Playing With Networking (Weekly Recap 10/4/2025)

Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...

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Good Things Come To Those Who Wait (But Aren't Exclusively Waiting)

There's a massive difference between actually waiting around and being so focused that others might mistake you for waiting around. The confusion over defining what "good things" you actually want is the greatest trick of them all. You can doom scroll through a million good things on social media, but noticing them and picking one to pursue are entirely different acts. There's a word for information without action, and it's entertainment.

Years spent listening to podcasts and thinking "someday somebody will ask me" wasn't patience - it was avoidance disguised as preparation. Real progress only started when the question shifted from "when will this happen?" to "what can I just do right now?" Changing jobs to escape compliance restrictions that forbade non-pre-approved media. Befriending people who would teach and give a shot. Actually taking baby steps toward the thing instead of just consuming content about the thing.

Good things come to those who are working their asses off without concern for those who think they're just waiting. Patience is still a virtue because patience implies practice and persistence are at play. There's an internal effort - that's the difference.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on the difference between idle waiting and focused persistence

"Good things come to those who wait, but they only come to those who are also pro-actively working on stuff in the direction of the good things they want to show up."

On The Shoulders Of Giants (A Tony Hawk 900 Story)

Tony Hawk was commentating a vert competition in 2024 when 9-year-old Ema Kawakami stepped up for a run. Hawk invented the 900 in 1999 - an iconic moment that's been copied, studied, and practiced for 25 years. Still really hard, but people have pulled it off. What had never been done? Back-to-back 900s. That was video game stuff.

Ema landed three consecutive 900s with Hawk watching. Twenty-five years after the trick was invented. Born and raised in Japan, 5,394 miles from where Hawk first landed it in California. Digital inspiration is the water we all swim in now - some people just pay closer attention than others.

Sometimes torches get passed hand to hand. Other times, somebody learns about torching, makes their own, and suddenly there's a new torch lit on the horizon. This wasn't the torch being passed - this was a whole new torch showing up lit, building on a legacy in a way nobody expected.

Quote from the Personal Archive - as Hawk witnessed the impossible become routine

"The torch isn't passed, it's either taken or a whole new torch just shows up lit."

Breadcrumbs Into The Valley (A NEPA Horror Fest Trail)

Growing up geographically walled off by valley mountains creates a particular mindset. You need someone to show you the breadcrumb trail out before you realize leaving is even possible. Murphy's Law playing Homebase (a converted warehouse with concrete floors) in the late '90s. Their singer Jimmy dumping beer on an underage kid's head, then hanging around after the show, inviting that kid to visit his tattoo shop in New York City, offering a few bucks off.

Little moments when the outside world was right there, inviting you to come along, made it feel like you really could just go places and do things. Once you spot the breadcrumbs and follow them out, the question becomes: do you come back? And if you do, what's your purpose?

Sponsoring Bobby K's NEPA Horror Fest checked all the breadcrumb boxes. Movies from in and out of the area on a giant drive-in screen, open to all ages. Local filmmakers and guests from Dubai. Cross-generational nostalgia isn't just sentimentality - it helps culture survive in places industries easily forget. Watching something together on a giant screen at the end of a parking lot does something phones can't replicate.

Someone needs to keep leaving breadcrumbs into and out of the valley, or nobody's going to find their way.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on the responsibility of those who found the trail

"Be someone's breadcrumb."

Grow Your Network: Danielle Strachman Is A Professional Fairy Godmother Who Invests In Renegades

Danielle Strachman walked into a hospital neurology department without an appointment and turned it into her first career. Co-founder of 1517 Fund, she's built her entire career on recognizing irrational passion in others - from teen founders building the future to kids making hyper-realistic stuffed animals. Her mechanic father and contractor mother gave her the osmosis-learned belief that "you just make your own money," which translated into uncommon levels of high agency.

High agency isn't about having all the answers or following prescribed pathways. It's about being comfortable creating your own opportunities when none exist. The pattern isn't recklessness - it's the willingness to dress appropriately, show up with genuine curiosity, and let others decide if you belong there rather than pre-rejecting yourself.

Irrational passion is the thing you're almost embarrassed to talk about because other people might not understand. At 1517's camps, they ask kids to share what they're irrationally passionate about, and the real magic happens when they bring the actual thing to show. This kind of passion can't be faked, manufactured, or optimized for. It's either there or it isn't.

