The Entrepreneurial Mindset – Mikey Trafton

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Mikey Trafton is the founder of Blue Fish Development Group, Fire Ant Software, an original investor in the Alamo Drafthouse, and mentors several Capital Factory startups. When Mikey and I met in 2012, he told me a few stories that distilled his motivation for entrepreneurship down into radically discrete elements that are so simple for us to apply in our day-to-day lives there is zero excuse not to. Things like how we do our laundry, or the work environment that we want to have.

Mikey calls the result of these motivations, “local optimizations.” As an entrepreneur, when Mikey wants to adapt a tiny area of his life, he evaluates his circumstances, isolates the element that he wants to be different, and then makes a change to create a situation that will serve his interests.

These local optimizations have been major players in Mikey’s life that led him to start his first company.

Mikey’s story tells me that “entrepreneurial mindset” can be attained. You or I can train ourselves to think and behave like the successful entrepreneurs that have build companies and created products that are changing our world.

Mikey told me that he started Blue Fish because,

“…I wanted to have a cool place to go to work every day. If someone else had started Blue Fish, and I had started working there right out of college, I wouldn’t have ever needed to start my own company.”

As soon as I heard Mikey say that, I thought, that boils entrepreneurship down to it’s essentials.

He’s not after a revolution.

He’s not on a wild crusade.

He’s using zero buzzwords.

Mikey is just stating an honest desire to have a great place to do work that matters with people who “get it.” When Mikey looked around, he couldn’t find a place that he liked to work, so he went and created his own place. He didn’t have to become an entrepreneur. But he did need to work in a certain environment in order to maximize his life. And he was unwilling to compromise those values.

Mikey was describing the results of a lifetime of “local optimizations,” slight modifications to his environment throughout his life that have made him into the entrepreneur that he is today. The same willful qualities that he describes made him a “bratty kid” also made him a “successful entrepreneur.”

Me, I’m a selfish person. I heard Mikey say those two sentences, and I started scheming how I could get more access to his mind so I could hear him tell his story and hopefully apply it to my life and efforts.

The interview is the result of that conversation

Here are the highlights of what we talk about:

  • The founding ideas behind the Midnight Cowboy Speakeasy
  • Why Mikey wanted to become an Entrepreneur in the first place
  • Minority owner in a company is something Mikey wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy
  • Started Blue Fish Development Group to be “an optimizer of my local environment”
  • Discovering that “going the extra mile” for his clients is a keystone motivator leads Mikey to start Blue Fish
  • “I just wanted a cool place to work” is the only justification Mikey needed to start a company
  • Sought to create a “get it” culture. A place where he want to work, and a place where his employees want to work there as well
  • First contract was with Sun Micosystems turned his idea into a 6-Figure Company overnight
  • His first attempt as an entrepreneur is met with a crisis when he doesn’t hire for cultural fit
  • Your company is only great if the people who work there also think it’s great
  • How to hire really badass developers who normally work in “product” companies in a consulting company
  • Turning down business for the sake of the culture
  • Tweaking the business model to attract the right people
  • How being “incredibly selfish” motivates Mikey to seek ways to locally optimize his environment in an entrepreneurial manner
  • “As a child, being selfish made me a brat. As an adult, I guess it makes me an entrepreneur.”
  • Asking “how” questions, not “why” or “who” questions
  • “Don’t compromise your values” vs. “Being a selfish jerk…”
  • Why a high need for approval makes Mikey a perfect leader for his company
  • “I’m not afraid to go try something if I think it will improve my happiness”
  • Also, “I’m even less afraid to remove things if I think they are getting in the way of my happiness.”
  • “I’m one of those people who believe rich people should pay more taxes…and I’m rich, so that belief technically hurts my wallet…”
  • “One of the things that makes me happiest is when one of my rockstar employees comes into my office and tells me they’re leaving to start their own thing or to be a CTO…that’s freaking awesome”
  • Mikey’s rule on relationships: they must be built on a spirit of mutual giving
  • The more you give, the more you get, and the world is a better place
  • “The rantings of a selfish man”
  • Being opportunistic and creating opportunities for yourself
  • The belief that you actually *can* create the life you want
  • Forget the 5 year plan…How do I prioritize for right now, and let the rest work itself out?
  • Not everybody has to be an entrepreneur, not even me…and I’m fine with that
  • Knowing what matters to you and being able to prioritize accordingly
  • Know what you care about and then prune the tree
  • I’d rather make less money and have a great work environment
  • “There’s two kinds of people in the world…”
  • “Giving myself permission to live the life that I wanted to live…”
  • Define your goals correctly: “The goal to make $100MM…that’s a messed up goal.”
  • Realize the core values of how you want to live your life, and your opportunities will balloon
  • “If Bluefish had existed when I graduated college and I had gotten a job there, I never would have started my own company…”
  • Summary, “Get to watch DVD player all day, and you’ll be happy.”

