These are my Momentos, short personal diary entries I write daily – since 2013 – and publish monthly. Some links are affiliate links.
1
Jessica Livingston published Founders at Work back in 2007, a series of interviews with founders of startups like PayPal, Apple, Yahoo, Adobe, TripAdvisor. From the intro…
I’d say determination is the single most important quality in a startup founder. If the founders I spoke with were superhuman in any way, it was in their perseverance. That came up over and over in the interviews.
Perseverance is important because, in a startup, nothing goes according to plan. Founders live day to day with a sense of uncertainty, isolation, and sometimes lack of progress.
2
Might have turned a corner with the cold calls this week. Booked 3 appointments from them the last two days. Using an opener now that feels good and gets me into more conversations. Of course, some people still hang up on me, but that’s inevitable. Still ultimately a numbers game.
3
A friend told me years ago that he found meditation to be overrated. Starting to agree with him. Practice often feels frustrating and unrewarding, and the payoff is usually unclear. Whereas something like ACT is way easier to get to grips with, and the payoff more obvious and immediate.
4
Chris Paul’s playing career is probably over. Feels like the last direct link to my years as an NBA superfan. I had a media credential when he played in New Orleans way back when, used to ask him questions in the locker room. Feeling the distance between who I was in my mid-20’s and who I am now.
5
Looking up different ways you could get paid sleep. There are sleep studies, plus some marketing stunts by hotels and mattress companies. But most interesting are the people who stream themselves sleeping on Twitch and apparently make good money.
6
Been a tough year and there are plenty of things I could have done better. But I’m proud that I kept the self-sabotage to a minimum, didn’t indulge in any self-destructive habits. Could easily have abused alcohol, or weed, or food even. But instead I showed up every day and worked towards a better future.
7
I went to mass every Sunday for the first fifteen years of my life. So I’ve probably been ~800 times. Unfortunately, I can’t think of any significant benefit I got from all that. Maybe it made me more patient? But more likely it was just a gigantic waste of time.
8
Prepping for a couple of appointments tomorrow. I basically go through the entire online presence for their business, looking for ways to improve their marketing, prioritizing the quick/easy opportunities. I often get into a flow state doing this kind of work.
9
Did those two appointments today and booked another three. I feel myself gaining confidence with each call. Done enough now that I know I’m providing a ton of value. When someone doesn’t want to avail of that, I feel sorry for them more than I feel any sense of rejection.
10
Train Dreams hit me hard. The story of a man who leaves no permanent mark on the world, yet still lives a beautiful and profound life. But what resonates with me most is how he achieved a dream, watched it all fall apart, and somehow managed to keep going.
11
Massive work day today, a bunch of calls, appointments and to-do’s. I had to set an early alarm and skip my exercise routine. But I was actually looking forward to the challenge, felt strong and capable and eager to meet the moment. Here I am at the end of the day, a contented man.
12
Another quote from Founders at Work, this one from Joe Kraus, cofounder of Excite…
Some famous person said, “Success is 50 percent luck and 50 percent preparedness for that luck.” I think that’s a lot of it. It’s being ready to take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
13
6:30 and I wake up in pain, a severe cramp in my leg, rolling around in agony for 20 seconds until it fades. No going back to sleep after that, but no worries, eager to start work today anyway. Feeling a buzz similar to what I felt six years ago in Bali, when I was building my last big thing.
14
They say hard times make you stronger. But I think there’s a difference between going through a hard time you didn’t choose, and going through one you did. The former can actually break you, make you weaker. But if you choose to do something hard, that usually pays dividends.
15
Related to that: we start off looking for easy things we can do to make money. But really the best way to make money is to help people solve hard problems. And hard problems, by definition, are not easy to solve. You have to be really talented or become really skilled… or both.
16
Another prospect telling me they’d happily pay $300/month if I can deliver this system. Pretty sure I can. Won’t be easy, but I’m up for the challenge. Good timing now with Christmas around the corner and me staying put in Andorra. Plenty of time to knuckle down and build an MVP.
