Back Home in San Francisco...

Fingers of fog, and courage in the sauna...

Hey guys,

Relaxedly writing from “back home” in San Francisco.

It’s been one of those almost balmy weeks in our weather. Days that are so rare yet that show up most beautifully in May and October, at the start and end of San Francisco summer months sponsored by our famed fog, the daily battle of warm and cold fronts fighting it out in the skies above us. 

The cool air over the Pacific Ocean coming onshore from the West collides into the blanket of heat coming out of the arid inland California to the East. And a nice duvet cover of condensation is the result. 

So cruel on summer visitors who were sold on pictures of blue skies…

The Spring balm will last just a few days, and we know they’re coming to an end when the deep baritone of the booming foghorn starts to reverberate off the water and ooze up into the streets, and wafts into bedroom windows all night long. 

And then we’ll wake to a slim finger of fog pulling its way under the bridge and across over to the city, pulling the full duvet cover behind it.

It’s a beautiful sight, tinged with that crisper air tickling the tiny hairs on your hands with the reminder that the balm is over….

The finger of fog, pulling into the Bay

Courage, In The Sauna

So, last Sunday, I opened the warm wooden door to pull into the Dolphin Club sauna, after a chillier-than-expected swim in the Bay. 

The Dolphin Club is one of two charismatic old swimming and rowing clubs on the shore of the protected Aquatic Park, both founded in the 1890s, one a white building with red paint trim, and the other a white building with blue trim, and both with saunas tucked away at the back. 

So I open the weighty wood door to scents of pine and steam and sweat, and blue-lipped men reheating themselves after swims short and long, stoked by banter and camaraderie.   

And looking around that half-filled steamy room, with its window gazing out the back on the Fisherman’s Wharf Streets, I straight away saw a friend and professional acquaintance in the corner by the window, Lawrence. And climbed up to the bench space next to him. 

Lawrence, a wonderful guy who I got to know through a few years of trading thoughts on our roles raising money from large ‘institutional investors’ (pension funds and insurance companies and endowments and the like, who look after long-term investment portfolios). A wonderful guy who’s really looked out for me in different ways, not least in urging me to get in the chilly Bay waters more often and to come down for the Friday evening socials. 

Anyway, just days back from New Zealand, it was my first conversation with a friend from professional life originally. And after a few minutes sharing the highlights of the trip, the inevitable question came. The question that I’ve had echoing in my head for over months…

“So, what are you going to do now”?

I shifted slightly on the warm wood, adjusting into that posture of readying to talk a little more frankly, and with my shoulders opening up from the heat hunch.

And the words just wandered out of my mouth…

…and with a hint of a smirky smile, the kind that has a tinge of apprehension… 

…“Well, I don’t think I’m going back to institutional finance.”

Now, I can’t lie to good friends, and this was the first utterance in the witness box of truth as to where my head is at on ‘what next’...

I’d felt this split-second moment of courage, when the confidence is still far behind and lolling around with good days and bad days. It was almost startling. It was like I had an out-of-body experience, staring down at those words that just came out of my mouth. 

And all week, it’s kept coming back to me, the moment frozen in kodachrome colour in my memory…

The moment too made me think of the case studies in a wonderful book urged on me by a fine friend Rick (who’s been through the grand evolution himself) in London during my March trip, Working Identity, by Herminia Ibarra. 

In essence, the book is all about how our identities have to shift when we decide to evolve our careers. The narrative and the stories in our head that make up how we see ourselves, and so what we experiment with doing. And how this shift can come slower for some, and more suddenly for others.

But per the beautiful opening quote in the Preface:

“The indecision brings it own delays, 

And days are lost lamenting over lost days.

Are you in earnest? Seize this very minute;

What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it;

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

All week, I found myself sharing this moment in the sauna with one close friend after another. Sharing the words of what has long been known, as if it was a surprise.

With one particularly wise friend, when I mentioned this instinctive moment of courage, and referred too to the shaky confidence behind it, Deryl made an observation that at first felt like a riddle of words…

He pointed out that while courage comes from the heart - just per its french origin, “la couer” - and from love (of self, not least), there is too a neediness in confidence, a need that often comes from fear.

This riddle of words kept coming to mind for days, pulling up memories and moments, and luring thoughts of the traits of sporting heroes, and business builders I’ve known, and people that pull off other extraordinary feats in which they’re swimming in courage, especially at the start.

In noodling on this all, I came to see how courage always has to come first, and that confidence comes along behind that, only truly building in stature as twitches of neediness and pretense dissolve.

The lesson is that it’s not only fun and interesting to pay attention to the words wandering out of our mouths, but paying attention to our words is essential.

You’ll notice how the words pair with the images in our head, and together they start to build the movie of our perspective, and how we see the world, and how then we move forward. 

And you’ll see then the clues scattered all around you, and start to enjoy the instincts of which clues to pick up…

Have I been smoking something?

Just words…

Onwards,

Kevin