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

The Things That I Believe

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I keep a journal that I hand write when I need to process life in intense bouts. I’ve got a mentor responsible for massive progress in my life in the past year who basically forced this upon me early on, and Thank God she did. It works to work my thoughts out into words, and my feelings into digestible chunks so I recommend this to people who are facing some inner decision.

Going back through my journal in prep for new years, I came across a list of 33 things that I wrote at one of my last trips to a monastery. I wrote them in a stream of consciousness, but had the foresight to number them, and upon re-reading them, all but one or two were good enough (and non-specific enough) to be worth offering up to the small, *but growing* community of people who tune into my blog.

The list now has a permanent home at austingunter.com/beliefs, where it will probably evolve over time. For now, here are the 33.

  1. Every person (entrepreneur) has the ability to see the visions in their imagination become reality. You can’t imagine it if you can’t make it real.
  2. Forget your 5-year plan. Focus on being happy today, right now, doing work you love, with people you admire. In 5 years, make sure you’re just as stoked to be alive. The rest will work out.
  3. Life is too short to not grow constantly. Be around people who push you to be better. Get rid of those who hold you back.
  4. Startups should create real value and make the world a better, wealthier place in real human terms.
  5. The world’s economies and cultures will be saved by the people willing to strike out and start something new.
  6. Companies must encourage their employees to be entrepreneurial. Autonomy and independence are key to productivity, creativity, and innovation in the 21st Century.
  7. Your customers will no longer be “sold to.” But, if you’re nice, they’ll let you help them out while they “buy.”
  8. Never publicly disparage anyone you work with or have worked with, including your customers. Every experience should teach you something, so be grateful.
  9. Scrappy startups, when successful, stop being the underdog. This means people root for you a bit less. The more awesome you were along the way, the easier you made it for people to continue rooting for you.
  10. Self-awareness will unlock the keys to your potential. Be aware of your station and act accordingly, but always keep an eye out for new opportunities.
  11. Fast-growing companies evolve quickly. That means the employees must be ready to do the same. Bake this into your culture, and hire accordingly.
  12. Ask: “How does the company need me to evolve so it can grow?” and then ask, “How can I stay humble and willing to change along the way?”
  13. It’s just a game. Don’t take it personally.
  14. Grace is more powerful than Justice. Offer Grace and it will be returned to you.
  15. Trust people. You have more in common than you could ever realize.
  16. When a person violates your trust, act appropriately. Don’t let yourself get hurt unnecessarily.
  17. No one will seek you out to mentor you. If you want mentorship, create your own mentors.
  18. Believing you’ll be successful is the first step to actually being successful.
  19. Believe that things will work out for the best, and somehow they always will.
  20. Know that the universe is conspiring to do good things for you, and then let it.
  21. Know when it’s time to get out. Don’t overstay your welcome when you’re needed at the next stop.
  22. Trust yourself.
  23. It’s not about what you do. It’s about who you are. Don’t worry if that’s hard to believe. We all spend our entire lives trying to learn that same thing.
  24. Believe that you can always figure it out. You will.
  25. Dress well, and learn the subtleties of etiquette. This will help you stand out to those who have already been successful.
  26. Remember, everyone around you can be your teacher.
  27. When you’re broke, find someone with even less than you and give them more than you can afford. Money will flow back.
  28. It’s often not your fault, but it’s always your responsibility. This is the most empowering belief in the world.
  29. Make zero excuses.
  30. If you can inspire yourself with your belief, you can go as far as you want to.
  31. Believe in something. It will be the thing that saves you.
  32. Love yourself. This can be harder than it sounds.
  33. Learn to forgive yourself.

