Sam Hartman

Debianhas always been filled with people who want to make the world a better place. We consider the social implications of our actions. Many are involved in work that focuses on changing the world. I’ been hesitant to think too closely about how that applies to me: I fear being powerless to bring about the world in which I would like to live.

Recently though, I've been taking the time to dream. One day my wife came home and told another story of how she’d helped a client reduce their pain and regain mobility. I was envious. Every day she advances her calling and brings happiness into the world, typically by reducing physical suffering. What would it be like for me to find a job where I helped advance my calling and create a world where love could be more celebrated. That seems such a far cry from writing code and working on software design every day. But if I don’t articulate what I want, I'll never find it.

I’ve been working to start this journey by acknowledging the ways in which I already bring love into the world. One of the most important lessons of Venus’s path is that to bring love into the world, you have to start by leading a life of love. At work I do this by being part of a strong team. We’re there helping each other grow, whether it is people trying entirely new jobs or struggling to challenge each other and do the best work we can. We have each other’s back when things outside of work mean we're not at our best. We pitch in together when the big deadlines approach.

I do not shove my personal life or my love and spirituality work in people’s faces, but I do not hide it. I'm there as a symbol and reminder that different is OK. Because I am open people have turned to me in some unusual situations and I have been able to invite compassion and connection into how people thought about challenges they faced.

This is the most basic—most critical love work. In doing this I’m already succeeding at bringing love into the world. Sometimes it is hard to believe that. Recently I have been daring to dream of a job in which the technology I created also helped bring love into the world.

I'd love to find a company that's approaching the world in a love-positive, sex-positive manner. And of course they need to have IT challenges big enough to hire someone who is world class at networking, security and cloud architecture. While I'd be willing to take a pay cut for the right job, I'd still need to be making a US senior engineer's salary.

Actually saying that is really hard. I feel vulnerable because I’m being honest about what I want. Also, it feels like I’m asking for the impossible.

Yet, the day after I started talking about this on Facebook, OkCupid posted a job for a senior engineer. That particular job would require moving to New York, something I want to avoid. Still, it was reassuring as a reminder that asking for what you want is the first step.

I doubt that will be the only such job. It's reasonable to assume that as we embrace new technologies like blockchains and continue to appreciate what the evolving web platform standards have to offer, there will be new opportunities. Yes, a lot of the adult-focused industries are filled with corruption and companies that use those who they touch. However, there's also room for approaching intimacy in a way that celebrates desire, connection, and all the facets of love.

And yes, I do think sexuality and desire are an important part of how I’d like to promote love. With platforms like Facebook, Amazon and Google, it's easier than ever for people to express themselves, to connect, and if they are willing to give up privacy, to try and reach out and create. Yet all of these platforms have increasingly restrictive rules about adult content. Sometimes it’s not even intentional censorship. My first post about this topic on Facebook was marked as spam probably because some friends suggested some businesses that I might want to look at. Those businesses were adult-focused and apparently even positive discussion of such businesses is now enough to trigger a presumption of spam.

If we aren't careful, we're going to push sex further out of our view and add to an ever-higher wall of shame and fear. Those who wish to abuse and hurt will find their spaces, but if we aren't careful to create spaces where sex can be celebrated alongside love, those seedier corners of the Internet will be all that explores sexuality. Because I'm willing to face the challenge of exploring sexuality in a positive, open way, I think I should: few enough people are.

I have no idea what this sort of work might look like. Perhaps someone will take on the real challenge of creating content platforms that are more decentralized and that let people choose how they want content filtered. Perhaps technology can be used to improve the safety of sex workers or eventually to fight shame associated with sex work. Several people have pointed out the value of cloud platforms in allowing people to host whatever service they would choose. Right now I’m at the stage of asking for what I want. I know I will learn from the exploration and grow stronger by understanding what is possible. And if it turns out that filling my every day life with love is the answer I get, then I’ll take joy in that. Another one of the important Venus lessons is celebrating desires even when they cannot be achieved.

I was in such a different place at the beginning of 2016: I was poised to continue to work to help the world find love. Professionally, I was ready to make a much needed transition and find new projects to work on.

The year 2016 sucked. It feels like the year was filled with many different versions of the universe saying "Not interested in what you have to offer." At the beginning of the year, I had the energy to try and reach across large disagreements and help find common ground even when compromise was not possible. Now, my blog lies fallow because I cannot find the strength to be vulnerable enough to write what I would choose to say. Certainly a lot of the global changes of the last year have felt like a strong rejection of the world I'd like to see. However, many of the rejections have been personal. Beyond that, most of the people who stood as pillars of support in my life, together helping me find the strength to be vulnerable, are no longer available.

