Running back up

Traffic to the old blog finally petered away to nothing, so I've archived the entire thing and am starting from scratch. At some point I'll re-compile the old blog as a book. But in the meantime?

Hi. Welcome to BoxWrestleFence, home of David R Packer, author. That's me. Over the next few weeks, I'll be re-building this site to not only look correct but also to be the central repository for a bunch of things I have planned. Not committing to any of those things, because I'm still in the planning process. But changes will happen.

Still going to talk about martial arts, specifically sword arts, here. By re-branding this as my author page, I'm also allowing myself to broaden the scope of content without feeling limited by the context I created for myself.

To start, I'll recap for myself where I am, and what I'm starting with. I just wrapped up 3 years of work as a specialist at Shopify. Spent a lot of time there helping people with the ecommerce end of some very, very successful businesses. Because of that, I've learned a ton about what can make commerce enjoyable..and why most of capitalism is a hot, stinking mess. Hint: Assholes ruin everything.

Another thing I learned while I was there was what makes a good team, and what working on a high-performing team not only looks and feels like but also what's needed to make that happen. Related to that, I also took a 6 month project management course, so I've learned how to actually get shit done.

Of course, due to the pandemic, that job went from fun and easy to brutal and overwhelming in short order. Helping people move to online commerce was nice. Helping close down their businesses because they couldn't continue anymore, not so nice. I was in contact with a lot of heartache for a while, and then after that, things just got really, really busy with no break.

Which meant I lost touch with the habits and practices that kept me in contact with other people. And realized I relied on those processes for friendships. Covid took away my "have friends" habits. Which means it also took away my fundamental process for practicing martial arts. And no shit, that's caused a sizeable chunk of trauma and is going to take some healing.

It also means I need to build new processes for myself for interacting with humans. A process that future pandemics can't sever. Not sure what form that will take, but obviously I'll need to get out of my comfort zone. Maybe TikTok. Ugh. I'm also building a daily writing-as-job process for myself, so some major life-changing going on here.

It's a good thing I have 50 years of experience with change. Gonna need to use everything I've learned.