In writing letters to old friends, I’ve found it a little hard to get a sense of “how are they doing these days?”. Skimming Facebook doesn’t seem to be great way to figure that out, for a few obvious reasons. I ask them, of course, but that too often tends to get a 2-3 sentence answer about their last few weeks, instead of the more fully considered sense of who they are and what they’re about.
I can’t blame them, though. In telling the story of my life, who I am these days, etc, I can get similarly tongue-tied. Luckily, Derek Sivers has a solution: the now page.
Some time has passed, and I’ve updated the page. Here’s what it looks like now, Nov 3rd, 2021:
Last year, I had quit my job at Facebook and moved into Somerville. I dove into my neighborhood, started a bunch of projects, and tried to heal from burnout. I wasn’t done with that, but had to put that all on hold to participate in the 2020 election. I also become a fellow at Berkman-Klein.
Up until recently, this year, I was working on a secret project with many friends and former coworkers. This involved an in-person retreat, a ton of conversations, dreams, and documentation. Talking to possible donors. Briefing journalists and helping them better understand how the world worked.
Now that we’ve gone public, I can finally tell you what my life is like!
Now, I’m excited to finally talk about the big project: The Integrity Institute
When I started diving into the Berkman fellowship, I started noticing something strange: people started taking me very seriously. Journalists, academics, activists, even policymakers not just wanted to ask me questions: they took my answers seriously.
Turns out that things seemed obvious to me (due to my time at Facebook) were not so obvious to people on the outside.
This was cool, but made me uncomfortable. There were integrity people, many who had since left Facebook, who I looked up to. Surely they deserved a platform too.
So I gathered them in January 2021. We decided to found a group that would be a combined professional association for integrity workers, a think-do tank, and a place to research what an “integrity science” would look like.
Fast forward months, and here we are.
With Jeff Allen, I’m running The Integrity Institute. It’s great! Check it out. (Here’s a lovely piece laying out what we’re up to).
Now, I’ve been focused on just a few other projects. Matchmaking (of many kinds), making mix tapes for Sarah, and thinking big thoughts with Berkman people. I helped kick ICE out of Massachusetts, but that honestly didn’t involve much work for me.
One day soon I hope to revive Yenta as well. The FB posts are still happening, but the substack is a bit dormant.
It feels weird to have One Big Project instead of lots of little ones. I miss hanging out with people, and generally relaxing. I miss being relaxed.