When the universe sends such strong messages, it's a good idea to ask whether you are on the right path. I certainly have discovered training I need and things I need to improve in order to avoid making costly mistakes that hurt others. However, among the rejections were clear demonstrations of the value of reaching out with love and compassion. Besides, this is what I'm called to do. It's what I want to do. I certainly will not force it on anyone. But it looks like the next few years may be a hard struggle to find pockets of people interested in that work, finding people who will choose love even in the current world, along with some difficult training to learn from challenges of the last year.

Amongst all this, my life if filled with love. There are new connections even as old connections are strained. There is always the hope of finding new ways to connect when the old ones are no longer right. I will rebuild and regain safety. I have the tools to do that. The process is just long and complicated.

I was talking about the last half of 2011 with bouncingleaf last night. One quick conclusion: I had a busy 2011. And really it was a good year.

I think work is the biggest success of 2011. I've long had a goal of establishing a lifestyle company with close friends that would be fun to work for and that would be doing interesting things. The goal would be to be successful without being so driven by success that we fail to have fun. For me at least, I think Painless Security is well along that path. I'm enjoying working with Margaret and Kevin; they are doing great work and our clients are happy. There are opportunities to turn some of our consulting into products and that would be great. I'm not sure Margaret and Kevin are as happy as I am. One of the goals for 2012 is going to be to make sure that we're all enjoying ourselves and to try and tune things so that's true.

I've started to think about spirituality and to some extent religion this year. I've had some really wonderful experiences. It's great to have lots of new things to think about on that front.

For me at least, one of the ways to judge how stable something is and how important it is is to watch how people respond to challenges. This year has given me increased confidence in the strength of my relationship with mrw42. Both of us have gone to significant lengths to address some concerns that came up. I think it's really wonderful that our relationship is able to survive both when times are great and when there are challenges. I also am very pleased that we continue to learn and grow together. We've had some great times this year. We had a great get away for our anniversary early this month and we had a wonderful Christmas with our family. I continue to be amazed that I have someone as wonderful as Margaret in my life!
Things are very exciting on other parts of the relationship front as well.

Being a parent continues to be a wonderful experience. It's neat to watch Zoe grow and to watch the complexity of her play increase so much. She reminds me so much of myself..

This year was also filled with friends. I had an opportunity to get together with chardin several times. It's always wonderful when we can connect together. I got to see several groups of other friends in Austin, Germany and California; it was wonderful.

I'm really looking forward to 2012.

Yesterday was the five year anniversary of mrw42 and my commitment to spend our lives together. Five years ago we were in a hotel in Austin at the end of a visit to friends there. Margaret knew that I was looking at making some changes in my relationships; she was concerned about what I wanted to do. She was delighted to learn that I'd realized I always wanted her and my life and I was overjoyed to learn that she left the same way. Shortly before we had to leave Austin, we discussed when we wanted to actually make a commitment to each other. There's no time like the present and lacking any reason to delay, we made a commitment then. She'd already talked to Kevin about how she felt and about the possibility of making a commitment. We didn't have much time to celebrate: Margaret needed to catch a plane for a business trip and I was staying in Austin. I spent the rest of the day bubbling over with joy inside while trying to focus on a difficult conversation with a friend and later on designing some extensions to IPsec.

That began (or perhaps continued) what has been a five-year journey of wonder and exploration. We worked to understand what our commitment meant to each other and then braced ourselves for the reactions of others. For the most part the reaction of our friends and loved ones started a wonderful trend: when you approach those you care about with happiness and joy, they reflect it back! We were nervous about how people would take things, but for the most part people had a few questions and then shared our happiness and joy. Not everyone has been comfortable with our relationship, but things have gone much more smoothely than expected.

A year later we were ready to stand in front of our friends and profess our love and commitment to each other. Again, we were nervous about how tha would go. We spent a lot of time exploring what it meant to us, and comparing it to other things. That was valuable for us, but it was yet another example that for the most part, openness, honesty and happiness works.

A year later our relationship continued to grow as we decided to have a baby together. Having Zoe and having Margaret as the mother of my child are two of the best things in my life.

For me, these five years have been an important growing experience as I've learned what it's been like to be part of a family, to be a father and to support your lovers through their life. Especially recently, I am appreciating how wonderful it is to have Margaret as a friend. I've always known that for myself, but over the last year I've gotten to watch her as she's been a wonderful friend to other people she cares deeply about. That's given me a new appreciation for how lucky I am!

Things have been rough at times. There's been a lot to learn and a lot to adjust to. I'm still struggling to figure out what I want and how to balance time. However, right now, I couldn't be happier. Throughout our relationship I've had the kind of deep love that truly allows people to grow beyond themselves. I look forward to the years to come.

