moving to london and founder fear.

My home for a small bit in time.

It’s been a definitive minute. I apologize for my lack of updates — it’s not been a self-imposed writing break. The world is changing every day, and I’m holding on where I can.

I’m living in London until July for a program that we got into — I left Vermont exactly a week ago. I sit every day on the train and think how lucky I am this is my life. That this is suffering, but the best version of suffering one can have.

I talk to Valkyrie often about this idea that we live in the best time in history to do what we want to do — when my dad was born, women weren’t allowed to have their own credit cards.

But now, the environment around autism in the United States has completely shifted. My honesty online that has lit a candle is also making me worried about being a visibly illuminated target.

I intensely still believe in building tech to change the world for better, but it’s increasingly becoming clear to me with adult life that the idea of changing the world for better means 200 different things to 200 different people.

Without giving it too much information, we’ve dealt with threats, wins that are beyond our dreams, increasing clout and pressure, and the swell of a team to 11 from 3 last year. It’s been a lot to hold in one hand.

Being an adult also means realizing everyone is the ruler of their own tiny universe, and when they realize how small it is — they sometimes hurt others to know they have the ability to make something happen. Pain ripples in every direction, and it’s mostly by accident.

Most people are not bad or immoral — they are just the steps of a system that keeps them underwater so intensely, they can’t remember the sky.

Others are just right cunts, as the British would say.

I keep on thinking every day that the world is ending — the world is ending and I’m just building an insurance product. I’m 23 and running out of time to learn how to ‘change the world’, and it feels as though at some point the hourglass will run out of sand and the beaches and land will go with it.

It’s not as though I don’t think insurance is important — I do more than anything. It’s all I think about everyday. But it’s not enough to solve what needs to be solved.

The threats to our world loom larger every day, and my contribution remains small. I don’t give a shit that it’s hard for one person to have a big impact. I love this world, and I want to give it everything I have. I keep on coming up shorthanded.

The book I’m currently reading now

Books about homelessness, the criminal justice system, corruption, and non-profit management jumble around to form discordant noises. I just think I no longer hear the music — I’m waiting to hear the symphony of purpose for the first time since Astra, the non-profit I ran for 6 years, died.

Here’s what my past 2 months have been like: I’ve been to Chicago, LA, Austin, Orlando, New York, home in Vermont, back to New York, then to London in the past 2 months. Then, I land at home and my dad is hospitalized for a week. I need to be a LinkedIn influencer. They don’t know what’s wrong with my dad. I have to keep it together for my development team. I can barely focus enough to stop the anxiety that brings heart-attack doppelganger pains to my chest.

I sit for hours waiting for a call that may inform me of losing my dad, my only bloodline tether to this planet. In between anxiety and pressure are the grief pangs of losing my non-profit that kept me together more than I kept it together.

I wander and watch the clock run out thousands of times over every day for thousands of people. Time is torn garment, and I’m constantly trying to mend it, and to stretch more life & use out of it. At some point, I know it will be beyond repair. Today, I still think I can elude it.

My dad is ok after a week of misery. I say goodbye to my friends and my beloved cats, and I immediately move to London. I am 23 and paying with my youthful time in a gamble to buy more. My life will be cut from the strands of my prior bloodline without warning. But, not today.

I love writing about ethical, life changing tech. The greater challenge is to build something that lives up to that standard.

If I play every note, I can create something that cohesively articulates the world I want build. My heart is on the other side of frosted glass — the outline is there but never the details. I’m painting every face until the right one appears.

I hope to live enough and have enough time to come back and tell the tale. I miss you all, and writing about ethical tech [and building it without fear]. Hopefully, my life will free me up and I’ll be able to spend time on deep dive articles.

There’s a few I’m incubating on the lack of a federal gun database enabling the cartels to continue violence in South America, and why VC money is flowing mostly towards wildfire detection cameras in the natural disaster preparedness space.

I’m growing up, whether I want to or not. Please keep holding me through it. I also got a sick as fuck drunk neck tattoo in Times Square, so maybe not all hope is lost.

My corporate friendly neck tattoo, as long as my hair is down. Don’t tell my investors.