Leg 3: Bakersfield to San Francisco, a few weeks after arriving

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My desk in the Mission

My desk, now that I’m all settled

Shame on me for not finishing this post sooner. I’ve officially been in SF for a month, and I’m getting settled into my routine.  It’s been an intense few weeks. My highs have been high, and I’ve had a few lows and “Oh shit, what did I just do” moments, of course. Packing everything you own and driving across the country with no backup plan will do that to a person.

Fortunately, I’ve learned that the lows in life are inevitably followed by a high. It’s almost as if we need to go down hill for to pick up enough velocity to reach the next summit. That’s another blog post for another time.

To arrive in San Francisco, my last leg of the 5-day journey, I had to drive North, and follow the California Coastline. I left Bakersfield, outside of LA, after some amazing hospitality from Jason Cosper and his lovely wife Sarah. They put me up and fed me before I made my final push into SF.

I hit the road about 9AM, and drove through the farms outside of Bakersfield, making my way over to the Highway 101. It’s not the fastest way to drive from SoCal to NorCal, but it’s the more scenic route up, taking you along the coastline and through the California farmlands before you hit the Peninsula and drive into San Francisco. You can even drive by the spot in the road where James Dean wrecked his Chevy that fateful night. It’s an unassuming spot where 3 farm roads meet. There’s just a small sign and a tiny plaque to commemorate his life.

The drive up the coast was one of my favorites. The farming operations that I passed along the way stretched for miles and miles, bookended by the Sierra Nevada range, with clouds and fog looming over everything I saw. The state of California matches the lyrics of America the Beautiful very well. Every single type of beautiful ecosystem is present in the state. I feel like I’m going to get an eye roll for saying this in such jaded times, but I spent hours on the road driving North through Cali, and I kept thinking, “purple mountain majesties,” as I passed through. The drive was a great time for me to just let go of my cynicism and be inspired by the natural beauty.

Rolling into San Fran, I had the new single from Tegan and Sara, Closer, on repeat. I probably listened to it 10 times that afternoon. It was a love song about the infatuation stage of a relationship, and connecting with someone those first few exciting times. My car explored the curves of the highway the same way our hands and our emotions travel the curves of a new lover. That track, and the rest of the songs on my road trip playlist, which transformed into a NorCal hip hop mix, are on Spotify.

It was raining hard as I started seeing signs like, “San Jose,” and “Cupertino” through my windshield. Driving North on the 101 is like thumbing through the tech industry’s greatest hits album. You get a rush seeing all those famous names flying by. As each city flies by, you realize you’re on the same highways that millions of men and women have driven, searching for the same Gold Rush that the 49ers were after. That afternoon, I was driving directly into the epicenter of the last 40 years of tech innovation and I could feel the energy.

San Jose.  Cupertino.  Palo Alto.  Stanford.

The best way to describe what was going through my head is to explain that I realized that I was literally behind the wheel, driving myself into the best place in the world for tech entrepreneurs. A place full of history and momentum. And a place where many of the best minds travel to make their vision into reality. I had found an opportunity to live in the thick of Silicon Valley. I was incredibly excited. I was also wondering WTF had gotten into me that I wasn’t afraid to leave the last 16 years of my life behind, forsaking the past for an unknown future. I wasn’t holding myself back psychologically, or holding onto the past.

