The End of Summer

Nobody on the road
Nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air
The summer’s out of reach
— Boys of Summer, Don Henley

This song, which is less about summer and more a metaphor about aging and the futility of time, will forever acts as a soundtrack for the end of sunny, bright and hot days of summer and the onset of dark, cooler days that make up autumn and winter. It was an annual rhythm I had experienced, first living in Delhi, and then later in New York. San Francisco’s idea of seasons is somewhat wonky — not that I am complaining — it definitely marches to its own beat. Fog makes summer months chilly, and then we have warm autumn and then return of chilly nights.

Since starting Gigaom in 2006, I have not really had a chance to experience the summer. For eight summers, I put aside any thoughts of beach, mountains, travel, books or cookouts. I avoided invitations from friends to come visit them. Stories, blog posts, major and minor troubles, conferences — every little thing simply added up to life being a continuous and gushing mountain stream of events. Summer was just some numbers blinking on the calendar of my iPhone. I wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for my baseball fantasy league, where for past five years I had finished in the bottom third.

2014, however was different, mostly due to the fact that I stepped down from day to day duties at Gigaom, hung up my reporter’s notebook and became a partner at True Ventures. It was a chance to recalibrate and regain the natural rhythm of my life. I finally had a chance to do things what normal people do — read books, learn about new things, try out different teas and talk to people without checking the phone 15 times in 15 minutes. It was a chance to actually experience summer again.

And that’s exactly what I did. The summer of 2014 was not a lazy summer by any means. And if you were thinking I was a layabout, you couldn’t be more off the mark. Yet, it felt more measured and calm, mostly it wasn’t experienced at network speed. Instead, it was a summer in tune with the rhythm of life — not just mine, but of other people.

* * * 

I will write about my new VC life some other day, but one of the great joys of the summer was that it exposed me to quite a few entrepreneurs. Some had ideas which were intriguing but somehow were not for me. And there were few that got me all excited. And some are or will soon become part of the True family.

However, a bulk of my time was spent trying to lend a helping hand to some of our current portfolio companies in their fundraising efforts. That includes everything from introductions to other investors to fine-tuning investor presentations. Most importantly, you have to provide the vital moral support during the very emotional fundraising process. Summer’s end, bookended a successful season of fundraising for many of our companies.

* * *

Daily deadlines had been pretty much part of my entire adult life. Somewhere, somehow the deadlines stopped being fun and it was clear to me that I needed a reset. So when I left, I made a decision to not bother with writing, with the exception of my Fast Company column which is something I absolutely love to write. To be honest, I didn’t want to write just because I owed someone “copy.”

It is not surprising that I have only a few works to show for this summer. Most of my words are ending up in my daily journal, a habit that had become victim to daily deadlines. The privacy of a paper journal grants you permission to rediscover your true loves. It has been a liberating experience.

The breakthrough came when on vacation in Italy. I had no computer, just my iPhone, so I picked up a piece of paper and a pen and started writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Some of it is intensely private. Other might someday be part of a travel piece, but most importantly it was a chance to write again. Someday in the future, I will become good at it.

* * * 

From a travel perspective, summer of 2014, has been hectic, to say the least. I started the summer with a visit to Italy for a journalism conference in Perugia. It was on that trip I met with Brunello Cucinelli, the man behind eponymous cashmere maker and one of Italian true entrepreneurial superhero. A few weeks later I headed back to Europe, this time to Paris to meet with some French ministers and have an audience with French President François Hollande. And then back to Italy again for what was essentially my first ever real vacation.

And somewhere in between those travels, I was in Michigan and New York. It seemed I was on a plane pretty much every month — and that is why I decided to stay at home in August, opting to short trips to various spots in California versus jumping on a plane. I am hoping to stay put in San Francisco, though I really miss New York, so there is a good chance my travel abstinence won’t really hold for long.

* * * 

Summer of 2014 was also the first summer, I took up reading actual books all over again. I didn’t want to read business books, so instead I picked a variety of different books — mostly non-fiction. Here is a list of six books I have finished this summer. There are about a dozen books which are lying unfinished next to my bed.

• Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War (Amanda Vaill)
• Floating on a Malayan Breeze: Travels in Malaysia and Singapore (Sudhir Vadaketh)
• The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Elizabeth Kolbert)
• The Chairs Are Where the People Go: How to Live, Work, and Play in the City (Misha Glouberman)
• Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster (Dana Thomas)
• Portrait Inside My Head: Essays (Phillip Lopate)

And I am currently reading:

• Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball (John Feinstein)

* * * 

As the calendar turns to September, I know the summer has ended. For me, the summer of 2014 will be a lot more meaningful. It acted like a bridge between my old life to my new life. I learned many new things this summer, some of them are probably going to have a long term impact on how I live and work and not work and live.

I have rediscovered my love for words. The summer has given me time to tinker around with some projects that had been put on hold because I just didn’t have much time — one of which I will share with you later this month. I am also digging into Swift, the new programming language from Apple, mostly to prove to myself if I can still do it.

But most importantly the summer of 2014 brought home the undeniable truth about myself — I thrive on uncertainty, unknown and quest for answers that sometimes aren’t really there. I gather data, swirl it around in my head, sometimes dots connect and I try make sense of it. Except of one thing — I hate being rushed. I am no longer in a rush.

I can see you-
Your brown skin shinin’ in the sun
You got that hair slicked back and those Wayfarers on, baby
I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone