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- Playing With Networking Weekly Recap (12/13/2025)
Playing With Networking Weekly Recap (12/13/2025)
Turning 44, plus: Hope, Grounding, and the Goals That Outlast You
Matt Zeigler
December 13, 2025
Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...
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I turned 44 this week, and like I have for almost 30 years, I played "Happy Birthday to Me" on repeat - somewhere between 1 and 22 times depending on how many loops I lost count on. The Vandals have always felt like they could be from my town, with their stupid humor and their genius at inverting symbols rather than just using them. What struck me most this year wasn't nostalgia, but how much the whole aesthetic still fits - not in fashion, but in the refusal to take yourself too seriously while taking meaning-making seriously. You have to keep making new memories while pulling out old ones. Fun comes from experiences, old and new.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on staying present with what matters
"Life is too short not to have fun. Fun comes out of experiences. Old and new. And fun comes out of more than just memories. You have to keep making new ones."
This week I kept returning to Emily Dickinson and a line I've written about before - "Hope is the thing with feathers." It can fly, but that doesn't mean it's flying. Hope feels like untapped potential you're aware you can tap, sitting there fully feathered, cold, idle, knowing. The thing that landed hardest for me this year was that last line of the poem: Hope will not ask you for anything. It's just going to wait for you to notice. Not everybody knows what it's like to be in the presence of hope, so I wanted to make sure you had it this week.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what's present whether you're using it or not
"Hope. Will. Not. Ask. You. For. Anything."
When last-second cancellations and urgent requests threaten to unravel everything, I've learned to pause and remind myself: If you know your feet are on the ground, and where to find them, you're good to flow. It's a requirement - taking the breath, remembering you're still attached and not floating away, then getting into that headspace where you know exactly what you're doing. It takes practice and reminders, but feet down, in the flow, feels pretty good once you're doing it.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on the practice of staying rooted
"If you know your feet are on the ground, and where to find them, you're good to flow."
I had a clip about serendipity that made me think of Eric Pachman, whose entire life is full of crazy twists and turns - from how he ended up in Ohio to the company he started around prescription drug pricing after losing his mom to cancer. He's a man of making meaning out of actions, even when those actions aren't in his control. When I showed him Eric Markowitz and Elie Jacobs talking about deliberately adding elements of serendipity into their lives, something shifted. Eric doesn't believe in serendipity as a label, but he believes he's living it in real time, all the time - and he's humbled by the idea that everybody is, but not everybody has the optionality to turn accidents into opportunities instead of obstacles. He's now building data tools to make those differences visible, looking at SNAP programs and poverty data - the stuff nobody wants to look at but everyone needs to understand.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on the difference between accident and opportunity
"He doesn't believe in serendipity - as a label, anyway. Eric believes he's living serendipity in real time, all the time."
Greg Larkin has spent decades in the trenches of major institutions - hedge funds, Bloomberg, PWC, Google, Uber - understanding exactly how innovation survives or dies inside corporate walls. He embodies something I value deeply: the courage to name what's actually happening and then do something about it. From him, I pulled three lessons that land differently at 44. First, the "f*** you pay me" test - knowing your trade before you walk into the room, stripped of all slides and pleasantries. Second, the brutal distinction between pressure (healthy resistance that builds strength) and stress (the weight of wondering what the hell's the point). Third, that innovation dies not because ideas are bad, but because we don't know how to handle obstruction - and by failing to do that work early, institutions build massive inventories of solutions that never actually integrate.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what separates pressure from stress
"Pressure is healthy. Pressure makes good economies. Pressure is resilience. Stress is like the pain of wondering what the hell's the point."
Eric Pachman represents something I've come to admire deeply: the courage to reconstruct your entire professional identity in service of what you actually believe. Chemical engineer turned nonprofit founder turned data analyst turned investigative journalist - each time bringing the same fire to problems that matter. He's powered by what he calls the hot ball of fire - the refusal to look away from injustice once you've seen it, the anger that becomes fuel for work that's about integrity, not ego. But the insight that's reshaping how I think about my own 44 is this: he sets goals he'll die before achieving. Not because he's pessimistic, but because it's liberating. You stop needing to see the finish line. You stop needing to be remembered. You're just pushing the ball because that's what a conscious person does - and then other people will keep pushing it after you're gone.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on work powered by refusal to look away
"I'm holding this, like, hot ball of fire. I get so angry when I'm doing this analytics because I don't really see any difference between me and someone that's in the circumstances in life where they need to be on SNAP."
Where Else I Showed Up This Week
I was back on Excess Returns with Matt Reustle - one of my longest-running Cultish Creative collaborators - talking about what he's learned from over 200 episodes of Business Breakdowns. It's the kind of education that only happens when a person has been paying attention to the same patterns for long enough to see through the noise. Matt's been doing this analysis/fact-finding in public longer than most, and it shows in how he thinks about what actually matters in business stories.
Personal Archive Prompts
What old songs or traditions keep you tethered to who you've been, even as you're becoming who you're going to be?
WHERE ARE YOUR FEET RIGHT NOW - and are they on the ground, or are you floating somewhere you didn't choose to be?
If you traced back far enough, what accident are you the product of - and have you really let yourself feel how arbitrary your existence is?
What's the injustice you've stopped looking away from - and are you building something that addresses it, or just talking about it?
WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE between the pressures you're carrying (the ones that build you) and the stresses (the ones that hollow you out)?
If you set a goal you knew you'd die before achieving, what would change about how you work and what you prioritize?
What would it mean to plant a tree you'll never enjoy the shade of - and why does that matter more than you think it does?
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