that seems fine, then.

My previous employer started trading on the NASDAQ last week. I quietly converted most of my shares to cash earlier this year, which let me stop thinking about it and create a cushion for the household; I squinted and kept an amount that felt like it was still a stake in the outcome. More than anything, it's like being in a casino and deciding how much to take risks with. Mostly I want my friends there to be rewarded for their hard work. And there are a bunch of people who got royally fucked over, and will not be rewarded for their hard work. Shocker: they're not white or Asian males.

This fucking industry. Reflecting the inequities (and iniquities) of our society, garlanding itself with words like "meritocracy" and insisting that technology is neutral and apolitical, when it is neither.

This was really my first successful company: all the others have flailed into one ignominious merger or another, because VCs are really, really good at getting paid. But this is the first unqualified, high-value success. As a joint family project, we now have lots of options about what to do with ourselves; the funny thing is that, if you have to pick just one option, but you don't know what to do, then if you're suddenly able to pick three options...you still don't know what to do. Between the pandemic and the imminent end of high school, we're in a bit of a holding pattern.

(Just to keep me on my toes, though, the guys who bought my shares recently discovered that, being unaware of a stock split in 2020, they over-valued the company and paid me double what they intended to—both times. I've spotted them two phone calls where they desperately try to get me to give some of the money back, or hand them the rest of my shares, or anything. The overall valuation isn't in the contract, much to their horror; just the share price. This crosses the dichotomy of how different professions see companies: investors deal with big numbers like valuation, and employee-stockholders like me care only about the share price, because the valuation as such doesn't affect us at all.

The contract is uncomplicated, and filled with all kinds of juicy sections saying "We all totally understand what we're doing, we can afford to lose the investment, we understand the other party might have material information we don't, and we waive pretty much any right to sue each other," so I'm not worried, from that perspective. It's adrenalizing, and I feel bad for them, but Wealthy Guys Who Fuck Up Large Stock Deals is just not on my charity list this year.)

So the house is paid off, which turns to have been a considerable chunk of our monthly expenses; now we have more money to subsidize the booming business of running Dungeons & Dragons online for schoolkids, especially kids who are maybe wired a little differently. I'm trying to build up a little machine shop for...machining...things. Our musical instrument collection grows, in a measured, stately sort of way.

Just...trying to make it through, I think.