Jonas and Mayor Ed Lee

Jonas Lamis and Mayor Ed Lee at the RallyPad

Many times in the past, I second-guessed any sense of entitlement that I *could* have the life I wanted.  That I could live at the epicenter of the most creative people on the planet, and that I would belong with “the cool kids.” Since I practice honesty on this blog, I have to confess that the move was striking a mortal blow against the part of me that used to whisper, “that life isn’t for you, it’s for ‘other people.’”

As I was driving into San Francisco, I knew that I was driving home, and that I was in the process of claiming my rightful place among the “other people” that I used to fear. It was liberating. The only thing that had held be back before was my own thoughts. Confronting those was the only obstacle to having this adventure.

After weaving through rush-hour traffic, I finally got to my place in the Lower Mission, and met my new roommate and her spaniel, Zorro. I found a nice place to park within 3 blocks of my apartment. Turns out I may not have to pay for parking. That’s $150 a month I can roll into other stuff.

My boxes from UPS had arrived that day. Completely trashed. My stereo looked completely broken, but it still worked. I began the process of unpacking and organizing my life. I have a list of things to set up in my new life in the city, from getting a Tai Chi dojo (check), to finding a doctor (check), to getting started on dating so I can meet someone  (double-check), find good coffee shops to work at, etc. I set goals for things I want to achieve every week that gradually build my life here.

Knowing that I can make my life exactly what I want it to be is liberating. San Francisco is the place where people go to live to the limit, so I’m taking full advantage of the opportunity to re-invent myself. When faced with a choice, I ask myself, “what do I want my life to be like in a year, and how do I make that happen?” Then I go do the thing that makes me happy. I’ve made a list of the things that I want, and I’m going after them week-by-week.

The final thing I did was head to the WordPress meetup at Automattic HQ in the Mission. Evan Solomon and Daryl Koopersmith were presenting on 3.5 and going deep into the code

More Friendly WordPress Folk

More Friendly WordPress Folk at Dolores Park

changes for WordPress this time around. They were kind enough to hang out for a while afterwards to show me some cool places on the map, and help me get settled. It’s great to have new friends in place as I’ve arrived. The Automatticians have all been incredibly hospitable since I’ve arrived, and I’m glad we’re connected.

The weeks are flying by, and my life is completely different, but it’s still me. I’m changing incredibly quickly, and learning so much. Look for for more changes, more ideas, and more adventures to come.

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

 

 

Jack Dorsey on Editing His Ideas and Making Twitter + Square Happen

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I love how he talks about the intentional, iterative, messy process he was willing to put himself through on the way to fully realizing his ideas. It makes me wonder what ideas are we all having that we’re not giving time enough to mature.

Notice also how clearly he can articulate the human perception of Square towards the end when he describes accepting payment as “primarily social” and articulates very clearly how important it was for him to make Square “trustworthy.” He breaks his ideas down to their atomic center, and then has the clarity to build around them. I’ve seen that pattern in the successful entrepreneurs I’ve gotten the chance to work with, so I think this truly is a pattern.

Where do your thoughts go when you’re not distracted?

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What thoughts does your mind drift to when you have a few moments to yourself?

When you’re in the waiting room, what do you start thinking about? Do you wonder what you need to get at the grocery store, or dwell on that thing that went wrong at work last week?

Or do you remind yourself that you’re on track to meet your goals and that you’re spending your time the way you want to?

When you’re riding the bus, what sorts of talk echoes through your head? Is it positive or negative? Are you happy to be by yourself, or do you find respite in distracting yourself watching YouTube videos or browsing Facebook on your phone?

This evening, I’m riding through the rain to go run a few errands in my new city. I rode with my roommate for the first couple of miles, but once she hopped off at her stop, I didn’t have conversation with her to distract me.

The challenge and opportunity of being in an entirely new environment is that I have the opportunity to make powerful memories that will remind me who I am and what I want the entire time I live in this city.

The ways I spend my first few weeks here and the habits I develop will have a profound affect on the next few years. I can set myself up for success now by reinforcing the reasons I moved my career across the country.

