Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

Broadly speaking, I would say my life's work is the intersection of literature and what I call my spiritual mission. When I started writing, I was of the mindset that all of one's life should be dedicated to the task of writing, to the exclusion of happiness, if need be, and my happiness was excluded in practice. Career disappointments and a recognition of my folly put in mind the importance of the context surrounding one's vocation. It is a creative effort to curate the life that is separate from the work of letters. Enduring the psychological crisis that followed these all too predictable disappointments, I realized that I had an abiding belief in the good of engaging with the process of reading, writing, and publishing literature. Over time, I came to see how isolated I was, due partly to my person, but partly, also, to the wider concerns of the world. I wanted to solve the problem of isolation, to the extent that it was in my power to do so, for others, feeling that this, in turn, would make meaning of my personal crisis.

I went about doing so in my own ways, often ineffectually, but still feeling I was on to something, until the pandemic. Although I found that the surgical extraction of the social life I had managed to cultivate, save for my intimates, whom I still saw, meant that I could not write as I had before, I could continue to work on fostering the environment I felt literature and the writers of literature required in order to thrive. To make a long story short, I began investing in a platform that is meant to augment the process of writing and reading. They are simple tools, but they will be part of a coffeeshop environment, which is already under construction, where I hope commerce and literature can be wed to the benefit of the shop's regular patrons.

On July 4th, I could hear the reports from Central Street in Highland Park, which left six dead. I became obsessed with the tragedy of how suddenly and capriciously death can come, especially in relation to one's spiritual mission, which I feel is often left in a state of disorder, in ways big and small. The notion of completing one's spiritual mission in life, or in maintaining one's spiritual mission in a state of completeness, does not seem without our nature, just as the tendency to maintain its disorder does not seem innate to our nature. To develop the theme of literature in the 21st century and our spiritual life will be a matter to which I apply myself throughout life.

I grew up playing ping pong in the backyard because we had no room inside. It sucks just as much as you would imagine it would because of the wind.

It is not quite as bad as trying to surf on a pond but it is down that path.

> Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way

What do you mean crippling ? We're living longer than we did 100 years ago through advances in science in medicine, I see a lot of tech as net positive.

https://www.turbulenceforecast.com - created by me in 2005 and probably will keep doing it for the rest of my life. It's a site that has evolved from a self service site of aviation maps into a service that tells people how bumpy (turbulent) their next airline flight will be - although the maps are still there if you want to forecast yourself.

I've had people tell me it's helped them take new jobs, start relationships, and I have had emails from people working at all the major airlines how they use the site in various dispatch centers, and flight attendants working flights - and this is despite the airlines providing their own tools for turbulence. It feels very impactful and meaningful.

https://metroretro.io - started as a hackathon project in 2016. I found people using the barely functioning prototype a year later for actual work meetings and decided to started improving it. I went perm on the project 3 years ago and this year passed 10k MRR (100% self funded). Still doing all the dev and ops solo, but I have two co-founders doing all the sales, support and finance stuff. We are going for a specialized whiteboard for software/agile angle rather than generalist whiteboard app currently.

I think I'll be working on this product for a long time as I believe there is a new generation of collaboration software coming to replace the current leaders and I would like to be one of them. I think about this product night and day, and wouldn't want to be building anything else!