Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Robert M. Pirsig

I’m starting a company in the near future and I haven’t done much pitching it. Hopefully there is not much of this kind of thing required, at least on my part. I’m not a salesman: I’m way too honest and ridiculous, an open book, which in some cases may be a positive quality, in others… not at all positive.

And my “jokes”, my favorite being the kind where it’s not clear if it is a joke or not, I think I can be funny, but sometimes… it’s not that I don’t care about the recipient’s take on it… I have a perhaps-not-good and definitely a not-always-good habit of working through my thoughts in long meandering messages which is… uncommon to put it mildly, and to put it accurately- sometimes I sound like a lunatic.

My messages are like these blog posts – unstructured, full of tangents (like this one) that may become the bulk of the writing, and, if there materializes a “point” at all, it’s not the one I had in mind when I started tapping keys, and indeed sometimes what it was I started with.

Sometimes it’s a “talking to the duck” situation and I work through my thoughts and something becomes clearer to me, maybe a conclusion of some sort is reached – at least this is what I tell myself to justify the behavior.

A good tone and style for a journal. Not for a sales-type-pitch or any time you want someone to take you seriously.

In short, I’m not a salesman. This particular business and industry at least in part chosen because the sales aspect is a very small fraction of what’s required in other industries / for other types of businesses.

So… what was I saying? Right – I’m pitching this thing and I learned from a very intelligent founder that when you are starting a business the first order of business is to answer the question: “Who has tried this? Why did they fail?” or, if no examples exist: “Why has someone not done this?”

If you can answer that question and are dissuaded, the next question you ask is: “Why are YOU uniquely qualified to solve this problem?”

When I (try to) answer this second question, there are a couple main points, but if I continue I find myself essentially giving a life story. A long one. It’s amazing to me how almost everything significant in my life seems to apply in some way. Sometimes very unlikely and unusual things. I get something like the feeling you might get if you are standing inches away from a mosaic and then start to back up and a picture emerges from all the individual pieces.

But the pieces are things in my life! Things that happened to me and sometimes carry emotion, I won’t say “emotional baggage” because the emotions are both positive and negative, depending on the mosaic block. A better analogy still is a mosaic that is composed of tiny square pictures, each piece, its own story.

One of those blocks (and here is where I attempt to come full circle) is that about 10 years ago now, I took a year off of work to be the primary caretaker for my children while my ex wife was doing her medical residency. Full disclosure: It was later brought to my attention by both my ex and my lawyer, that this is viewed as less admirable when I include the fact that I did bring my kids to daycare, and I did quite a bit of snowboarding during that time – but before rendering judgement: the spent far less time in daycare than other children, sometimes just an hour or two, while I did some traditionally feminine activity like grocery shopping or cooking or cleaning.

I was very much the primary caretaker for both the children and the home (not a negligent and juvenile snowboarder-father) and it was… unsettling in many ways, the role of house-husband.

I learned very well that whatever someone tells you, chances are overwhelmingly in favor that they do not respect a stay-at-home dad, even though they may truly believe that they do, and the non-respect is also overwhelming.

One anecdote: I was paying every bill and had paid every bill for… ever. There were student loans but if there weren’t then “put my wife through med school” would be accurate. I was able to not work then because I had received a decent payout from a successful startup I was part of, where I had worked… a lot and very hard. All the same, my old-bitch neighbor, upon hearing that I was a stay-at-home dad remarked, “Oh! So you are a kept man!”

Another: it took me almost three months to find a job. I thought people would say “That’s awesome! You earned enough money to be able to take that time to raise your children! Wow!” Nope. I eventually got a contract role, learned nothing except a couple things about bureaucracy and red tape, and it was over in maybe 4 months. I was the same person with the same skills walking out as walking in. In that next week I got 5 job offers. Stay-at-home dad – 3 months, 1 job offer. Employed dad – 1 week, 5 job offers. But just about every person these days will tell you – and honestly believe themselves: “I have the same respect for a stay-at-home dad as a working professional dad. What do you take me for?!? A fool who is affected by 1950s stereotypes! I am very much above and not susceptible to that bias, thank you very much!”

One more: I don’t think the judge in the divorce proceedings rendered the same judgment as he would have if I was a hardworking female who had taken care of the bills and children who was then divorced by her freshly minted M.D. husband.

One final one: My lawyer once told me, “It’s illegal in this state to video tape someone without their consent. We are not going to mention that – you could be charge with a crime.” At which point I thought for a couple seconds and said, “Wait hold on… you’re telling me that if she had a video of me…” at which point she cut me off and said “Oh – you’d be in jail. Yeah. Right now.”

It wasn’t my intention to write about father’s rights and sexism… I will just add: my ex and I get along very well and my wife, and her and her boyfriend, we’re happily raising five kids in total, all healthy and happy, so despite my complaints, a happy ending – one must trust the universe.

Ok now I will come full circle and say what I wanted to say when I started:

One of the unsettling things about that time when I was not working, I experienced this “frightening vaccuum.”

When you have a job, you get up, you get ready for work, you do your work, and then you’re tired, and if you happen to be not fatigued enough to ask yourself at the end of the day, “So what was the point? What did I accomplish?” Then the answer is obvious: you worked. Even if you scrolled through social media all day, you accomplished the receiving of that portion of your paycheck.

When you’re not working then you have to ask yourself – day after day: “Ok… so… what am I doing here? What would constitute an accomplishment today?” And hopefully you find some answer and then fulfill the goal you invented for yourself. Or… at the end of the day you might get a vacuum-type feeling.

And far more frightening: you might have the time to ask yourself: “ok… so what is ‘the big goal’?”

That question is sometimes difficult to answer and you may eventually find yourself reading Camus and wading into dark existential waters.

But one must trust the universe.

This is one of the mosaic pieces. If you’re planning on starting your own business, especially one unrelated to physical labor or a physical product, then you should have the ability to set a goal for yourself. If you only work when you have to… if you require a manager or slave driver to drive you… then you may be in for a shock and disaster if you start driving yourself.

A lot of people have told me “What would I do if I won the lottery? Well I’d relax of course! I’d drink margaritas and lie on the beach!”

And when I ask, “Yeah? For how long? Do you think you’d be happy doing that forever?”

The answer is usually, “OF COURSE!”

I have a paradoxical mix of pity and envy for these types. They are so into the carrot-and-stick game that they don’t ask the bigger questions. And that’s a bit sad and pitiable.

At the same time… they are so into the game that they don’t ask the bigger questions. And so they are not troubled by them! Which is enviable as one envies a Taoist monk.

Pity wins out. I have a suspicion that sometimes these types… that by the time they ask the bigger questions (and in every life, I imagine they come at some point) – when this time comes, they may find an answer, but it might be too late for them to do or accomplish the answer they have found. And… that is a situation I do not find enviable in the slightest.