Last week I was in Austin with a bunch of former Fundsxpress people celebrating the resolution of some issues surrounding the sell of FX to First data. It was a wonderful trip: I saw David and lasofia of course, also with Zane, Charles, Gregg, Cote, mhat and a few others. For various reasons, Jay, Arley and John Burns were not able to make it. However I've been working with the three of them lately.

Predictably, there was a lot of talk about getting the company back together. Well, at least getting the people back together on some new project. I was quite impressed with how successful all these people have been since FX. No one has been financially successful to the "never work again" scale or anything like that. However, all of us seem to have reached a high degree of excellence within our chosen fields. It's wonderful to see the depth of discussion whether it is a business or technical topic. For a bunch of high school students who didn't understand databases, version control, or object oriented programming, we've come a long way! Secondly, a lot of the people are working as consultants or the like.

As I mentioned, I have recently worked with John, Jay and Arley. It was a great feeling. I'm certainly one of the people who would love to see overlap in what I do and what other members of the former team did. However it's hard. Anything that happens is likely to be incremental at first: one or two of us working on a project. There are a lot of challenges to growing something like that. You need a project big enough to fund a bunch of senior people. You need something that is interesting enough to everyone. Still, it seems an interesting challenge.

To illustrate the sorts of challenges, Jay, Arley and I worked together on one project. There's a strong desire to work together again. However we're having a significant amount of difficulty understanding what it would men to join forces. Ignore finding the financial side for a moment. We're even having trouble figuring out how in a repeatable sense it would be meaningful for us all to be on the same team.

Austin was also great socially. I saw a number of people and had a wonderful time.

We're back from vacation. Over the next month my primary job is taking care of Zoe. That means that I'll be spending much less time around the computer than I normally do and so may be fairly slow to respond to email or LJ. Over vacation I didn't read email once other than to pick out a few messages I was expecting. So I'm at least a week behind on everything. Cell phone or SMS is the only reliable way to get a fast response from me over the next month.

I'm looking forward to the Austin trip mid month.

It's been a while since I had time to write about what's going on in my life. Work has been taking up a lot of time. Some of the time I used to have to write here is going into Painless Security.

Things are going about as well as they possibly could. Christmas was wonderful. Owen has been very excited by the toys he got; Rachel and the other kids had a good Christmas as well. As a family we had a lot of chance to spend time together and to play and have fun. Chris and Owen seemed to have a great time Christmas day playing with nerf darts that my parents got Owen and a Wii that I got Owen and Rachel.

I'm spending enough time with the kids and Kevin that I'm beginning to build strong connections with them. This transition has been wonderful for me. It's no longer a relationship between Margaret and I on the side of her family. Instead, I feel that I'm truly part of that family and the complex web of family relationships is shifting to make room for me; we are all changing and growing closer. I had no idea how wonderful this would turn out to be for me. I think we're all looking forward to Zoe's arrival. Things are starting to come together in terms of getting ready for her. Emotionally I'm anticipating what it will be like to be a parent. I'm nervous of course but also incredibly excited at the opportunity.

Living in North Andover is working well. I like the space; I like Kevin and Margaret's house. So far the distance from the city has not been a huge problem for me. However I've been busy moving in, preparing for Christmas and traveling. I haven't really had a need to get into Boston much. I'm still nervous about how I will maintain a social life and continue to meet people; I will talk more about that in a future post.

I was in Austin the Columbus day weekend. It was truly wonderful. I got together with Arley and John Burns for lunch Friday. I had not seen them in a while. You can tell things are going well for John; he's scheming again thinking of how to turn his company into something really big. He was very excited about some upcoming news. I then went to Odd Friday. Of course, it was mhatless, and that was sad, but there were a lot of wonderful people there.

Spent Saturday with David and Sofia and with another friend later. Then, Sunday, I drove down to San Antonio with my parents. We got together with a high school friend of mine (Max) and his family. My parents had not seen Max in years. We all had a good time. His oldest child decided that my job was to wrestle with him and carry him around. It was fun.

January is almost over and I have not yet found time to comment on 2006. So, I'll do that.

2006 was the year when everything became moreso. The trends of happiness, being busy, and development of me as a person continued. I popped out of a couple of shells I didn't even know I was in at work, taking control of several projects and really establishing myself in a leadership position within MIT. My new boss came along and expected me to just be able to do things I'd never done before. He didn't know I'd never done them, so I tried and it worked out reasonably well.

I'm back to living alone again. I think I've done that long enough that I could go back to having roomates; I may do so to save money and for companionship.

I've written a lot about Margaret this year. I'll continue that in the future: when you have something that makes you that happy it needs to be shared.

Really, though, 2006 was a year when things that were already in motion continued to move along and define themselves. The 2007-2008 combination is probably going to be different. I'm not sure where the line is going to be, but I expect the next two years to help me define my plan for a lot of long-term career goals, where I want to live, nd a couple of other important things. I think it will be a fun ride.