More Live Music
Welcome to the 41st entry of my public journal, where I share *some of the things* I've been thinking about, learning about, and exploring across work, tech, wellness, and life.
Declaring an Intention Makes It More Likely to Happen
About five months ago, I decided I wanted more live music in my life. Music was never a priority for me, so naturally, I hadn’t made time for it as life got busier with work and kids over the past decade. And yet, I started longing for the experience of being at a concert—immersed in sound, surrounded by people, all enjoying the same moment.
When I made this decision, I didn’t rush to check concert schedules or buy tickets. I just carried on with my life and said yes when opportunities to see music came up.
My husband and neighbors were going to a local music festival one weekend. I might have normally skipped it, but this time, I joined them. Friends had an extra ticket to see The Killers—I didn’t turn it down. On a night out in Lisbon with Matt, we intentionally sought out Fado music in a bar.
Just this past Tuesday, a friend offered me a ticket to see the Tedeschi Trucks Band. I almost said no—it was midweek, my ankle was injured, and I felt like resting. But I remembered my intention to see more live music, so I went.
Since May, I’ve been to three music festivals, two concerts, and a few bar shows.
I didn’t seek out a single one of these experiences. They were all passing opportunities that I might have let slip by. But because I had stated my intention, I noticed them and said yes.
What other opportunities are passing us by each day without us noticing?
Some of the (other) things
In a recent post, I mentioned I’m working on setting up a bookkeeping and accounting system for GM Farcaster. All of our revenue is onchain which should theoretically make it easier to track and manage, but there’s little standardized crypto tooling available. After some research, I settled on using Google Sheets for our first year to track revenue and expenses. I also got a demo from the team at Splits for their new product which is similar to online banking for crypto companies. I’m going to onboard to their product in the next few weeks and can share how that goes in a later update.
Inspired by July’s comments about cheese, I published a new blog post documenting in photographs how Mongolian nomad’s make traditional cheese: https://paragraph.xyz/@adrienne/cheese-making-in-nomadic-mongolia
I’m still continuing with Four Old College Friends, the just-for-fun side project where I record conversations with my old college friends and put it out as an onchain podcast on /base. We have virtually no audience, but we enjoy ourselves and I have a feeling I'll find it valuable in 20, 30, 40 years as a time capsule into what life was like for middle-aged women in the 2020s. I’m really excited that for our 11th episode we have new intro/outro music from artist and DJ Chic Bangs, who I’ve become friends with through Farcaster. If you don't want to listen to the whole podcast, at least listen to the intro/outro! Her music is so good.
The surgeon general issued an advisory on parents’ mental health, putting parenting in the same category as cigarettes regarding public health risks (article, podcast). The cause? “…the expectation that they spend ever more time and money educating and enriching their children. These pressures, researchers say, are driven in part by fears about the modern-day economy — that if parents don’t equip their children with every possible advantage, their children could fail to achieve a secure, middle-class life.” I see this phenomenon play out. A lot of parents are hiring tutors and focusing all their energy on getting their kids into the best college, but I’m trying to play a different game. I’m focused on building independence, resilience, and a love of learning. It’s less stressful this way.
I love when people peel back the curtains of their world, like in this post where author Nat Eliason shares the finances behind his new book Crypto Confidential — how much he got as an advance, how many copies he’s sold, how that compares to his goal and to other books, how many copies he has to sell to start earning royalties, etc.
I finally got around to publishing the Farcaster Writing Hackathon Zine, a compilation of select essays and excerpts from the hackathon I organized in June.
Some of the pics
What I’ve been up to, in pictures.
Top: Base meetup in NYC
Middle: Autumn sky in Cold Spring, NY, PSU Football, Early Fall Harvest
Bottom: Election season in the US, Tedeschi Trucks Band, a visit from a fox
A Note to My Readers
I started this substack in December 2022 as an experiment to see if developing a writing habit would help clarify my thinking and/or provide other benefits. You can read about my original intentions in my first post or my more recent reflections after sticking with it for a year.
I write about twice a month and share musings, meditations, and links to things I’m finding interesting as I build out a farcaster-native media company, a modern technology consulting company, raise my kids, and have fun creating and learning in the worlds of crypto, tech, finance, science and wellness.
Thank you for supporting my writing and journey. If you’d like to get in touch you can reply to me here or find me on X and farcaster.
Until next time, keep putting good into the world. —adrienne🌏❤️
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