I read this quote online the other night during a Bun shift and I started dreaming, er, thinking. I have seen these words many years ago but it was good reading them again now. “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once they grow up.” – Pablo Picasso

I know I need to grow up. Well, a bit. I have been needing to do this for a long long time. The war was indeed a wake up all. Actually, more like a freezing cold shower. Nothing like a shock to the system and a loss of innocence for the “growing up” vibe to kick in. And then, I sit and play for a bit with the Bunster this morning and go “Nah. Maybe some other time.”

Here is something I put in a blog post from a while ago. Some dialogue from a film where a man and a woman are talking. He is showing her a picture of his two kids from a photo in his wallet. And she says to him, “Are your kids special?” He answers her with passion, “They are very very special.” She looks at him and goes, “Everyone’s kids are special. So how come with all these special kids in the world we have so many ordinary adults.” Very good question.

The thing about the Bunster is that if is not climbing a giant strawberry he is playing with a ball. A simple round, inexpensive, non-digital object, and the Bun man is excited. He is pure innocent passion. He gets so excited when you whip out a ball. When you are all grown up this kind of excitement is rare. The Bun man inspires me. I know he is just a toddler but I want to be more like him. He laughs with his entire being. He is fascinated by everything and he is constantly amazed. The sun fascinates him. I hope he stays like this, even into his 50s.

Now this is a bit of a creepy story. I was writing a post here on my personal blog which is hosted by WordPress, and I have had this short story in my drafts folder for over four weeks, just percolating. The day after I started this draft I got an auto-mailer message from WordPress to say that the image in the blog had been removed because I violated their community service rules. This is the same meme that got me deleted off of FB. The thing is, this was not on my blog, it was in my drafts. It had not been published. This is pretty much like eavesdropping.

I have many notes/ideas in my drafts that are private and have not been published, and some may never see the light of day. But these are my private ideas. I was still thinking about whether to post that trouble making meme, but WordPress beat me to it. I get the hint. Their AI bot did not like it. Software has no sense of humour, clearly. But this listening in on my drafts is not nice. I wrote to WordPress support saying that they were not cool for doing this but got no response. They normally do respond when you ask for support/help but in this case I got zilch back. The world is on edge. That is my take on this. A bit of stretch yes, but I reckon I am on the money.

They say no good deed goes unpunished. On IG I used to try post a joke a day, for about past 6 years. I reckon I made a few people laugh. Sometimes the jokes would not work, but that is humour for you. You can’t get it right all of the time. Well, this meme below got me deleted. No 3 strikes and you’re out. Just like that, gone. I can’t say I have missed FB much, and it has freed up some time. Sorry to those few guys out there that miss the daily jokes. I will try and post a few jokes on my blog here every once in a while.

Here is the trouble making meme. I put that red/yellow thing over the part that caused the AI bot to go into full Robocop mode. Take a guess as to what was covered up here? Whatever it was, it was deemed inappropriate. This clearly was a joke, but again, software is not known as a replacement for comedy.

A friend was telling me about being blocked by Google. Being blocked by Facebook is one thing, but if Google blocked me now that would not be good. We all have to be a bit careful I guess. These are times of an an abundance of egg shells.

Here are a couple of memes I would have posted on IG. I have a cool group of funny mates, and we all send each other jokes. Laughter is the best medicine after all, as it said on my IG profile.

And here is one last one today. I hope this one doesn’t get me deleted off WordPress. It could be construed as inappropriate. I am sure this one would offend the US Supreme Court. The world is definitely on edge.

I have been very fortunate and privileged to be a part of a cool tech journey with an inspired man and his team for the last 6 years. I have learned a lot of hard personal lessons during this time and gained a lot of wisdom. Something reminded me today of an interesting scenario from about 4 years back. I was trying to connect us with the founder of a large software company that would benefit and like what we had to offer. I happen to know the owner/founder of this firm so after some time thinking about it I called him and asked him to introduce me to the right person at his company. He did. But not before he said to me, “I would like to invest.”

This put in an uncomfortable situation because I was not calling about investments, and also, it was not my place to make such a call. No one was looking for investment and this was not something I was well equipped to handle. But I did make a text connection between the two founders and I did not waste anyone’s time. I did stress that no one was looking for money etc. I was only calling to try and find the right person in his company to show the product to.

What struck me about my call is that I had heard this a few times before. People would say to me, “You need investment.” or, “You will never get anywhere without big funding.” or, “You are wasting time. You need to go big.” And so on. You get the idea. I never ever said anything about needing money or wanting investment, etc.

“The time you enjoy wasting, is not wasted time.” – John Lennon

Perhaps I just sounded excited about something and they wanted to get involved. Which is fair enough. But so many times I was told how dumb we all were, and how we were never going to get anywhere. Perhaps they were right.

What I do know is this. If the purpose in life is to get as much money as fast as you can, then sure, throw lots of funding at something, hype it to the maximum, and try exit with a bunch of cash. But then what? Is the aim then to do it all over again. And again. And Again. If you love what you are doing and you are driven by a sense of purpose then who thinks of exiting. My parents never heard of the term “exit strategy”. Where did these curious words come from? And why are these two words so popular. I really don’t get it.

I remember telling my tech friend a story about another guy who said to me quite forcefully that we don’t know what we are doing. I think at the time the venture had around 600 customers. We are talking mainly Fortune 1000 type of companies. Today there over 1000 customers. My friend said to me, “We got this far without knowing what we were doing. Imagine if we did know what we were doing.” We both giggled a bit.

This thing about exiting something you love is very curious. Do you exit a marriage because you then aim to get married again. And again. And again. If you love something or someone, then why do you exit?

You can’t hurry love and you can’t rush building a business. Creating a company with a magical culture and a healthy set of a values, while trying to make a difference in the world, is not the same as making a buck.