It’s all about momentum.

When college freshmen arrive on campus, the habits they develop in the first 2 weeks will define their lives until graduation. Their friends, sleep habits, workouts, girlfriends and boyfriends, mentors, and plans will shape them for the next few years.

What can we do in 2 weeks that will change our lives for years to come?

As I flipped through my Spotify playlists so I could listen to music on the bus, I found a reminder I had created for myself that tells me to stay focused on taking it one step at a time as I build my life in San Francisco- and to feel confident and prepared for what I’ll face as I build my skills in entrepreneurship so that I’ll have my own company in a few years.

The reminder was a playlist called, “Life is a Startup Company – Live Accordingly.”

When I listen to the songs it’s easy to find the resources I need within myself, and I know that I’ve got what it takes to put one foot in front of the other and continue making progress and living a life that is exciting and fulfilling.

What reminders are you leaving yourself that keep you focused on being fulfilled and excited in your life? How do you reinforce your goals in small ways?

Today, keep a promise to yourself, like to clean your desk, or go to the gym like you wanted to. Remind yourself that you’re living the life you want.

Let’s not make a cult out of failure

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If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your styleThere’s a brand new PandoDaily post that glorifies failure in a way that I think is totally unhealthy and misses the point of learning from failures and mistakes. The point isn’t to focus on the failure, the point is to *stop* failing so you can *start* being successful. Those are two different mindsets and “ways of being,” and one doesn’t necessarily lead into the other.

I disagree with the post and rather than point to my own life to start this post from Joe Kraus of Google Venture explains why success is more valuable than failure better than I ever could.

TL;DR Let’s not make a cult of failure for its own sake. The amazing part of the PandoDaily story is not the colossal fuck-up, but the fact that the marine succeeded once, make a massive mistake that tore down all his work, didn’t get in his own way and give up after the failure, and then went on to succeed once again. Had he not succeeded a second time, that initial mistake would have defined his entire life. That failure would have been the thing that he believed he was, not the success that he later became.

I had a mentor of mine suggest to me me over an early morning breakfast, “Austin, at some point you may ask yourself if it’s possible to stop ‘failing in exchange for knowledge,’ and actually succeed while simultaneously enjoying your work and learning twice as much as when you fail.”

That was a defining moment in my life and those words have rippled to where I sit now two years later. Until that moment, I thought that the only path to knowledge was called “failure.” I didn’t honestly believe people who were successful learned as much as people who failed.  I simply think that’s a lie we tell ourselves now to hedge failures. We learn more from success than we ever do from failure. We learn how to succeed. We should not be in denial about that fact.

I’m still on the journey, but with a lot of progress behind me since that breakfast. I tell the story of my mentor not to point to position myself as the “model for success,” but merely to share my own journey learning the difference in my own psychology between failing and succeeding. I’ve come to believe that success is life-affirming in a way that failure often isn’t. Failure is a reminder that we’re human and we should stay humble. Failure often reminds us of things we forgot along the way.

Other times, like the time I got laid off from a miserable consulting job in 2011, what might appear to be failure from one angle, is actually the best thing that ever happened to us because it opens up a new opportunity. However, in that case, the story isn’t really the failure, it’s the success you find later on. My story wasn’t about getting laid off, it was about starting my own consulting business, getting a contract with WP Engine, and then writing a job description and getting Jason Cohen to hire me. That’s the story I choose to remember. It makes me feel much better, and I don’t have time to walk around morose cause I lost what was, in most respects, a shitty job that would have been bad for my life. Turns out, the painful job wasn’t going to teach me as much as the one I have now, which I enjoy immensely.

Coming full-circle, I don’t intend to take away from the Pando article. It’s an incredible story of resilience, and the marine deserves credit and respect. I just want to reframe that the story isn’t about failure. It’s about someone who was so focused that he was able to overcome his own psychology in one of the hardest arenas on the planet, not once, but twice, and emerge victorious regardless of what anyone else might have predicted.

