137. A day in the life of a crazy entrepreneur

This post is a weird one. I don’t have a specific message to convey, a topic to discuss or a story to share. Instead, I just realised that it might be fun writing down what I’ve actually spent my day on. Not all my days are like this. In fact, very few are, but that’s because my days are pretty varied.

So, it’s not that this is a special day. It’s just a day.

But I’m going to share it nonetheless.

08.00

I woke up at 8.00, when the alarm clock went off. Since neither Marie nor I had any particular interest in getting out of bed at that time, I went back to sleep.

At a little past nine, I actually got up and started my day. Morning routines were taken care of, and by 9.35 I was on my bike headed for a 10.00 meeting.

Sadly, I realised that I needed half an hour to get there, so I called a taxi instead. Though it cost me money, the taxi got me to where I needed to go on time, and I arrived on location with at least thirty seconds to spare.

The next two hours were spent facilitating an idea brainstorm for Kultur Ama’r (Culture Amager). There’s a plan there to change how youths think about culture and their part of the city, and I’m happy that I’m part of getting that plane off the ground.

It was a fun two hours. We were twelve or thirteen people, if I counted correctly, and we talked about how to get young people to contribute with ideas for their city. At one point, I observed that it seemed that what we were most afraid of were the youngsters themselves, to which there was much rejoicing. I got complimented on my facilitation, and that’s always nice.

After that, my trusted iron steed (my bike) and I relocated a couple of miles. I managed to bike right past a pølsevogn (sausage wagon) without noticing it, even though I was searching for this exact phenomenon to grab some lunch.

A couple of cheese sausages and an unholy amount of onion later, I biked onwards to my destination — CfL (Center for Leadership). It was now 13.15.

13.30

After a quick pre-meeting, I sat down in a room with a round table and a huge lamp that smelled of expensive, modern design and together with two CfL people developed new concepts to offer to their members. We settled on doing a training day for ambitious 20-somethings who want to accelerate their career and put a session dealing with authenticity and decision-making in leadership in their catalogue.

Time passed fast, and at 14.45, we had to split up due to other commitments. Jesper had another meeting to attend, Linette had work to dive into, and I had a 15.00 meeting with a guy from Warner Bros Denmark. I almost made it, but managed to tell the crew at our office that I would be a little delayed, and if they could please let in my guest.

“He’s here already, waiting in the kitchen”, Sofie, the boss of our Danish division wrote on our office chat.

Claus (yeah, we were both Clauses in that meeting) had some ideas on how to use larp for TV purposes and wanted to make the initial overtures to see if we were interested in playing ball. We definitely were, and ideas were hatched.

One thing I’ve learned with TV is that there’s always a ton of stuff in development that never gets anywhere, so it’s silly to assume that a good first meeting means anything. Still, it was a good first meeting!

From there, I walked into a discussion about our national larp association. It was taking place in our hallway/library, and while spirited, was very constructive and relaxed. It was about money, services, futures and plans, but then again what talks about organisations aren’t?

After the others had said that I was no longer needed, our marketing boss, Olivier, pulled me out of that meeting, so he and I could work on a couple of our Dziobak Larp Studios web pages. Ticket launch is tomorrow, so if we wanted to make changes we’d better move fast.

The next couple of hours consisted of rebuilding two of our web pages from the ground up. I’m not a web designer in the traditional sense, but I have some experience with getting stuff done in little time, and here we also knew pretty much what we wanted.

19.00

There was even time for a dinner break at the local pizzeria. My spaghetti carbonara tasted great, and I got to chat with Olivier about both the past and the present. Unsurprisingly, it was mostly shop talk. The food was good, too.

Back to work on the second web page, and double-checking the first one for errors and inconsistencies. For that, I got some help from our web boss, who’s formally in charge of all Dziobak websites.

He wasn’t thrilled with all of my decisions on the new College of Wizardry website, and made his displeasure pretty clear. A phone call and some realigning of assumptions put that to rest, and while I banged away at the keyboard, getting some of his feedback implemented, he went back to playing Fairweather Manor in Poland.

Olivier had gone home earlier, so I was now alone at the office. It was now 22.30, and I didn’t have anything that required my immediate attention. Somewhere in there, I did a few short phone calls with Paul, who leads our Extraordinary Division.

We talked of a bank in Romania that wants us to do something wild for them, and looked at Professors for next year’s College of Extraordinary Experiences. He was also in a good mood, since he’d just found out that he’d be meeting our COEE Co-Founder Joe Pine in Saudi Arabia soon, for a summit that he’s been invited to.

I decided that I was going to write a blog post about the Road Trip larp (#10 of 15), but didn’t get started right away. Before I got to work on that, I had about an hour’s video chat with someone who’s dear to my heart, but lives on the wrong side of the Atlantic, which left me motivated and smiling.

The blog post flowed pretty naturally, and when it was done I could feel that I still had more writing in my fingers today. I didn’t really have anything particular that I wanted to write about, so I went off on a new tangent:

01.30

I’d write about my day.

In fact, that’s what I’m doing now.

It’s 02.15 (am) and since Marie’s not at home, it means that I’ll crash at the office. Writing about my day seems weirdly fitting, even if only very few people will want to read about it.

As I look at the chronological walkthrough of the day, I realise that there are many things that have happened that I can’t place without thinking hard. A short talk with a larp participant about expectations and responsibility at an upcoming event. Giving my partner in crime, Anders’ mother a hug, as she came by the office to have a talk with him. Writing instructions on a Design Document that needs to be edited to Edin, our Lead World Writer, who is busy running Fairweather Manor right now.

I’ve also managed to give advice on accommodation to a friend and business partner, who’s coming to Copenhagen early next year, thanked a close friend for taking the time to go for a walk with me yesterday and conducted a hasty instructional session with our talented graphics designer, Brent. Over the phone, while biking to the Warner Bros meeting. I was only a little late.

I’ve passed on information on next year’s Dziobak larp dates, so another friend can plan his larps knowing when ours are, answered a couple of mails from the famous archer, Lars Andersen, and had the privilege of watching an unreleased short film about youths from the “The Orcs Are Coming” project.

Then there’s the small, almost-insignificant details that make up a day’s office work. Forwarding a mail here, replying to a facebook thread there. Keeping up to date on our international company communication channel (we use slack) and putting a task in the work queue of our French graphics boss.

Add to that the two-minute-we’re-both-on-our-way-somewhere-else discussions, receiving the odd (but nice!) compliment from an employee who was in a good mood, and bathroom breaks to hold it all together.

Finally, before shutting off for the evening, I ended my day with the decision to do another round of LinkedIn endorsement hunting. Though I’ve spent most of my work life not caring about LinkedIn, I’m now in a position where more and more people find me there. So suddenly it makes sense to have those 99+ skills (or so I think — who knows if it’s useless?), but the easiest way to get endorsed is to poke people and offer reciprocity. Poke poke.

As I shut down the computer and go power up the office sofa, I can’t help but smile at the day I’ve had. It’s 2.32 am here, and I’ve been at work since around ten o’clock. That’s 14 hours, and while there have been breaks, they haven’t been many. My wife often jokes that I’m a workaholic, and truth be told it’s a joke rooted in solid layers of fact.

There’s definitely plenty of things that I’ve done today that I’ve forgotten all about already, and things I wanted to do that I didn’t find the time for.

Still, I’m feeling content.

02.36

Today has been a very good day.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

If you like my writing, and want to free up my time, to write more, you can do exactly that, by supporting me via Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/user?u=3351676

If you want to get into contact, you can find me at clausraasted.dk.