101 - On "Season 2" of Zengineering

Kerp (00:05.774)
Let's do a podcast.

TBJ (00:07.671)
Let's do it.

Kerp (00:10.286)
Hey, everybody, it's this engineering podcast. I'm Adam. Welcome back for another Hang in the Laboratory. It's been like five years.

TBJ (00:13.293)
I'm Brian.

TBJ (00:18.787)
Welcome everybody.

It's been a long time with a few random episodes thrown in here and there.

Kerp (00:27.01)
Yeah, I dropped one about Star Trek that I just did on a random weekend because we had recorded it back in 2020. And then we did like an emergency episode on AI because I started playing with chat GPT.

TBJ (00:33.612)
It occurs to me.

TBJ (00:37.433)
An emergency AI episode. It's like the other episodes just were waiting for that technology to drop. I don't think I've listened to the Star Trek episode, awkwardly.

Kerp (00:45.036)
Yeah.

Kerp (00:50.272)
It's good. It's a love letter to Commander Data that I think you would appreciate. Yeah.

TBJ (00:53.421)
I've listened to the old ones. So that's my afternoon. After we record this, I'll listen to myself talking for an hour.

Kerp (00:58.025)
Kerp (01:01.922)
But at least as far as we're concerned and have talked about regarding the project for a number of reasons that we'll get into as we dig in here, we're back for season two. We're calling it season two, I don't know, whatever it is. The first season was 100 episodes. We did over five year period from 2015 to 2020-ish.

TBJ (01:15.8)
You

TBJ (01:25.987)
That sounds right.

Kerp (01:27.2)
We also did a podcast for work called the data-driven marketer for like a, for like a year in there. There's a bunch of episodes of that. We kind of professionalized it to an extent. it did numbers.

TBJ (01:31.521)
yeah, I forgot about that.

That was good, wasn't it?

Kerp (01:42.466)
I can tell you that from the metrics.

TBJ (01:44.565)
It did numbers. Is that an academic term?

Kerp (01:48.014)
but we know it's more like a shithead Hollywood term. good ratings. no, we got downloads. I can see in the analytics that it had some level of traction with the people we were trying to reach, which is what you want out of a marketing property.

TBJ (01:51.513)
Ha ha ha ha.

TBJ (02:08.856)
Fantastic.

Kerp (02:13.026)
But I guess the big biggest thing is probably personally, find ourselves in a situation where this project has continued to come up. We're not, it started from a place of these conversations happen between us constantly. just sort of for years downgraded to an Apple note, a note in the notes app where every once in a while I'd be like, we could do a killer 45 minutes on the importance of like bags and pouches.

TBJ (02:31.705)
Ha

Kerp (02:42.19)
You know, like I put a note down.

TBJ (02:42.386)
Ha ha ha ha

or fitness trackers like the thread we had the other day.

Kerp (02:49.654)
Yeah, so then,

So we find ourselves here sort of a personal context where we have the time and the energy and the space and maybe our kids are just old enough. I don't know what's at play exactly, but here we are.

TBJ (03:02.137)
No offense to the kids, but I think that was why we paused the first time, right? We both had babies and turns out babies are time consuming and energy consuming.

Kerp (03:09.644)
Yeah, it just-

Kerp (03:14.55)
Yeah, there's a delightful but tiring black hole there for a few years, to be sure.

TBJ (03:24.119)
My baby's now four. How old are your babies?

Kerp (03:27.31)
four and then twins that are 19 months now.

TBJ (03:31.609)
All right. So you're still in the dark tunnel a little bit.

Kerp (03:36.29)
Yeah, a little bit, but my professional context has put me in a place where Zengineering gets to live again, which we'll get to in a minute as a tease.

TBJ (03:43.457)
Okay. Yeah, my tunnel is rapidly expanding. Like I've got small Legos all over the floor, which is a good thing. Some people think that's a bad thing. I think it's a great thing.

Kerp (03:52.364)
Yeah. no, me too on that side. and the Legos are in front of the bookcase where all the comics are. So it was just piles of comics, which is also fun.

TBJ (04:00.725)
Excellent. Yep. I've got role playing books out there. We've been playing this great little adventure cave game. Bodhi kicked my butt in it the other night.

Kerp (04:12.93)
But so we'll get to some of the professional contexts.

But we thought first we would start from just the thing of, or I don't know. Yeah. You, how you, how, well, the way one of these episodes usually would start is I would say, how you doing, man?

TBJ (04:29.933)
Ha

TBJ (04:33.731)
Well, that's kind of what we decided the whole episode was going to be, I think, right?

Kerp (04:36.704)
Yeah. So it's a different one. do you want to talk first about your, should we do professional stuff first, or should we talk about, you know, like what season one was and how season two is going to be different?

TBJ (04:50.745)
don't think anyone really cares what I do professionally. They just wanna hear our sweet, tasty jams.

Kerp (04:54.189)
Yeah, that's fair.

Kerp (04:58.616)
Well, you were, we were, we, we, we already talked about the other podcasts, right? We were working together at a startup that startup was acquired. Then you went to work at another startup. Now you have a lot of free time. Yeah, but not in any kind of way to, to worry about. That's the cool thing about having successful startups. Sometimes you get a cushion to figure out the next thing. I use my cushion to become a professor at the university of Virginia.

TBJ (05:11.097)
There's been a lot of changes. But yeah, I got time now, because I want to do some fun things.

TBJ (05:21.657)
You get a little time.

Kerp (05:28.63)
teaching entrepreneurship. also the assistant director of student entrepreneurship now, which creates a really cool context where my job is literally to make content like part of my job is to make content like engineering. So

TBJ (05:34.242)
fit.

TBJ (05:41.037)
mean, all teaching is making content, right? It's like the OG social network. That's not a good analogy. It's definitely show business, a lot of performance. The best classes had tons of performance in them, whether it was from the students or the teachers. yeah, no, got free time. I'm fun employed. So I'm taking a little break for myself. I have not taken more than probably a two week break in like 20 years.

Kerp (05:47.522)
Get show business. It's for sure show business. Yeah.

TBJ (06:10.839)
which I guess that's what you're supposed to do is like an American professional, but that sounds really stupid saying it out loud. So, I'm going to, was going to take some, take some time off after my last role, I jumped into something that was really super cool. didn't last super long. and now I'm going to, I'm just going to like be healthy and very specifically, I'll tell you very specifically what my, my goal is right now. It's to identify the things about myself, that need to be.

Kerp (06:17.038)
You

TBJ (06:39.661)
that are like unhealthy that I generally think are because I have a job, but actually are because of me underlying like as a being. And I think it's turning out pretty quickly that almost all of those things I blame on jobs are actually just me, me problems. Anxiety is about my time, like anxiety, basically performance anxiety of all different kinds. I don't, I've never had a formal panic attack, I don't think.

Kerp (06:54.446)
Yeah. Do you get panic attacks yet?

Kerp (07:03.278)
I started having formal panic attacks. That's what sent me on the journey, the journey of discovery you've just described most recently.

TBJ (07:06.361)
Hahaha

I think I channel the energy of my pending panic attacks into production of strange things pretty well.

Kerp (07:18.508)
I did, I did that as long as my body could take, I think. And then I started having physiological reactions. And I, what I've realized that helps me with it. How did we end up talking about panic attacks? That was not in the notes. but I realized like it's the sports background I have. And the funny thing is it got worse when I came back to UVA, I think because of like physiological reaction to being back in a place where the last time I was there,

TBJ (07:43.513)
Kerp (07:48.012)
I was consistently possessed of an energy where on any given Saturday, a gun was going to go off and I had to sprint as fast as I possibly could for a period of time. Like my body doesn't know when the race has started anymore. And every once in a while it's like, we're going. I gotta be like, Nope, Nope, Nope.

TBJ (07:55.673)
Cool.

TBJ (08:04.355)
Boy, without context of that being a sport, just having a gun go off and having to sprint is like a real gnarly situation.

Kerp (08:11.086)
To be fair, it was a beep. They call it the gun because it used to be a gun, but it's a beep.

TBJ (08:15.673)
That's a good point. Yeah, it's very much like a pleasant little engineered beep sound. It's like an apple beep. Beep beep.

Kerp (08:19.438)
Yeah, it's engineered to cut through the noise of a crowd.

so anyway, that has resulted in this engineering energy, right? Like you're texting me about 3d printing and, rubber flooring in your garage. Cause you're working on projects. And I have a job where I can answer you because I'm in an office mostly waiting for students to show up in case they have questions about the material and things like that, which is awesome also. but there's another layer. So.

TBJ (08:30.977)
Well, I never had.

Ha ha.

TBJ (08:38.029)
I'm, I'm deep in hobby space right now. I'm actually trying.

Kerp (08:56.194)
We should talk about the, the, the, really the future that makes this concrete, at least for me, to the extent of like putting up the production effort to make it come out again is, we're, we're, we're possibly going to find a way to make this financially. Make like, I have an opportunity because of the new position to look at sponsored content and like, well, the reality is engineering is good and has been successful. We.

professionalized it in one context and it worked again. So now we're looking at, okay, can season two be the same sort of explorations that we like to do, but about business and entrepreneurship related things. And the answer is absolutely yes. All of our previous content is in the context of startup life because it's what we live. it's so, so far conversations are looking good. Uh, so that's cool.

TBJ (09:43.545)
for sure.

Yeah, I doubt there was an episode where we didn't. Yeah.

Kerp (09:52.246)
I literally get to do it for my job, but also we maybe get production expenses. You know, it's academic level stuff here. We'll maybe get our expenses covered in case anyone's worried that that means we've sold out. It's a nonprofit project still.

TBJ (09:55.757)
Well, it's fun to have.

TBJ (10:05.305)
It's fun to have some purpose around artistic projects.

Kerp (10:11.31)
We're gonna have to orange and blue it up a little bit, but that's okay.

TBJ (10:16.119)
Well, we're in team colors today. I'm just not sure whose teams they are. We're in red and flesh tone with black, red, black and flesh tone.

Kerp (10:20.874)
Yeah, well, there's a lot of teams, algorithmically, someone probably, the commanders, I suppose, today.

TBJ (10:29.187)
Well, a thought I have all the time, because I'm regularly dealing with my own creative anxiety, is like, what's the point of the creative thing I'm thinking about or working on or wanting to build and make? having purpose behind it is what makes creativity and art meaningful, right? I, regardless of actually having time from job change recently, I started playing Dungeons and Dragons like three months ago, maybe, and it just...

immediately spiraled into like every single thing I ever did as a kid, plus all the new modern technology, like AI on top of it, 3D modeling, like painting miniatures, building scenery. And I'd started chasing all these other avenues. And so like this energy came back that I like knew it was under there, obviously, right? We used to talk about D &D all the time, but like it exploded. I like barfed out of all holes, like kid creative energy again. And so it just, that like is this engineering energy for me. It's like,

Kerp (11:00.293)
Hahaha

Kerp (11:06.157)
Right.

TBJ (11:27.959)
What was that like, there was so much purpose around the silliest things. Like I would build little building bunkers for orcs to hide in, but we'd like build table scenery. And then we had a group of friends who'd come play games at a table for like a whole afternoon. Like there was so much purpose in that. And that brought so much fun energy and just enabled all this creativity to go somewhere that mattered more than me. So that's what I think we're trying to chase again here is.

Kerp (11:55.384)
Yeah, I had a note somewhere that's not amongst my Post-its, but like it was, it's, it's about you personally, as a person that I've, you know, done this project with, but have known as long as I've known you, like you're better at the practice of that enthusiasm. And I say it that way specifically, like I think that level of

Like the idea that that happens because you're a jaded elder and you've seen too much life is not what it actually is. It's a problem of practice. Life does push you in the direction of like, okay, I got to look at the Doomer perspective because that's the scary one. But if you don't practice going to the other side and saying, yeah, but I'll look at what it could do about anything. Then like

TBJ (12:38.711)
Yes it does.

Kerp (12:50.51)
what you're squashing is exactly that part of you that you just described that like at a certain age doesn't know any better. So it's just like, oh, we can build this thing and that thing and our friends will come over and play us. Oh, it's gonna work. This is gonna be so great. Right. And like, if you don't practice that flexing that muscle, then it atrophies.

TBJ (12:58.05)
Yeah.

TBJ (13:03.053)
Ha

Well, the funny, I bought a thread. Yeah, it atrophies 100%. I think to a big extent, I have my mom to thank for that flexing of that muzzle. I vividly have many memories of her just being like, be excited about stuff. she would point things out. She'd like, I don't know why this person is being negative about this thing. It's super fun and super cool. Like do it, keep doing it. Just tons of encouragement and positivity and.

Happy enthusiasm. So, you you gotta keep the stoke. Sounded so dumb.

Kerp (13:39.586)
And it, and look, it's a thing that like, and this I have, so this is one of the other things about the position I'm in now, like I get invited to speak at things, which is cool, like locally, but again, this is why I big move out of big city.

TBJ (13:49.368)
Yeah.

TBJ (13:53.016)
Ha ha.

Kerp (13:58.434)
But it's caused me to think about a lot of that sort of stuff. I think like it reflecting on even my sports career, like I wanted to celebrate when I had good performance, but I had something kind of hold me back. And I wish that I hadn't it's I have a running joke with Emily that I'm dead inside, but it's based on just this idea of like, I don't, my impulse to celebrate was always just like, boop, you know, fist pump, get onto the next one. Right. And like,

TBJ (14:18.201)
Dark joke.

Kerp (14:28.322)
I occasionally like, I, was, this came up in a talk. That's why I mentioned it recently. think back on that and I regret that I wasn't more enthusiastic, like effusively enthusiastic about the whole thing. But it was, but there was, you know, the brain circuitry wasn't right yet. So I don't think back on it, but I do now feel like it's still a thing that like, I feel that resistance around outward enthusiasm and I have to practice not being that way, which makes it feel fake.

TBJ (14:31.833)
Interesting.

TBJ (14:54.787)
Mmm.

