It’s 2am. I’m playing with pool up in Duneland with some local friends and semi-pros who I feel threatened by, both in talent and in the feared proximity to their armaments. I’m here with some good guys who let me play trivia with them on occasion, but in the same breath they still don’t know me from Adam.
The ‘access to armaments’ could be a stretch.
But so goes the things in the half-drunk mind of a boy who has spent most-all his life in a Veil of Paradise [spelling intended].
My boy is with me.
One of the Project 03 confidants. He’s helping Bake & I on project management and talent recruitment. After a pizza, pitchers of beers and some pending Boscoe Sticks, one can forget these nights are vital to both business bonding as well as friendship bondings. They’re the moments that accountants would bitch about how to present as a tax ride off & HR would warn has some insurance implications because of the alcohol but at some point one can’t let safe & secure-based legislature domineer one’s choices. Living in such a bubble can constrict one to the point of asphyxiation.
& I can’t be steered by such praxis anymore.
The guilt of the adventure.
I feel like I’m cheating every time I walk up to the lakeshore, soaking in the roar of the waves crashing and enjoying zen like I hadn’t felt since the winters in Fort Myers.
The move to Duneland – even after one of my two childhood best friends who lived here moved to ‘Carolina – has been therapeutic. I spent a great deal of my weekends along the lake since the days at Denom U, either working at the boats or hanging in Duneland. It offers a different pace of life – more Jimmy Buffett, less meat market.
Less pressure from community and family history.
Before there was Nat Finn there was Finn, aka the OldOld Man. Before him was Finn, the one who helped take VHS to the first boys basketball state tournament – the legacy I neglected. And before him, Boss Finn. Throw in some lineage to taverns including the iconic Franklin House, an athletically legendary aunt & a great-great grandfather named Boss Dean, and the community pressure can be a bit overwhelming to take in when one is trying to hide away to finish a startup product.
The zen makes up for it.
Especially when the midpoint of daily walks is this:
Now, to finish what we started.
We’ve come too far to stop now. We can’t run it like a trendy lean startup. After talks with Schwedland, it was confirmed. We’ve experienced predecessors to Project 03. There are generation one variations to it running live and spamming my inbox with Free Trials.
It’s time to earn the name Finn.
Like the hotly anticipated 50th Anniversary Doctor Who episode, there’s one before me who is a part of me but didn’t make life choices in the name of Finn. His selfishness stripped him of the honor of being a Finn. Think I’m joking? Ask if his funeral was open or closed casket. Ask what the reason was. Then ask where his ashes were laid – nowhere near a Finn but on Sunday mornings.
The repercussions of his choices left a s***hole that I’m close to cleaning up. And when I do, I don’t hope for greatness.
I just hope for a quiet place a little closer to the water to write books of blues…
…and an unfettered space to allow the next generations of Finn to shape & mold the name however they see fit.
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