He’s a champion who knew better than to focus on “learning from failure.” He knew to leave his failure behind, but to never forget his rifle again.

Also posted on HackerNews.

Social Media: “Doing It Right” on Twitter

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Pretzel Crisps Social Media Win

Yes, those are apparently brand new pants before I took the tag off ;-)

I’ve had two different companies tweet “at” me because I’ve been out and about in San Francisco. Anytime a brand identity is tweeting at you on Social, you know that they want you to come patronize their business, so if they’re sloppy about it and are obviously just angling to sell you something, you can tell rather quickly.  As a social marketer, I have a very sensitive radar for what is technically referred to as “Social Media Horseshit,” and I have very little tolerance for spammy Twitter use in particular.

Done right, Twitter is an incredibly powerful way to develop long-term relationships with customers. Done wrong, social media is about as effective as email spam, but twice as annoying.

A brand is something that people actively have a relationship with, and social media is no less than a way for your brand to have an active relationship with potential, current, and even past customers. Twitter, in particular, offers you the opportunity to engage potential customers in real time, often at the precise moment they might be looking to make a purchase or use your service. For example, moving to a new city….

People tweet their flight check-ins and will talk about the city they travel or move to. When I drove into San Francisco last Friday afternoon, all my belongings in my trunk, it was raining. The city had rolled out a big soggy welcome mat for me, and I tweeted it.

Pretzel Crisps was paying attention, and they tweeted at me, using the rain as an excuse, and then offering me free snacks.

Pretty good welcome to a new city, right?

This afternoon, right before I was heading out to a coffee shop for a meeting, Pretzel Crisps showed up with a ridiculous amount of free noms. Guess what my favorite San Francisco brand of pretzels is now?

This approached worked because Pretzel Crisps was able to very easily create a relationship with a potential customer by offering a free experience of their product to me via Twitter. By making it simple (and free) for me to try their stuff, I now have a relationship with their product, AND I’m blogging about it.  Tons of free attention.  Not bad, right?

They got my attention because 1. They responded with a sense of humor, and 2. They offered me something free in their tweet.  Had the brand just made small talk, I would have ignored it. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, but I don’t always have time to respond to the people that tweet at me.  When a brand tweets without offering something of value immediately, I assume, just like everyone else, that they aren’t really interested in anything but selling something. I tune out immediately.

For example, the Half Moon Bay Golf Course apparently has a Twitter handle that likes to make small talk with people who check-in when their flights land in SFO. Brands making small talk, and not offering something in return is “doing it wrong.”

I don’t want to make small talk with a golf course. Now, they can’t offer me a fun-sized bag containing 9 holes of golf, but they could have some blog content about the best links in the bay area, including, but not limited to their course. Maybe throw me a link for some free balls, or a beer at the end of a golf game. Anything that would be valuable or relevant to me.

Rather, they just asked me what my plans were.  Basically, that’s asking me to spend time as I’m de-planing to tweet a golf course what my itinerary is.  Not happening.

So I responded like this.

Then I felt bad about being mean, so I tweeted back at them to apologize and give whoever that person running their social media channel an opening to engage me, but they didn’t respond back, which is a mistake.

Even if I’m not going to play golf, I know plenty of people who do, and I may have a chance to recommend a place at some point. That social media interaction had the potential to create a brand advocate out of me.

I use my own story as an example to show the power of social media to connect with real customers in ways that traditional advertising could only dream of.  I’ve literally got a counter full of Pretzel Crisps in my kitchen now, and I’m going to be offering them to every single guest that I have in my new San Francisco digs for weeks. I had never had the Pretzels before, but I’ll never forget them at this point.

Hope this helps.

Austin W. Gunter

Side note: I haven’t mentioned whether they’re good or not. That’s because an aggressive social media campaign like this assumes you have a stellar product. Otherwise, all that attention and energy you’ve poured into the marketing will blow up in your face with really nasty tweets. If the product isn’t good, social can’t solve that :-)

On the phone with Tony Perez of Sucuri Security

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I’m going to profile Tony on the WP Engine blog as a Finely Tuned Consultant soon. We did a preliminary Skype chat today to talk about it. I started snapping pictures and this was right after he said, “Are you taking screenshots?!”

