Pressure.

And no, I am not quoting a Freddie Mercury duet.

I’m talking about pressure.

I’m just talking about pressure.

Let’s talk about pressure.

Your daily Lex.

Pressure and nervousness have a lot of overlap in my mind, and I would say I genuinely, and I do not mean to say the word genuinely, I generally don’t feel nervous before a performance.

Stage fright is not typically a thing for me.

There’s nothing wrong with being nervous, and nervousness is actually a somewhat good thing because it helps you know that you should be paying attention and focused.

But like when I was doing Noises Off and I started the show in the house, I would not be nervous until like three seconds before my first line, and then I’d be like, Oh God, here comes my first line, and then it’d be fine.

Once I was in it, I was good to go.

When I’m doing improv, I don’t get nervous because like I feel like it’s out of my control.

I’m going to do what I can.

It might be good, it might be bad, but it’s going to be what it is because that’s how improv goes.

So I don’t typically get nervous.

Same for if I’m doing a big talk.

But there are exceptions.

I, like tonight is the first rehearsal for Arsenic and Old Lace, and I’m not really nervous because it’s a read-through.

But there’s also like a little bit of the first-day school jitters.

Not like, are they going to judge me?

But there’s just basically, for the people, there’s plenty of people in this cast who I know and love, which is great, including my wife and one of my closest friends who’s directing the show.

But then there’s like this ongoing question of like, am I cool?

Do people like me?

Am I fun?

I personally think I occupy a place with my friends, online and real world, where I have a reputation for being away.

I don’t know how to say this right.

I’m trying to think about it.

I’m trying to come up with the right terms in real time.

See, because I’m good at improv.

But like— I think I try really hard not to punch down, right?

If I’m making jokes, I don’t like to do them at the expense of other people.

I think that’s a mistake that young people make and that jerks make.

And so I don’t want to make jokes that are at somebody else’s expense.

However, I think that I take more than my fair share of jokes at my expense with my friend circle.

I don’t think it comes from a place of cruelty or meanness, but I do think that it happens a decent amount that I’m the one people joke about.

I think because I am a joking person.

I don’t think, like I said, I really don’t think I’m a mean joker because I don’t like to punch down.

I don’t like to make jokes about people.

I agree with that years and years and years ago, before you knew me.

But I don’t know.

So I think that there’s one aspect of jitters or nervousness or pressure that I feel for something like this first rehearsal, because, like, I want to be liked.

I also know I’m going to be me.

I’m not going to fake my personality.

So I know that I’m going to be the way I am, which means I’m going to make the jokes I make and say the things I say and have the thoughts I think.

That was very insightful.

So that honestly helps a little bit with not feeling so much pressure to conform or to look or be cool, because I know I’m just going to be me.

At the end of the day, I’m just going to do what I always do.

And so I think any nervousness I have on that front in a new setting is, will people like me for me?

Blessed union of souls style.

That reference is lost on many of you.

Anyway, there’s that.

I also feel this kind of endless pressure right now to have stuff to publish on Lex on Tech, but I don’t want to publish things just for the sake of publishing.

I refuse to write things just for the sake of writing.

There is nothing scheduled on the site.

I mean, I wrote several pieces today, but, you know, sometimes I can pre-write an indie developer spotlight or an op-ed piece.

But when it’s an Apple or really tech news site, you got to wait for there to be tech news that you want to write about or that’s worth writing about.

And what I love about my site is I get to choose what I write about.

So if I don’t want to write about, you know, Apple updates iOS by a 0.01 increment, I don’t have to, and I will never.

But I do get to write about the things that I think are fun to write about.

I had a lot of fun today writing about Apple’s new— Hardware.

I have to get the name in front of me.

Apple’s new MacBook Pro with Pro LED XDR display.

And I’ve made a commitment that I’m going to try to only refer to the MacBook Pro with Pro LED XDR display as the MacBook Pro with Pro LED XDR display, because if they’re going to name the computer that, I’m going to call it that.

Wow, that’s a long name.

But yeah, I don’t know.

So I think the reason I started this episode with pressure is because I feel like pressure, like I got to find more things to write about.

And typically, like once a week or so, I’ve had one article kind of blow up.

This week it was somewhere between, I guess this week it was really my piece about Eero and how my Eero network had a disaster.

That’s the one that’s the biggest of the week.

The past several weeks, it’s been about X or Strategery and X.

So anyway, I do kind of always want to find like, hey, what’s the next big thing I can write about?

But I’m not gonna, I don’t want to write about—what’s the right word?

I’m not chasing views.

I’m not writing clickbait.

I just want to write stuff that resonates.

And really what that means is stuff that gets picked up by somewhere in the greater community.

That could be Hacker News, it could be Six Colors, it could be whatever.

Like my story about vibe coding did pretty well because it got linked to twice by Six Colors.

How cool is that?

Anyway, pressure.

I have some with my site.

I gave myself pressure.

How brilliant am I?

Anyway, I hope you’re having a wonderful Wednesday, and I’m confident my first rehearsal is going to go great.

No nerves here.

How fine.

Lex.