Chris Brooks Newsletter 005
The summer is winding down and so is our time in New York. We’ve begun our “close the cottages” routine, but thankfully have guests this weekend for one last hurrah on the lake.
Where I’ve Been Traveling
On the heels of my flight to Florida and drive back to NY with our Tesla Model Y, three weeks later I drove our Airstream Interstate 19 van down to Florida to hand off to nephew Andrew to manage the sale. Along the way I picked up a replacement generator near Harkers Island NC and got it successfully installed with a local mechanic down in Melbourne. We’ll do some body work on the van and get it listed.
Jacob flew his drone around and put together an amazing composite video of our water activities at Keuka Lake.
Many more adventures coming up in September as we drive to Oregon and hang out there until early October. We drive away from NY on Thursday morning early, with this rough plan:
- Quick in-person golf lesson with my coach in Erie PA on Thursday morning, overnight in Canton OH.
- Visit friends in Indianapolis, staying at their place Friday
- Mini family reunion in Cedar Falls IA, staying over there Saturday night
- Drive to Gothenburg NE Sunday, staying at a KOA campground cabin where we can plug in our Tesla to a 50A NEMA outlet overnight
- Golf at Wild Horse in Gothenberg, then drive on to Saratoga WY (cool little hotel there with Tesla charging)
- Golf at Rochelle Ranch in Rawlins WY. I’ve driven by this attractive looking muni course many times and excited to finally get to play it. Overnight near SLC UT.
- Drive to Boise, ID on Wednesday Sep 14
- Golf at Falcon Crest in Kuna ID on Thursday. We lived in Boise for 2.5 years I think I played exactly one time! Don’t remember the course.
- Friday drive to Salem OR for a weekend wedding.
What I’ve Been Reading
My current fiction reading is Mistborn: The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson. When I read this series I think I’ll be 100% caught up on all things Mistborn and Mistborn-adjacent in the Sanderson universe. So far enjoying the rapid pace, high adventure nature of this novel.
On my drive to Florida I listened to my first Three Pines / Inspector Gamache novel, A Fatal Grace. I enjoyed it enough to load up my Kobo with the first 10 books in the series.
Four non-fiction books finished (well, started then put away) this month:
- A Course Called Ireland by Tom Coyne. I seem to be reading his books backwards, as I started with A Course Called America last year. This was a gift from son Jacob and is whetting our appetites for a potential Ireland golf trip.
- The Simpsons: an Uncensored Unauthorized History was a gift from Matthew’s girlfriend who happens to work for the agency that represented the author. Lots of cool tidbits in this book, though I wish it was better organized.
- Thinking Fast and Slow has long been on my to-read list, but I dropped it after the first two or three chapters. If I was going to engage deeply in learning theory or behavioral science it would be extremely relevant, but I’m not so…
- The Puzzler I discovered from a podcast and found the book at my library. I think I learned as much as I needed to know from the podcast! Still, it has inspired me to do crossword puzzles and I’m enjoying doing a few of NY Times crosswords each week.
Some tidbits from random articles I read in August:
- Read Apples and Oranges: A Critique of Utilitarianism — Part I to get a helpful critical overview of utilitarianism, which is related to effective altruism (a topic I’ve covered in past newsletters)
- I really enjoyed Studying Lizards Taught Me How to Trust. We live amongst the anoles for a good part of each winter, and I can’t say I’ve spent much time thinking about their behavior; I certainly do not know how to distinguish males and females. Still, this article was a good reminder that generalizations we make on behavior and self-interest (and self-preservation) don’t always hold true in the small.
At the end of this summer, I found myself filled with an openness I hadn’t really known before. If lizards could so flagrantly flout the rules of self-interest and persist for millennia nonetheless, anything seemed possible.
- Very good career advice from Kathleen Nisbet Halpin on Twitter. Best point:
My biggest piece of advice: the more people associate you with getting things done, the more top of mind you’ll be for the next big task.
- As I change my dietary preferences away from eating meat (mainly driven by long-term health concerns), I can’t help but also view this change from an animal welfare perspective. I’m well aware of what factory farming looks like for chickens, cows and pigs. But should I feel better eating tilapia, or salmon? I don’t seek out octopus, but this concerns me: The world’s first octopus farm - should it go ahead?. Some of my personal calculus on animal welfare (and suffering) is driven by how much I think the animal is aware of the conditions and hence the suffering engaged while being raised to be our food. I’d be a lot less concerned eating a scallop than a dolphin. Here’s another perspective on the rights that we should perhaps bestow on octopuses.
What I’ve Been Watching
Watched a few movies last month. Julie’s dad saw a musical theater production of Once and had a hard time following it, so we watched the movie version. Once was one of the first Broadway shows we took Jacob and Matthew to! I was hanging with my horror-flick-loving sister in Florida so we watched Choose or Die. Very average. Julie and I finally got around to seeing the acclaimed Belfast. Highly recommended.
TV-show wise I’m binging Seinfeld (mostly while hanging at Tesla charging stations) and we started season 3 of For All Mankind.
We saw two broadway shows!
- First up was Hadestown, a telling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The set design, choreography, and costumes were fantastic. I liked but did not love the music and performers.
- Next was the Sondheim musical Into the Woods. The production was almost minimalist in terms of set design, and like Hadestown had the orchestra on the stage with the performers (Hadestown was more of a speak-easy band, while Into the Woods had a more traditional orchestra). The simplicity put the focus on the performances, the songs, and the lyrics, which in my opinion surpassed Hadestown. I also think this show had a more compelling message.
Sailboat Stuff
Our Flying Dutchman sailboat has been on life support for about 8 years. I’ve had to do multiple fiberglass / epoxy patches, and we had a critical failure of the main sail halyard winch three years ago that took some creativity to work around. Our final critical failure happened about a month ago, forcing us to retire the boat and sadly sent it to the local landfill. Fortunately we had a replacement boat already on order and it arrived on August 17th. Meet our new boat, the Melges 15. Julie and I are both re-capturing the sailing bug and are getting out whenever the wind cooperates.
The Sermon
The tweet-storm I linked to earlier got me thinking about advice I would give to a young knowledge-worker professional. Here are a few:
- Be an owner, not an employee. If you have a hard time caring enough about the business to behave as if you are an owner, have a plan to move somewhere where you can.
- Find ways to take on more of your boss’s job. Many (especially new) managers have a hard time delegating and a willing employee helps relieve that burden.
- Each day you make a conscious choice to show up to work (be it in-person or remote). Given this choice, make every effort to add value and be a positive resource.
- Sometimes the best path to promotion is to change companies. That’s OK, just don’t do this every 1–2 years.
- There’s a lot to learn and benefit from by working at a large company early in your career. You can likely change organizations instead of companies to seek more opportunity or rejuvenate yourself. It can also be helpful to have a brand name on your resume for future opportunities. Consider saving the startup or small company work for a phase 2 or 3 of your career.
- Company culture might value time-in-seat over effectiveness. There might be a badge-of-honor from working 60 hour work weeks. If that suits you then great! Early career is that time to experience this kind of work. I don’t think it is sustainable long-term, so I grew to value companies that value effectiveness and outcomes over hours in office (or on Slack, etc.).
See you next month!
-Chris