”
As I shuffled through, I came up surprisingly empty. I know a lot of good people, so my response doesn’t make sense. Why are my standards impossibly high? That’s probably not healthy, and honestly I think I need to lower them.
Eventually I realized that I’m not really proud of myself most days, so I guess it makes sense that I get failing marks at feeling pride for others.
Okay that’s sort of depressing — my point is I want to talk about some happenings, just to sort of share with the universe.
So here’s a glimpse into my week, just to put it out there, and see what that feels like
This week was one of the hardest yet but also amazing and crazy and scary and thrilling and disappointing.
Emily and I finished a book on AI art we’ve been working on for months.
I met with a multi-billionaire and thought he was surprisingly cool.
I accidentally scared some baby birds in my backyard and they flew the nest and it scared me and the parents yelled at me and it caused a bunch of chaos for all of us.
We sat in the board room of a public company and joked with the founders and executive team.
Another public company flew in to see us for an all-day meeting. For that, I woke up at 5am and braved the 405 at rush hour like a real LAer.
I had these meetings while masking being sick.
At the beach I slowly crept up to a cormorant until I was three feet away and draped myself over a rock and watched him fall asleep while I told him he was a beautiful bird no matter what anyone says.
I had to mediate between a vendor and a neighbor where the word “racism” was thrown around multiple times. Such a short moment, yet it was my peak stress point.
In the evenings I’ve been testing some new ad strategies and may have finally hit upon an interesting direction.
We hired someone for a role that we’ve been searching for many years. Instead of celebrating, I felt numb, and wondered if this will be yet another hiring mistake.
We finalized a location (a museum in Slovenia!) for a conference our foundation is helping put on later this year. (And by “we” I really just mean the amazing Kristoffer.)
I made a song with AI of a barbershop quartet singing about the US banning TikTok and it didn’t go viral and I was annoyed.
I stepped on a jellyfish.
We closed on two new pre-IPO AI startup investments.
One morning I gave up before the day started and ate a chocolate chip cookie for breakfast.
Another day I got so many things done I saved the two page list in my journal.
I finally got Zizi to say twelve after eleven instead of friggin thirteen by telling her that a cup of tea was called twelve.
I made videos comparing Grok with Gemini and ChatGPT and keep forgetting its okay to just do things because I enjoy it and not to chase views.
I showed Emily the best Last of Us episode and we cried.
I’m doing these sorts of things while doing my best to keep Brainjolt running on a daily basis.
That’s it for now,
Josh
Emily read my first draft of this and she was sad I didn’t say some version of “she knows me the most” and so we got into a sunday afternoon fight. There is no way I’m adding that line under duress. This is also a glimpse into my week.
Hey Josh, this is Ryan Bradley. You're actually pretty difficult to contact (and I have no internet presence). Still, I'd love to catch up. Any ideas how we might go about that? In relation to the post, and to prove it's me; I still think of screaming all the lyrics to the "Moon is Down" on random night drives every time I listen to FSF, <i>and</i> you were such a snob about Jimmy Eat World when Bleed American broke--skipping "The Middle" every time you played the CD.
yes, yes I do