1. Dear Selfā€¦ Quit Your Job. Srsly.

    Posted by Shane Becker on

    Today Iā€™m 35 years old and Iā€™m quitting my job.

    Wait, what!?

    LA Ruby Conf 2012

    In 2012, I gave a talk at LA Ruby Conf called ā€œQuit Your Job. Srsly.ā€ It was not meant to be a metaphor. So, Iā€™m taking my own advice. Finally.

    G5

    Just as I predicted in the talk, I fell off the wagon and took a job again. Iā€™ve worked for the past two years at G5 after forming a team to build a new product. Iā€™ve accomplished (most of) what I set out to accomplish and itā€™s time to move on.

    Next

    Iā€™ve put off my own projects and dreams for too long. But enough already! Iā€™m pushing my chips to the center and going all in. Iā€™ve got to take a shot or else Iā€™ll never know.

    Projects

    Iā€™m making five things.

    Open Source Offsets

    Open Source Offsets is an open source foundation with the goal of paying people to work on open source. Simple. We need backers. Individuals, small shops, large companies.

    The Board of Directors is: Shane Becker (@veganstraightedge), Melissa Severini (@luckiestmonkey), Ian McFarland (@imf), Sarah Mei (@sarahmei) and Matt Kern (@lightcap).

    opensourceoffsets.org

    Homesteading

    Jessica Suttles and I have formed a company called Hypernova to build a personal publishing platform called Homesteading. Itā€™s all open source. If youā€™re interested, you can help us build it.

    homesteading.io

    All Attack, No Hold Back

    A magazine of radical politics aimed right at the heart of the tech community. I canā€™t talk about the writers that I have lined up yet, but Iā€™m very excited. With this, the kids gloves are coming off. Iā€™m coming out swinging.

    allattacknoholdback.com

    Farmhouse Publishing

    Iā€™ve started a small publishing house to put out some of my amazing friendsā€™ work. Photobooks. Novels. Cookbooks. And more. Iā€™ve published one book, so far. I have several more lined up.

    farmhouse.co/publishing

    Date Edge

    Bookis Smuin and I built a dating for straightedge people (though, not just straightedge people). There are nearly 3,000 people on the site. Weā€™re growing the site with more features and functionality, because we love Love.

    dateedge.com

    Help

    Iā€™m jumping off the edge of the cliff without a safety net. I have a little bit of nest egg, but not a ton of runway. I still have to pay rent, of course. So, I need these projects to start paying some of my bills sooner than later.

    If you like me or my ideas or projects and want to support me and and their development, hereā€™s you can help me out.

    1. Become an Open Source Offsets backer (any amount helps)
    2. Contribute to Homesteading, or hell, invest in Hypernova
    3. Help fund All Attack, No Hold Back
    4. Buy the Farmhouse Publishing book/s
    5. Advertise on Date Edge

    End

    Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

    RT @extinctsymbol: Anything else but a complete dismantling of the capitalist system is just going to be rearranging deckchairs: http://t.cā€¦

    This gif is like a campfire. I could watch it over and over forever. http://twitter.com/veganstraightedge/status/512363701542719488/photo/1

    Whoever was telling me a while back that Ninjutsu wasn't a real thing and that I was think of jiu-jitsu:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjutsu