Stories

I recently saw a meme on social media from a friend about how backwards it is for us humans to work inside in offices under fluorescent lights. I’ve seen several variations of this meme over the years from people I know who live in small town America. I want to workshop this concept because work in a skyscraper in a cubicle under fluorescent lights, but also because I am in the Contrafabulist business, I want to understand, explore, and call out w...

I have read more books in the last five years than in the previous 40 years of my life. I have always loved to read, but have always managed to come up with a range of excuses why I couldn’t. Television, movies, and the Internet just don’t cut it for me like they used to, and honestly there are way more nutrients available via books, than anything I can find online today. Reading is nourishing, but it also has really helped me deprogram much of ...

I have long struggled and written about the people I leave behind in my life. There are a long list of people I have moved away from, severed communication with, and just evolved beyond over the years. Honestly, very, very, very few people can keep up with my mercurial approach to living, my appetite for travel and learning things, and more recently my determination to do the hard work of unraveling the programming of my youth has left even more people behind.

I’ve done a lot of thinking lately. The 3rd anniversary of Isaiahs death has me reassessing everything around me. The last three years have been surreal. The covid pandemic dictated the shape of how I see the world around me, but it was something in which Isaiah’s death had taken to new levels. The world always has seemed a little off to me, but in May and June of this year, everything seemed off and in need of shaking up. So I did just that—I shook the Etch A Sketch with all of the powers...

During my recent wanderings in Oakland, I came across a parking sign that promised a “Contactless” experience, which got me thinking about the concept of contactless in our world today. It’s a term we hear quite often, either explicitly stated or implied by barriers, plexiglass, or the absence of human presence. As usual, I have some questions about this phenomenon:

I have been thinking about the storytelling surrounding the recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) a lot lately. I just gave a talk at a company retreat about the importance of storytelling, and how all dimensions of the SVB situation is about telling and believing in stories. From our belief in money, markets, banks, to our continued belief in technology and venture capital, the recent goings on was all about stories. A significant part of this storytelling involves how we see t...

I am struggling lately. I made it through the kid passing, covid, and managed to quit drinking, lose a bunch of weight, and get healthier, only to be really, really struggling in this moment. I want to make sure and document this moment in the calendar, if nothing else just to be able to look back and remind myself of the ups and downs of being Kin Lane. I have a well-paid job, amazing team, and yet I am struggling with showing up to work and giving a shit. It has been about 3 weeks now, a...

I was watching a documentary on Fat the other night on PBS. They were conducting a study on a tribe in Africa to better understand why they don’t struggle with obesity and heart disease. The long story short is that our challenges with obesity is wrapped in a mix of our genes, processed foods, and our sedentary existence. The tribe in Africa is just always on the go, and they aren’t eating food that is as processed as ours is, and they have been doing this for many, many generations. I am ...

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I setup Mastodon instances for my personal and professional domains. Over the last month I’ve invested time into understanding how this federated world works and doesn’t work, and began doing the hard work of building community in this new space. Numerous folks from my Twitter community have come over to Mastodon, but many I know have opted to stay in the Twitterverse, or opted to join other communities for a variety of reasons. The main reason I’ve seen is th...

We made it as far as Coalinga, CA, formerly known as Coaling Station A, before dark. This is where we’ll be spending two nights here before we continue on through Bakersfield to the edges of Death Valley. As one journeys to Death Valley you have to suspend your traditional views of the world, and no better place to do that than amongst the almond and orange orchards looking out across Interstate 5 outside of Coalinga, CA.

As we all sit and watch the dumpster fire that is Twitter it can be easy to cheer on the demise of this platform. Although as I stare into the multi-color flames I can’t help but think about tall the work we’ve done on the Twitter plantation of the years, and the role it plays it our world. One are that comes to mind is how many of us received public health news as Covid gripped the world via Twitter. I spent months working on a Covid tracking w...

I made a conscious decision in 1997 to immerse myself in the incoming technological apparatus that capitalism was unleashing on the world. Until this moment in time I had purposefully avoided capitalism, a career, and understanding how business was applying technology. I had spent the previous decade actively working to subvert the system from the outside-in, and for me to have the impact I wanted on society I knew that I had to get closer to the machine and operate from within, otherwise ...

