The personal blog of Ben Blain, his thoughts and flaws as a human.
My Startup Work:
We’re going to talk about trauma.
I experience a ptsd response every so often and I don’t know why; it’s unclear what triggers it. Sometimes it’s progress. Sometimes it’s failure. Sometimes it’s nothing that I can identify.
The wave will come back and swamp me, plunge me back down to the bottom of the ocean. To the abyssal plateau.
Down there it feels dark and distant – entombed in the past. Usually the best thing to do is nothing. Just keep breathing. Practice acceptance, practice perspective, choose kind ways because the anxiety is terrible.
It’s hard not to snap at people, or sound pessimistic. So I wear the mask of myself for a little bit, knowing it will pass.
Then little by little… through dimples of sunlight in the morning… on bike rides… by making someone a cup of tea… I swim back to the surface. First to the mesopelagic, then to the epipelagic, and then (do you feel it?) breaking through once more! Back to this reality.
Surfacing is always followed by this nova of empathy, that rush of creativity, and a reaffirming of life. I don’t know why.
I don’t why we have to dive, back down, at random intervals – but I’m beginning to accept that it is part of it (the healing).
Years ago I went to counselling for my trauma, and it was so intense I couldn’t do anything else. I now see that once a week was too much, I could never make it back to the surface in time.
For reasons unknown my body, my brain, know that I have to dive anyway. But I do get to surface with the sun on my face, and a heart full of treasure.
In this way you never stop understanding how it feels for people to be anxious. How it feels to be ill, desperate, or alone. Isolated and under immense pressure, shivering in the darkness. That is quite a gift, if you think about it.
Being Human is a deep thing.
To plumb the depths of human experience sometimes means to dive into the Kermadec trench.
19 March 2025, in the sunlight.
I’ve been struggling to finish this entry since January, but I have a handle on it now.
Certain people wield powerful leverages on an unimaginable scale, all through the grace of systems. That alone isn’t greatness because powerful people tend to act up and cause ruin.
No, the greatest leverage action is something that is simple, complex, and never a waste of time. It’s called understanding.
Things worth understanding:
- Your dog.
- Your environment.
- The systems that shape you.
- The cultures that protect those systems.
- How to make a loved one smile.
- Why AI can’t pour wine.
- Why you are doing.
- Yourself.
12 March 2025, Curled up on the rug.
Piko the dog (Peek-oh) loves it when I ride my pedal-bike.
Her eyes shine, sleek weasel-body wriggling with excitement, and she leaps about in joy. Her last home took her running with the bike, in a special harness connected to a sprung boom off the axle.
Grinding home up the crunching driveway, she waltzes over and pop-pops her head up into my palm. She is hoping. Hoping in the patient way only dogs, distant lovers, and the oppressed can hope.
With every wriggle she is telling me, “I’m really glad you had a nice ride Ben, but next time maybe take me too, won’t you please? I surely would love that, and I’ll be very good, if I may go running swiftly beside your bicycle.”
Oh Piko! Every time you break my heart! How can I show you I am just temporary, an unequipped pack-animal, when faced with your eternal hope?
Even by dogsonification: I can’t.
So instead I tell her she is good. I massage her brow, rub her chest, thump her flank reassuringly. I want desperately for her to feel the joy of a bike-run, to keep that hope alive, because the memory is her heart’s treasure.
23 February 2025, a dog nose.
In 2012 I was sitting, dumbfounded and panicked, in a small class that taught a notorious theoretical math paper. For 40 minutes my lecturer had filled three enormous blackboards with arcane figures, equations, and proofs: the sources of my dumbfounding.
But I didn’t feel panicked until he paused and said “and so, obviously the answer is…”
I don’t remember the answer, but I do remember sitting bolt upright to scan the room. How many lost like me were there? About a quarter of the class.
I was wracked with doubt and inadequacy, “was that really obvious?” and “if that was obvious, I must be far too dumb for this paper.” Reflecting (much later and with more self-knowledge) I realised it may have been a flex, or knowledge bias, or a teacher’s bad habit of using “obviously” incorrectly. It didn’t matter; my confidence was approaching zero.
In reality nothing is obvious, especially the first time round. Truth is stranger than fiction and as technology advances, the stranger it gets.
Nothing is obvious is my mantra. It is the name of my business – now in our 9th year of putting handles on ungraspables. It is my default starting point and my reminder that progress is best discovered along the way of doing.
Fingers in the soil. Listening deeper than preconceptions. Walking someone else’s journey. White-belt mentality. Digesting hard truths and asking for seconds. Building belief with evidence. Sitting in community with respect and generosity. Then…
Discovery!
21 February 2025, Hihi.