Kerp (14:58.264)
which then gets me to this like philosophical idea of like Pascal's wager, which is like the thing he's on to there is there's just things you have to practice or the atrophy. Does that, does that get you to the belief in God, which is what he was talking about? I don't know. But like his idea was no, just pretend to believe it. And eventually that will turn into real belief. You just have to fake that you're stoked about things. And then magically one day you realize you're actually stoked about everything.

TBJ (14:58.932)
Yeah.

TBJ (15:18.145)
Everything's that way.

TBJ (15:22.115)
Yeah.

TBJ (15:25.625)
Yeah, every everything works that way. Wait, I want to dig a little deeper into your cause I think you hit on something that I have to maybe we can turn this into just a general therapy episode. The lack of like feeling like celebrating you were talking about like your own successes, right? Like you want a tournament or something. You're like, I'm not going to celebrate. Like I got to just let me just stay focused and keep grinding. I got to win the next one. Right. That kind of attitude. I feel that I don't like celebrating things. Birthdays are coming to mind. I'm like, I don't want the attention.

Kerp (15:28.354)
You know? Yeah.

Kerp (15:35.224)
Sure.

Kerp (15:40.119)
Yeah.

Kerp (15:47.65)
Yeah.

TBJ (15:55.041)
I just want to, I just want to let's be calm. Let's be, let's not spend the money on a cake. Like that kind of thing.

Kerp (16:01.664)
Yeah. I think some of it for me is stereotypically male cultural, like, emotional repression. but also there's a lot of like, I'm very goal oriented and, I'm, you know, like a project manager and like on a lot of levels for a lot of the things that would constitute victories, including the swimming and stuff. Like.

TBJ (16:09.486)
Hmm.

TBJ (16:13.475)
Yeah, there's a lot of that.

Kerp (16:32.888)
For some of them, there was still a lot of pain left to come. And so there's a little bit of just like, okay, yeah, we'll celebrate when we get to the big one. We got to go to the next workout to try to get faster than that because we're not there yet. which I'm not sure that serves necessarily, but at the time it felt like appropriate focus on whatever. But even so, like that applies to other things in life where it's just sort of like, like even when I was working on movies and stuff.

One of the things I learned that I talk about often is that we should have the wrap party like a few weeks after we finish the thing, because the last shoot day of a thing like that, everyone's exhausted and they hate the project just from like physical weariness. And then you're like, and we're all going to meet at a bar. And yes, there are sloppy fun times, but like, nobody really wants to, know, and it just. So we would instead like.

TBJ (17:23.639)
Yeah, nobody wants to go to that. Certainly not guys in their 40s. They want to go home.

Kerp (17:30.946)
Pay for the crew to go to Vegas three weeks later and meet at a hotel or something. And that was much greater success. so some of it is that right. You weren't gonna be in a projects and like, it's, but the time when pop culture tells us we should be celebrating, like you're too tired. but there's for sure a resistance. You wrote a good blog post about, years ago about crying in a, in a, in a

TBJ (17:59.523)
Yikes.

Kerp (18:00.554)
Spin class. Yeah.

TBJ (18:02.241)
yeah, for Tom Petty. That was real sad. Is that the one you're talking about? I cry all the time in yoga. That's a great place for me to release. Not like balling, just like I just, things just relax and I'm already all sweaty. I might as well make some tears in there too.

Kerp (18:18.018)
But so one of the things that I've been living through right now that I think contributes to that, like take on it is, one of the classes I oversee is essentially like a mock, agency class. so watching a group of like realizing the support that a group of students at that age need to push through the agency process has has

Like it's, it's just caused me to put my coach hat back on, I guess, in a way where you realize that like, there is a, there's, know, like.

Kerp (18:58.764)
the joke about like baseball coaches chattering on the sideline, right? Or like coaches clapping and doing coach things on the side. It's not like most coaches are very pragmatic. If that didn't do something, they wouldn't be doing it. Right? Like it, it, it creates an atmosphere where the enthusiasm and the hard work and the whatever is more fun and happens and whatever. so like realizing how hard I have to push myself out of my comfort zone.

TBJ (19:13.143)
Hmm, that's interesting.

Kerp (19:28.566)
in order to be that person has made me think about it a lot. cause there's a lot of just like, literally have to set reminders for myself to be like, tell everyone good job. And it's not cause they're not doing a good job. It's just because like my reaction is such a reaction of satisfaction that the work exists that I don't need the external, like personally, I don't need the external validation of someone going another good week, another good week, but like,

that is no judgment for those that do and thrive off of that human energy coming from other people.

TBJ (20:03.873)
My head is just spinning, spinning like crazy right now, because there's so much there. There's so many sessions of therapy and the things we just said. I have to go receive this shipping container real quick. I will be right back. All right.

Kerp (20:05.486)
Hahaha

Kerp (20:12.27)
Ha

Kerp (20:16.76)
Yeah. Word. Should I just stop this? We can start a new one when we, when you get back.

TBJ (20:22.947)
Sounds good.