What the hell is Andy Fossett doing now?

As of right now, Andy Fossett lives in Tokyo and spends most of his time working on GMB and teaching Taido.

🗓️ Here’s what’s up right now:

  • 🎧 Listening to: I’ve been listening to this album by Ben Kenney, who was a member of Incubus. It’s a short album and falls somewhere in the “alternative rock” category, but each track has something surprising going on – maybe a strange guitar sound or an unorthodox arrangement… Definitely worth a listen. Nice for putting on your headphones and taking a walk.
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  • 📖 Reading: There’s nothing new going on here. I’ve reread some Chuck Palahniuk and Margaret Atwood novels I enjoy. Otherwise, I’ve been going to bed earlier instead of reading, which I guess is what I need right now…
  • 🥋 Taido: We’ve decided to go ahead with planning to actually hold our World Championships next year in Sydney. This was planned for a couple of years ago, but we’ve obviously had to postpone things. Australia has opened their borders, vaccines are widely available, and it’s time to get things moving again. Dates are tentatively set for the last week of March 2023! I can’t wait. I’ll also be doing some black belt promotions in a few weeks in Atlanta (see below), which is always exciting.
  • 📈 Work: It’s been a rough couple of months with some big changes at Google and Facebook affecting the way new people find us, but we have some very exciting things in the works, and our community growth has been very fulfilling. In a few days, we’re launching an experiment with ads on Smart TVs (like the ones you see on Hulu, for example), which has been fun to work on.
  • 👨‍👩‍👧 Family: The Girl is just about to wrap up 3rd grade, which feels crazy fast. At the same time, it’s been over two years since she visited the US or saw my folks, which we’re hoping to address this summer. We’ve been focusing a lot on our heath – taking care of routine stuff like dentists and physicals and also looking at small changes at home like what we keep in our kitchen and use for cleaning. I got my sinuses singed to reduce sensitivity to pollen, for one example. None of this is really exciting, but we’re trying to make use of this time we’re not traveling much to handle the stuff we usually tell ourselves we’re too busy to do.
  • 🎙️ Yapping: I normally wouldn’t include this if I hadn’t just mentioned family, but a few weeks ago, I was on a podcast taking about fatherhood, a topic on which I’m definitely no expert. Still the discussion went to some profound and interesting areas, so if you’re into pods, you can listen to it.
  • 🎸 Music: Almost exactly 20 years ago, I finally received my Klein Electric. It took over a year to have made, and I bought it using money from my grandmother’s life insurance. It was my dream to own one, and it’s my more precious physical possession. So where do you go for maintenance on something like that? Well, I found a shop not too far from home that seemed well regarded, and it turns out that the owner is actually good friends with the guy who made the guitar in the first place. I’m feeling lucky to know it’s in good hands and can’t wait to get it back in a couple of week.

🧰 Things I’m finding useful:

  • ✅ I was looking through old email receipts for some work stuff and discovered that I’ve been using the Things app from Cultured Code for twelve years now. That’s pretty amazing since I use it to organize my entire life. It’s always on my phone’s homescreen and permanently open on the left side of my computer screen and just constantly, solidly keeping important shit in front of my face.

✈️ Travel (is a thing again!)

  • 🍑 Planning to be in Atlanta for a couple of weeks – probably the first and third weeks of April.
  • 🌵 In between, I’ll be attending Baby Bathwater in Cabo San Lucas.