And sometimes you need permission to stop. Danielle got accepted to graduate school for neuroscience but realized being good at something and genuinely passionate about it are completely different experiences. She had the courage to jump off a train she'd already boarded.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Danielle on creating opportunities

"I was NOT waiting for an internship... I decided I would walk across the street to the neurology department and just be like, what can I find out? I just brought myself into the waiting room."

Grow Your Network: Bobby Keller Is A Community Builder Who Brings The Outside World In

Bobby Keller has been running the NEPA Horror Film Festival for 11 years, bringing filmmakers from Dubai to Scranton, creating spaces where independent artists and horror fans can experience something most people in the area would never see otherwise. After a year that was financially challenging but experientially successful, he learned to shift his definition of success from financial metrics to the actual experience people have at his events.

Sometimes money is the wrong measuring stick. When the value of something is bigger than financial, reconnecting with that purpose becomes everything. Bobby's festival does something transformative - it breaks down invisible walls that make people think creative work only happens "somewhere else." When you see that someone made something incredible without Hollywood's backing, you start to believe you could do it too.

After years of growing the festival - adding celebrities, extending to full weekends, increasing complexity - Bobby returned to the core mission: showing independent films and creating a gathering place. This wasn't about giving up or scaling back in defeat. It was about remembering why he started in the first place and recognizing that bigger isn't always better.

Most people from the valley won't travel to major festivals even if they want to. Money is tight. Life is busy. But just because they can't get to a major festival doesn't mean we can't bring a festival to their local drive-in. All it takes is somebody willing to commit, raise the money, risk their own money, and learn painful lessons while showing up year after year.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Bobby on redefining success

"I'm just happy to be doing it again and as long as people are having fun and coming out, that's the important thing."

CHECK OUT THE FESTIVAL ON OCTOBER 11!

Sunday Music: Gang Of Four (And The Importance Of Influence)

Kurt Cobain explained early Nirvana as "A Gang of Four and Scratch Acid ripoff." Flea heard "Not Great Men" and immediately wanted to start a band. Michael Stipe called Gang of Four one of R.E.M.'s chief influences. These aren't casual name-drops - these are artists crediting fundamental influence. Your favorite artist's favorite artist is an indication of pure, uncut, raw musicality.

In the late '70s post-punk wave, four friends from Leeds pulled from Dr. Feelgood's angular guitars, dub reggae's selector-style composition, and The Meters' body-movement funk. They piled, mixed, and smashed their influences up. The real trick to making great art: you can hear all those influences and yet the combination sounds nothing like any of them. It just sounds like Gang of Four.

They stayed authentic. They stayed themselves. They stayed committed to not repeating the past and not becoming cartoons of themselves. They didn't chase trends - they became one. Gang of Four smashed the walls, creating the foundation that bands like Chili Peppers, Nirvana, and R.E.M. built their sounds on. They showed how you can be dancey, rock, and play with genre to push and defy boundaries for people discovering you later to take even farther.

All it takes is figuring out how to knock down a few walls while you stay standing.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on the nature of true influence

"Great art has a way of standing out, always at some fundamental level. What provides the floor for the new level - sometimes requires construction, and other times it requires deconstruction."

Where Else I Showed Up This Week

Over on Epsilon Theory, I published an analysis of Kyla Scanlon's recent piece about meme coins, mystery boxes, and economic exclusion. Using the Perscient database, we found something fascinating: "young Americans shut out" narratives consistently predict "degenerate economy" stories by several months. Like gears on a clock.

Kyla spotted the pattern intuitively - when people feel priced out of traditional wealth-building, they turn to speculative alternatives. Our data confirms it works with reliable timing. The meme economy isn't random youth behavior; it's a measurable response to measurable exclusion. Both narratives are currently depressed but climbing off the bottom, which could signal the beginning of the next cycle.

Read the full analysis here: The Meme Economy Timing Signal: How Kyla Scanlon May Have Spotted the Next Cycle

Personal Archive Prompts

What door have you been waiting for permission to walk through when you could simply show up and make your case?

WHAT WERE YOU IRRATIONALLY PASSIONATE ABOUT AT AGE 12, and what would it mean to reconnect with that kind of unself-conscious enthusiasm today?

What train are you riding because you've already invested so much in buying the ticket, and what would it mean to get off at the next stop?

What project or initiative are you currently measuring only by traditional metrics when you should be evaluating its real-world impact on people's experiences?

WHO BROUGHT THE "OUTSIDE WORLD" INTO YOUR LIFE when you were younger, and how can you do that for someone in your community now?

What project or mission have you complicated over time that needs to return to its roots to be truly sustainable and impactful?

What walls do you need to knock down while staying standing?

As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)

ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules