Calm Like a Ninja

by Micah

I have a folder in my Google Reader called “Friends”. It has blogs that are written by people that I have physically met. Often, I will add a person’s blog soon after meeting them, and then over time, depending on the subjects they write about, I will continue to read them or return them to the blogosphere, and keep an eye out for them to be mentioned in other places.

Right now, I think the blogs in that folder number around 200. Of those, there are about 10 I check out first. My friends Rana, Tyler and Michael always share interesting images, quotes and posts, so I usually check their feeds first. Then I read Meg, Jeffrey, Grace, Darcie and Eric‘s blogs each for different reasons, but mostly because I enjoy the writing.

The final two I check are David‘s and Brad‘s because they are in a space that I want to be part of and know more about: investing and venture capital, and they both write extensively about the subject.

Of those first ten, there are often threads of ideas that I pluck to contemplate posts of my own. Sometimes, there is a concept that just screams for me to think, and perhaps, write about.

Today was such a day. Brad wrote in his post Deep Calm:

While my life is frenetic, the world around us is chaotic, and as I like to say “something in my world somewhere is totally fucked up every single day”, I generally achieve a very deep calm.  On the surface I appear to be extremely busy, but at my essence I hear the birds chirping and think of fields of golden retriever puppies.

I am on vacation. I am staying home for two weeks after spending 50% of the last 45 days traveling. I am trying to learn how to be organized. I am trying to learn how to properly prioritize my activities. I am learning how to use a to-do list.

Here is what I have done (or will be doing) my first three days of vacation:

Monday: Run errands, clean the house, go into the office for a meeting, and meet with a techstars team.

Tuesday: Rearrange my office, clean some more, run some more errands, get blood tests, go in to the office for a meeting, write a blog post for the lijit blog, work on a lijit project, meet with three different techstars teams.

Wednesday: Meet with one of my mentors, clean up my back yard, run some more errands, go to the doctor, meet with two techstars teams. Clean up my basement and my master bedroom. Complete a Lijit project. Figure out my strategy for Learntoduck.tv.

My life is in a constant state of movement. I have ten things I should be doing, twenty things I am doing, and thirty things I wish I could be doing. I take every phone call and meeting that comes my way.

Within all that “stuff” that is going on, there are things that are falling down; things that are breaking; things, as Brad says, “are totally fucked up every single day.”

Yet, while I am intense, loud and passionate, I never am concerned that the outcome will be anything other than good. (Not specifically successful, but educational. Learning is as good as winning most of the time).

Unlike Brad, I dont have thoughts of fields of buttercups and golden retrievers, but I do have the utmost trust in me. I know that if I was given a single oar and dropped in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I will get to the shore.

People who are anxious or worry about their ability to produce at the heart of it dont trust in their own ability to generate a positive outcome.

Perhaps its narcissistic; perhaps its arrogance, but all I know is it keeps me calm like a ninja.

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