regardless of whether you’re focused on fundraising, selling, or product, as a CEO you’re responsible for the output of the entire organization. In my current role at the company, I think of myself as an information router, so my primary job is to unblock everyone else on the team to operate at peak efficiency.
At the end of that five minute sequence, I ended up with no valuable additional information. In this instance, Twitter played the role of an ephemeral anxiety delivery device. Is that really how I want to spend my time online? Given how much I use social feeds to consume news, I don’t even know if that’s a rhetorical question. For the last two years I’ve thought a lot about whether I am lightly addicted to information that gives me a low grade level of worry.
And as these loyalists harm themselves and expose all of us to unnecessary and preventable risk, publications—including this one—have run articles sympathetically explaining the recalcitrance of the unvaccinated. These tales are 2021’s version of the Trump safaris of 2017, when journalists traveled through the Midwest to seek enlightenment in diners and gas stations.
We will also work fully remotely two days a week, 3 weeks a year, and for the month of July, to keep our remote muscle working.
I propose using a simple taxonomy of related activities that put it in context.
I told her I felt like all I did every day was try to act normal while watching the world end, watching the lake recede from the shore, and the river film over, under the sun, an enormous and steady weight. There’s only one thing I have to say about climate change, I said, and that’s that I want it to rain, a lot, but it’s not going to rain a lot, and since that’s the only thing I have to say and it’s not going to happen, I don’t have anything to say. I said I had one more thing to say, which was that I didn’t even want to talk to my friends about it because of course none of them were doing well either and I just didn’t want to talk about how afraid and how sad I was because if I told them then I would just make them feel worse so that basically meant that I was never actually telling anyone what I was thinking so I just felt full of feelings that would be better not expressed and at this point I felt that my relationships were becoming yet another casualty of (points at relentlessly blue sky) “this.”
The sea level in Miami has risen ten inches since 1900; in the 2000 years prior, it did not really change. The consensus among informed observers is that the sea will rise in Miami Beach somewhere between 13 and 34 inches by 2050. By 2100, it is extremely likely to be closer to six feet, which means, unless you own a yacht and a helicopter, sayonara. Sunset Harbour is expected to fare slightly worse, and to do so more quickly.
Like I said, confidence is a funny thing. You have to somehow believe that the worst outcome simply won't happen. Sometimes you have to do that while knowing for a fact that the worst outcome is happening, all the time.
I was acting the part of what I call Quintessential Host, someone who seems to have anticipated every guest’s need and desire—and this is key—without breaking a sweat or having to try too hard. The role is a trap. It’s about martyrdom and the idea that you only get to enjoy yourself once everyone else has been taken care of. But it’s also a tad controlling.
But free to roam, with flights to any imaginable destination just a click away (credit card points!), an unlimited number of new people to meet, and nothing to tie me down but a backpack, I felt more unmoored than ever.