a really good uber pool + q2

I DON’T HAVE WIFI, OOO —

if you’re reading this, i am unplugged in yosemite right now. partly by choice, partly by necessity. so before we get into things, thank you to the loyal friend that logged into my substack account and sent out this newsletter this morning. i allow you one giphy hyperlinked in any spot of your choosing in the following post.

this week, let’s talk about self care. a fellow passenger in an uber pool was making small talk with me once, and i told him about how i had been out and about all weekend and was feeling recharged by the people around me, after a particularly hard few weeks. the fellow passenger twisted around in awe, and said “i did the exact opposite.” he launched into how he too was having a hard couple of weeks, so for the weekend he completely unplugged and stayed in his room and finally felt recharged by the lack of people around him. it was a classic extrovert meets introvert situation, but i think both of us left the ride happy we knew the other side.

it seems obvious now, that moment and many more have helped me realize that self care* looks different for everyone. for me, it can alternate between a drinking glass of wine and cooking myself a carby, gluttonous meal, or spending the day couch and shoulder hopping between people i love. for others, a self care not moving and eating a fruit salad. or unplugging completely.

more later, including a perspective on this i can’t stop thinking about, but first my words + reads.

my words: with the help of many, i wrote the quarterly analysis of venture capital that flowed into startups led by female founders. spoiler alert..it was an underwhelming amount. in the wake of funds focused on investing in unrepresented founders, one founder told me that while all money is good, we should be cautious. “it’s creating the potential scenario where we don’t need to invest in women, non-binary people and men of color from main funds because we’re doing this from our diversity funds,” Natalia Oberti Noguera, founder of Pipeline Angels told me.

for example, Female Founders Fund launched with a $27 million fund in 2018. that same year, in two days, three vc firms announced $4 billion for six new funds. none of those funds explicitly focused on diversity.

learning lesson: this was a really hard piece to put together, not just because it dealt with some nuanced data, but because it was built around nuanced narrative. based on conversations over the past few months, so many female founders are tired of being asked about what it’s like to be a female founders, so while writing about challenges and success stories is important, it’s important to hold these stories to strong data. it’s also important to interview not just the underrepresented founders, but the venture capitalists who could help change that.

etc: this piece, with the help of the awesome human that is my editor, went from 10 pages to about 3 after edits. so, most definitely, those blurbs that were cut will be turned into stories to come.

unorganized tab time:

miscarriage leave, a benefit no one wants to use, on the rise

i got tea with the ceo of Firefly

“the joke that all of tech is just bundling, and unbundling, continues to hold.”

journalism lesson for those who work with us to read (please)

liberals + conservatives coming together over this Big Thing

the other side of outdoor advertising

my weekend newsletter for crunchbase news

is faceapp actually dangerous?

anyways,

back to self care. my friend (yes, this one) once told me not to associate the positive things we do for ourselves with negative triggers. in other words, don’t wait for a shitty week at work to put on a face mask and ignore everyone for the weekend. and definitely don’t wait for Them to piss you off to whip up a sauce from scratch for your favorite pasta.

do things for yourself with abandon.

i want to agree with this point fully, and i almost do. my only worry is if we do these self care techniques often they’ll lose their calming kick. there’s comfort in reserving some good things in your life as pick me ups. that said, i think i need to work on making some good things a regular feature.

before getting out of the car, the fellow uber pool passenger told me that his weekend alone was part of something bigger. since moving to san francisco, he realized how being an introvert doesn’t mesh well with being an engineer in the thick of fast growing startup culture. he was left tired almost every day just by the interactions and happy hours. after a while, he decided to stop reserving his alone time for weekends. he quit his job at said fast growing startup, took a small step down in salary, and found a place that let him and his mind be a little quieter. and sometimes, as a one off when things got too hectic, he’d take a weekend off if he needed it.

thank you to all 148 of you that let me bother you on mondays,

N

*also, for balance since that’s what i do i’m not someone who can talk about not posting about self care on social media. i do it, a lot. and i’m really hyperaware of it but not to the point of changing anything. someone send me an essay critiquing that or something so i can tweet about it later.

a trip to trader joes, flowers, and pasta = ideal self love sunday evening