This is the fifth Public Work Log entry for Coεmeta, a Public Benefit company providing data & sensemaking services with positive externalities. It's intended as a window into our journey & playbook as it develops, in the spirit of working in public, contributing to knowledge commons, "finding the others" & leaving a trail + some resources for those that follow. I hope it inspires more folks to follow a similarly rewarding path & find similar (if modest & provisional) success. Feel free to reach out at any time, I'm happy to help however I can!
- Daniel McNichol, founder & Chief Scientist
This post is mirrored at: Github (primary source & version control) & Roam (navigable outline format), & excerpted at Medium
...comments, forks & pull requests are welcome!
It complements our Open Source Strategy repo, which offers more discrete, version-controlled resources related to the strategies & frameworks discussed here in more narrative form.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
🙏🏼 Support Coεmeta's public benefit work with a donation via ko-fi or paypal!
💡 click headings to expand sections, then the Contents links above will work
Coεmeta is an attempt at an infinite game. The goal of infinite games is not to win, but to keep playing.
I consider this the metagame (as opposed to endgame):
a more balanced, integrated, enriching & impactful life in greater community
To pursue this metagame indefinitely (aka "infinitely"), I needed to reclaim some agency & autonomy in my work. So Coεmeta is also currently a Pennsylvania Public Benefit LLC, serving as a vehicle for more traditional freelance & consulting work, as well as broader public-benefit oriented activities.
(My longer-term vision for Coεmeta as a formal entity is something more like a worker-owned cooperative or DAO with shared collective ownership, or at least part of a federated network of mutual aid & partnerships with other "self-sovereign" ᵋ groups or entities. This is part of the "in greater community" aspect of the metagame.)
So Coεmeta is not exactly a traditional 'venture' or typical small business or startup etc, but assumes some of those trappings for now. The first log entry recaps more of the motivations & considerations underlying all of this, & our Open Source Strategy repo describes some of the strategic planning & wayfinding models used so far.
As elaborated throughout these artifacts, public work & contributing to knowledge commons are core parts of the overall metagame strategy & ethos. So these posts are part of that: figuring it out as I go, learning while doing, in public. This entry picks up where the previous left off. (The timing & titles of these entries should make the intended heliocentric publishing cadence clear.)
ᵋ NB: I'm generally skeptical of this terminology & its associations with neoliberal / libertarian fantasies of fully atomized "sovereign individuals", but "independent" isn't quite adequate either.
This entry marks the 2nd Vernal Equinox Update, & the first Public Work Log of this new cycle. The first VEU was also the first overall Public Work Log, & looking back now, it was remarkably substantive & eventful. This is largely due to the 6+ months of antecedents it included, but also the richness of those first few months on this path. I've now come full circle in multiple senses & am beginning to feel that richness germinate again, as described below.
In contrast, I wrote the previous entry entirely in TL;DR format, due to bandwidth & capacity constraints resulting from an overload of client work (which became a recurring theme throughout last cycle). I reflected on predictable unpredictability, untested theories & neglected pillars of the original mission over as my 1st year an independent worker.
I also conveyed gratitude & some validation of my initial motivations & conceptions, & yet lingering dissatisfaction over the aforementioned untested theories & neglected pillars. So in the new year I made the difficult decision to rebalance my workloads, which meant ending an engagement with a major client in order to refocus my energy & efforts where they felt most vital.
The past three months were largely consumed by that transition, turnover & recovery from the untenable imbalance. But by the end of it (at the time of writing), I'm feeling back on track, rejuvenated & redoubled in my conviction of this path.
A brief timeline of relevant events, from the winter solstice of Dec 21, 2022, to the time of writing around the vernal equinox of March 20, 2023.
(see the full timeline to-date here)
Jan-Feb 2023
-
After regaining some clarity & grounding over the holiday break, resolve to give notice to a major client that I'd have to end our engagement due to capacity constraints & being spread too thin.
- I had already rescoped this engagement several times to try to find a viable arrangement, but ultimately realized it was untenable, & the client deserved someone in the role that could bring sufficient attention & energy.
- Agreed to stay on through January under the current scope, then be available on a more limited basis for any remaining triage or troubleshooting throughout February, to ensure a thorough & seamless as possible turnover.
-
Most of Jan & Feb spent tending to these transitions, wrapping up end of year business admin stuff, & using remaining energy reserves for a bit of (belated) forward-looking planning for the next cycle, which I realized I couldn't kick off in earnest until next quarter.