17
That news about Rob Reiner is horrific, but I’m more disturbed by some of the comments about it on X, like this one aimed at Conan O’Brien, a man whose friend just got murdered…
You Hollywood scumbags are the worst. Focus on raising better human beings instead of obsessing with your TDS and lecturing America… Did you give Nick drugs at your Xmas party, Conan?? You POS
Social media is the worst, turning normal people into brazen, insensitive assholes.
18
Crazy then you think about it: so many of the things we enjoy, things that some people are even passionate about, didn’t exist a century or so ago. Basketball, movies, snowboarding, hip hop, video games, automobiles, computers, scuba diving, surfing, mountain biking…
19
A nurse from Honduras. Saline and glucose. An extra blanket. Too much blood, then not enough. Supplies in coffee cups. Pumpkin, buckwheat, egg yolks. No sun until midday. A gift for the doctor. Eight hours in the hospital. Everything comes and everything goes.
20
I love Christmas music, been listening to it all month. Especially the older stuff, so much nostalgia. But there’s no song quite like Fairytale of New York. You don’t hear that one much outside of Ireland, and I’m transported home every time I hear it.
21
Watching Avatar 3. I have a love/hate relationship with cinemas. Great to see a movie on the big screen and feel more immersed. But the food culture in these places is depressing. People downing massive buckets of soda and rainbow popcorn, so called “treats” that destroy their health.
22
Another appointment no-show. I’ve had a few of those now. Clearly I’m not doing a good enough job of setting them up, making them sound compelling. I’m confident in the value I provide but not so much in how I communicate that value. Persuasion doesn’t come naturally to me.
23
Alice Taylor on growing up in the Irish countryside ~75 years ago…
Then my mother did her shopping. This was of a very practical nature as money was scarce in those days: there was plenty of everything except money, but then the need for money was not great. We produced all our own food and most places we went to we walked, which cost nothing only time, and we had plenty of that.
24
Nochebuena. Snowy morning walk. Sneaky coffee. Free writing and ACT. Pumpkin and broccoli. Exercise and stretching. Salary confusion. Al Pacino and Christopher Nolan. Eight reviews in six days. WhatsApp and web design. Chicken pasta pesto. Dark chocolate and mandarins.
25
It snowed all night, woke up to a picture-perfect Christmas Day. I could live another sixty years and never experience this again. Got out for a walk on a lit-up ruta, wandered the cutest town in the country, ducked into a church to hear an old priest sing. A much better day than expected.
26
Woke up at 6:30 and spent all day working. Not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Had to drag myself away from it this evening. I love these stretches when the hunger is there and I don’t have to force myself to do the thing.
27
Photographers call it the blue hour, that time at dawn or dusk when the sky is a deep blue and combined with the village lights everything looks soft and magical. It doesn’t actually last an hour though, more like twenty minutes. I try to be still and take a few slow breaths every time I catch it.
28
I’ve watched 200+ movies this year. Favorites that I’d never seen before…
- 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
- Extraction 2 (2023)
- Green Book (2018)
- Hell or High Water (2016)
- Incendies (2010)
- Spotlight (2015)
- The Holdovers (2023)
- The Taking of Pelham 123 (1974)
- Train Dreams (2025)
- Under the Skin (2013)
29
Still chipping away at learning Spanish. I listen to podcasts for ~15 minutes every morning, followed by 10 minutes speaking with ChatGPT. I usually get ChatGPT to suggest a concept to practice. Today it was converting a sentence like Les escribí una carta to Se la escribí.
30
With each year that passes, I better understand why older people have such interest in death notices. I pay increasing attention to them myself. Elden Campbell, Chris Rea, Brigitte Bardot… all gone this month. Each a reminder of my own mortality, the ticking of the clock, slowly growing louder.
31
Did our own thing this year, didn’t wait for midnight. Celebrated the last sunset on a snowy road with spectacular views, pinks and purples behind a clear moon. Then sparklers and wishes at another special spot beneath the stars. Just the two of us with all our hopes and dreams.