🔑 Keys

I lost mine

This past Sunday we finally had our first snowfall of the winter. My wife and I are were excited because this would be the first time our 1-year-old son, Cameron, was able to actually play around in the snow.

We have a field right behind our house with a little tiny bunny hill. Perfect for his first time sledding.

Sunday afternoon, my son and I put our snow gear on and head out to the field.

For some reason, I decided to bring my keys, even though my wife was at home, and I can see our house directly from the field.

Habits I guess.

So we head out to the field and had an absolute blast sledding! Cam had this excited look on his face the entire time as he was zooming across the field in his new red sled.

Core father-son memories.

*Checks pockets* Uh oh.

As we get back to the house, I take off my snow gear and relax on the couch for a bit.

A couple of hours go by, and I go to find my keys to hang them on the rack by the door.

They’re nowhere to be found. Awesome.

By now, there’s maybe another inch of snow outside, so I gear back up and head out to find my keys while there’s still some daylight.

Walk of shame

As I put my snow stuff back on, with my tail between my legs, wondering why the hell I even brought them with me in the first place, I was on a mission to find them.

I knew they were in this field somewhere, I just hadn’t found them yet.

But I would. I was manifesting that shit.

I searched the field that night until my flashlight batteries died.

No luck.

Round 2

That morning, I searched the field again. Back and forth, top to bottom. R1, R2, L1, R2, left, down, right, up, left, down, right, up.

Still nothing. You’ve got to be kidding me.

I knew I’d find them, but a sliver of doubt was starting to creep in. “Did someone scoop them up?” I thought to myself.

Not all who wander are lost

That night, I geared up for round 3. As I retraced the sled tracks and footprints from the day before — suddenly an overwhelming sense of calmness hit me, in some spiritual way.

And no, it’s not what you’re thinking — I stopped smoking weed a long time ago 😅.

It struck me that this is what my startup journey has been like.

In the same way that I knew for a fact I would eventually find my keys — I know in the deepest depths of my core that I will one day build something that changes the world for the better.

I just haven’t figured that part out yet.

Community is key

Since the start of the year, “community” has been the focus word for me with pairprogram.com.

I have been consuming a lot of Greg Isenberg’s content, just finished Seth Godin’s Tribes, and was on my second (back-to-back) listen of The Minimalist Entrepreneur.

I even joined a couple small Twitter and Telegram communities where we simply share a screenshot of our GitHub calendar, posting our daily green square 🟩, as part of our journey to commit code every day together for 2024.

This epiphany I had in the field was poetic on many levels. Maybe my wife slipped something into those holiday cookies lol.

This field behind our house even belongs to the town “community” center. Ha.

As I paced the field, I was listening to The Minimalist Entrepreneur by Sahil Lavingia. Highly recommend btw.

Sahil talks a lot about building a community. And there I was — at the community center.

It occurred to me that no one was just going to randomly begin using pairprogram.com for no good reason. I mean, a few people had but nothing meaningful.

I needed to become part of a community.

I needed to build genuine relationships with like-minded people, those who are cultivating — or trying to cultivate — strong coding habits for one reason or another.

It was becoming more clear.

This is the way

Tuesday morning I woke up. There were good vibes in the air. I knew I was going to find those damn keys.

I made some coffee, hopped onto Telegram and Twitter and politely shared the progress I’d made on my project that day with the group.

To my surprise, a handful of people signed up, I received a ton of great feedback, and even a few feature requests. Some even began posting their progress on my platform too!

It’s clear to me now that this is the way. It takes work, but I’m not sure if work is even the right word. I enjoy these things.

There is no “build it and they will come”. Well, maybe there is, but I doubt it.

To build something great, you need a tribe of supporters who cheer you on.

I don’t exactly have that yet, but I have more of that than I did before I started contributing to these communities.

To go far, go together.

I found them

A few hours later, I took my son sledding again. Time to find those keys.

Sure enough. Sitting about 30 ft. away from the entry path to the field, in a small patch of grass where the snow had melted, there they were.

“Why are you so excited, dad?”