-
going to do more hard things & less tedious things in 2023 🫡
— Daniel Coεmeta McNichol (@dnlmc) January 30, 2023
-
Mar 2023
- Start settling back into a tenable routine & regimen
- Slowly realize that I'm actually considerably burnt out again, similar to the end times of my last full-time job, altho at a lower magnitude. So give myself more space to recuperate before plunging back into the game full force.
- (I earned at least this much, via extended runway as well as general exertion)
- Also deeply appreciate having the flexibility & autonomy to rebalance my work without upending my entire livelihood (again), which itself was [again]So I feel deeply gratified & substantially validated in my initial motivations & conception of this endeavor. And yet, not fully satisfied. There's still vital, fertile ground to explore. So I'm excited for this new cycle, to continue wayfinding & course-correcting: new plans, new ambitions, new directions, new journeys. ) substantial validation of my initial motivations in taking this path
- this doesn't mean I'll always make the best decision or procure the best outcome, but the mere capability is worth the risk, & frankly I trust my judgement orders of magnitude more than 99% of those I'd otherwise have to defer to.
- Slowly realize that I'm actually considerably burnt out again, similar to the end times of my last full-time job, altho at a lower magnitude. So give myself more space to recuperate before plunging back into the game full force.
- More planning & ramping back up
- Revisiting / rebalancing the pillars
- As mentioned in the prior entry, the first cycle both neglected & validated parts of the strategic pillar model. So I didn't make many tweaks, other than resolving to rectify past neglect, & OODA onward.
- In addition to resetting time / effort allocations as part of an overhauled work portfolio strategy, I did revisit the substantive plans & sub-strategies for the pillars a bit:
- Client work: obv...do less, more focused, higher-impact. Long game: other pillars eventually feed back here.
- Relations / community-building: no major shift, continue mutual capacity-building via crewing, mentorship & apprenticeship, focus remaining effort on communities & platforms with synergistic potential re: other pillars
- Content creation: 2 major clusters:
- Toolmaking: as with other pillars, focus on synergies & feedback loops, building tools & resources to support these interlinked efforts. Particularly salient:
- Sensemaking & analysis aids
- Affordances for mutual-capacity building, especially among other feral freelance folks, & those looking to join our ranks. Will have more to say / show here soon.
- Sketch out a rough 8 capital strategy, to begin mapping & navigating a more holistic landscape of value:
- inclusive of my personal life as well as this work, & partly inscrutable due to my personal Roam folksonomy, but intend to formalize for Coεmeta as well & add to the Open Source Strategy Repo
- Set / update OKRs for the first time in two quarters, as they became moot in the client work deluge
- these largely map with the above 2 points, as they should
- Set general intentions for the remaining year (again, mapping with above):
- Build on the foundation & extended runway laid in the first cycle
- Share & reinvest past harvests in more mutual capacity-building
- Get back to the core mission & vision, incorporating lessons learned
- Give the other pillars their due, explore / experiment as originally intended
- Have more courage of convictions, sooner — my intuition & weak-signal detection have repeatedly proven well-honed enough to give the benefit of the doubt, & the longer I defer their admonitions, the righter they get
- Continue to course-correct & risk-mitigate as needed, but mostly acclimate to the vicissitudes of the permaweird
- Revisiting / rebalancing the pillars
- Semi-impromptu trip to visit friends in the mountains around the equinox provides much needed rest & rejuvenation, & rekindles the initial spark which set me on this path — now accompanied by a year's worth of foundation & firewood
-
i owe a vernal equinox public work log
— Daniel Coεmeta McNichol (@dnlmc) March 30, 2023
but i spent the equinox in the mountains making fires with friends & looking into glowing rectangles as little as possible
soon https://t.co/upJ7CBWC5v pic.twitter.com/t6tIzSDt6A
-
The numbers don't add much to the story here, but for completeness & continuity with past entries:
- NB: my diligence re: non-billable time tracking also wavered a bit in the annotated
client glut&burnoutepochs, so everything but freelance is likely a bit understated
- NB: my diligence re: non-billable time tracking also wavered a bit in the annotated
- (annual targets are prorated / to-date)
But how are the vibes?
Refreshed & renewed. Ready for more.
...play started to become finite again, so had to reboot
I do feel a bit behind the curve of this new cycle, as the prior year spilled over & needed a cleanup. I'm only just rebooting now, 1/4 the way through. But I feel good about weaving those threads of continuity into the knotwork of this next cycle, yet more strange loops in the infinite game.