The hardships that I encountered in the past will help me succeed in the future. — Philip Emeagwali 

Pretty much how I went through the last quarter of the year.

While I listen to a lot of the people around me lamenting this year, I’ve been silently rejoicing. Not that I’ve been particularly pleased with how this year went, but it wasn’t all bad. I went through the gamut of emotions throughout the year, wept when one of my personal heroes, Christopher Lee, died, laughed as two of my friends had an audacious wedding. Cursed when my cofounder went AWOL in the middle of a big project, just as I worried when he was under arrest by the Saudi government. I fretted over a lot of financial hard spots, cried myself to sleep with anxiety, and woke up with migraines more often than I care to acknowledge.

I learnt a lot about being human, owning and operating a company, and making hard choices. 

Every year brings trials, lessons, and wisdom. Every month that passed by in 2016 taught me to stay light on my toes, yet grounded in the here and now to keep things moving forward. It’s an uneasy truce between mind and body, needs and desires, emotions and rationality.

During parts of the year I would reach out, grab my phone, and start dialling my dad. Then, I would remember that he passed away in August 2015. The shock of the action would send me into a thoughtful spiral, one that often ended in irrational anger. After all, it’s been over a year. You’d think that by now I’d have reigned in old habits. Learning to deal with these “human” emotions during times when I was already stressed from running a company was trying. Especially when Dad was the one that I turned to when the shit was hitting the fan and I needed a cheerleader. He was always on my side, walked me through the options, and was a great listening ear without trying to influence what was ultimately my decision.

Dealing with decisions with no one to listen — but not influence — was hard. I haven’t started talking to myself yet, but I have picked up the habit of pacing with a giant mug of rosey while thinking. It’s a decent facsimile for now.

Running a company is trying. 

For every single thing you can find a complaint about, there are dozens of remedies for you to choose from.

Over the last year I’ve had to make a few flippant decisions, such as how often to send thank you cards out to our network, to more serious ones, like whether to focus on the academics and science or feelings and emotions. With each decision is a chance to define Insanitek, grow as a company and develop a stronger team. Each turn is a chance to hear dreams of those in our community and make those dreams inch closer to becoming true.

With each positive thing that could happen, there could be a lot of negative consequences. As the owner of the company, I have to be prepared to take extreme ownership, as Jocko Willink would say, for all the outcomes. Up until this point all the outcomes have been toward the good end of the scale. But not all decisions have played out yet.

The hardest decisions have yet to really play out all the way. Without going into too many details, I needed control of everything Insanitek, that includes our website data, but our webmaster wasn’t responding and went off-line in all capacities. Frustrated, I found a work around that got control of our data… but shoved the AWOL member out of the system. When they come back, they will have to talk to me to get it.

I do not like situations like this one. It’s never a good feeling to use your authority to knock someone else down, but it’s pretty much understood that as Captain of Insanitek, I need to do what I need to do to keep it going afloat.

Challenges have helped me grow. Surviving hardships will make me succeed. 

To be honest, I’m not fazed by the parade of celebrity deaths, the election of Trump, or any of the other things that had social media up in outrage. Sure, I appreciated the contributions of each celebrity to the western culture’s art, but they don’t know me, and I don’t know them. I’d be far more impacted by the death of my neighbour than someone who could care less that I existed.

And of course Trump’s election will have an impact on Insanitek, which will have an impact on me. But, what those impacts are have yet to be seen, so I’m not going to bother to over-react. What I will do is watch the news and adjust directions as necessary. I will keep encouraging the love of science, teach and communicate the world of science to others, and strive to include the wide world of “normies” in on the geekery. Science communication will never be “unnecessary”, and if the Chicken Littles of the science community are right, then it is more necessary now than ever.

So, over the next year you’ll see things about policy, leadership (business ownership), and other things that are on my mind in education and science communication. If I can’t call my father and talk these things out, then I’ll talk to you about them and hear your words in the comments.