Yes, yes I was ;-)

Tony Perez of Sucuri Security

 

(Used with Tony’s Permission)

Leg 2: El Paso to Arizona and St. Anthony’s Monastery

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St. Anthony's Monastery

I left El Paso and headed for a little spot on the map between Tucson and Phoenix called St Anthony’s Greek Orthodox Monastery. In general on the road trip to SF, I wasn’t interested in making crazy detours to see the sites or dally about. All I wanted was to get a little bit closer to San Francisco every day, and I saw big detours as a distraction from that goal.

However, I made a very specific exception and drove well out of my way to visit this monastery in hopes of seeing Elder Ephraim and receiving his blessing. He’s a Greek Orthodox monk who lived on Mount Athos, the heart of Orthodox Monasticism before moving to the United States to start 17 monasteries, including the one outside Austin that I regularly visit. When I need to center myself, I take a long weekend at a monastery, and am grateful for the peace I get from those places. I wanted to visit Elder Ephraim’s monastery in Arizona to receive his blessing for my health and also receive any words of wisdom he might impart.

On the way to the Monastery, you have to drive through miles and miles of desert. It was an incredibly beautiful drive, and I cut through the terrain with huge saguaro cactuses on both sides of me. It was close to sunset as I was nearing the monastery, and the desert took on a very different sheen than I was accustomed to. I took a backroad to the monastery, and I swear humans must rarely travel the road, because the nature on either side of the road was stunningly beautiful. Colors I’d never seen before overwhelmed me as I cut through the desert.

Then I realized that I had forgotten to fill my tank up in Tucson, and I was riding the “E.”

I did a quick mental calculation as I looked at the maps on my iPhone and realized that if the fuel gauge was accurate, that I might be able to make it to the monastery on fumes, if at all. The beautiful desert road that had seemingly stretched out forever suddenly seemed like it was a thousand miles long. I started hypermiling to conserve gas, getting up to about 75 MPH, and then stepping on the clutch to let the RPMs drop and coast the car for as long as I could. Fortunately, there was a gas station in the middle of the desert for reasons that made zero sense to me.

The monastery was one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I walked the grounds as a prayed both nights I stayed there as was awed by the peace and beauty the monks have cultivated. It’s a giant garden in the middle of the desert. I’ll actually be installing a slideshow plugin just to add the pictures.

Services at St. Anthony’s start about 1AM, and there was a monk would would come into the guesthouse about 12:35 to wake us up. I had set an alarm and was up and ready to roll, except I never quite woke up during the entire duration of the service, which ended after 3AM. It’s hard to stay awake when the Church is pitch black :-)

However, I was able to get the Elder’s blessing that morning before the service started. You could approach his place in the Church and he would bless you. When I came over and made my prostration, half-asleep, I felt his hand slap my head in the shape of the Orthodox blessing with more energy and vitality than I had expected from him. I felt his hand on my head as if he already knew me before I had arrived, and was expecting me. It was the paternal slap of your grandfather who hasn’t seen you in a year. I was a bit blown away by the moment, small as it were.

After the service, we went back to sleep from 4-8AM, and I got up and was recruited to go work by the monks. I found myself working alone and in peace and quiet inside a citrus orchard. Talk about bliss. I love good physical labor, and here I found myself in the middle of the desert, blessed by the elder, and now spending a day working amidst orange and lemon trees.

That afternoon, I spoke with the Abbot, who blessed me and gave me a good word. I never got to meet the elder for more than that brief moment, but somehow that was probably all I had come for.

I pulled out of St. Anthony’s at 8AM the next morning, headed through Arizona and SoCal to hit Bakersfield, California. It was cold in the desert as I got back onto the highway and watched the desert shimmer with a bit of dew and magic.