I haven’t been writing about my apocalyptic upbringing lately because for the most part I’ve moved beyond it. Writing here on my blog and pondering the subject since the 2016 election has put me in a pretty sweet spot when it comes to living life and not stressing about the programming I was raised with. However, recently a story was shared with me about someone I grew up with sharing rantings about how the apocalypse was just around the corner and wanted to make sure this person I was tal...

I was driving my friend and fellow API conspirator Fran Mendez around Oakland this week while he was in town from Spain. I regularly drive people around Oakland, and most have had some experience in the city, but most have experienced West Oakland, and have very little awareness of the redlining that has shaped the city. Most people just see poverty and trash and assume a traditional racist stance and think that the people living here have chosen to live like this. When in reality, it has ...

I had just stood up the Mastodon instance for my API Evangelist account, logged in, and was staring at the empty message box. What would I say? I had no followers. Nobody would be listening even if I did say something. So I followed my Kin Lane account, and then followed API Evangelist back. Now at least I would be talking to myself. This seems much more appropriate. I don’t need an audience. I’ve always (that’s a lie) done API Evan...

I have been simmering on the whole Twitter drama lately, and the mass migration to Mastodon. As I said before, I am not being emotional about this, and want to think about this in the context of what I consider to be my overall domain strategy. I run my own websites, blogs, email, and I think the time has come for me to own my social network. It makes me sad and a little mad to s...

I got some inspiration lately and went hunting for a new Jekyll Theme to rule my blog universe. I love blogging across my domains, and I love the storytelling scaffolding of a Jekyll site running on Github. The balance of words and data with a GitOps API-driven approach to things just works for my brand of storytelling. This new “docs” themed template (https://jekyll-theme-docs.netlify.app/) has everything I love about Jekyll from a storytelling perspective but they have gone the extra dis...

I struggle with anxiety. I have most of my life. I have been able to find balance with it on a daily and weekly basis, and while I am able to function and even move forward, the impact of it in the moment is massive and heavy most days. I choose to find my own way through this jungle, as opposed to a pharmaceutical route, and have developed a number of coping mechanisms. But, as I get older I continue to seek more solutions, and as I roll over 50 years of age I think I have found the most ...

Once I began seeing family members start dropping like flies when it came to voting for Trump in 2016 election I knew there was no turning back for me. I’ve long been on a quest to come to terms with my own complicity in white supremacy, and this was the opportunity for me to shift things into overdrive and understand more about why and how I saw the world around me. After Trump was elected i wanted to develop better understand how people I care about could believe in such a horrible human...

I turned 50. This is a big milestone for anyone. For me personally, it is everything. As a result of the programming I received from those I grew up with, as I approached being an adult, I assumed I would die by the time I was 30. This isn’t me being dramatic at 50. Me, and several of my friends believed wholeheartedly that we would die is some grand event before we were 30 years old (couple friends achieved). This belief didn’t originate from any single source, but was an aggregate of the...

I am sitting on the couch at home in Oakland after an emotional week traveling to and from Southern Oregon. Leading up to Isaiah’s birthday and two years after he passed away from an overdose, his mother and I wanted to do something meaningful to celebrate his life. After two years of isolation due to Covid-19, we felt like it was time to get out, and I thought it would be a good idea to retrace some of the hikes I did back in 2016 as part of our Drone R...

One of the highlight of this last week, as well as my life in general is my girls, Audrey and Poppy (and Kaia who is in Korea at the moment). As I step back and evaluate the week I am full of gratitude for Audrey and Poppy. They are my rocks. My inspiration. My heart. None of this would be happening without Audrey as my sidekick and I am not sure we would be functioning human beings after Isaiah’s passing without the Poppy dog. I cannot end this week of processing without acknowledging the...

We spent the second half of our journey this week in Crescent City, CA, a little town on the coast of the Oregon and California border. It is a town I have a lot of history with, and a town I have literally gone out of my way to bypass for the last 30 years. I was skeptical of spending time in Crescent City, but I wanted to try and revisit some of the trails Isaiah and I hike in the redwoods back in 2016. Like with Isaiah, I suspended by dislike of the town while I was there with Audrey, a...

Another hike I did with Isaiah back in 2016 as part of our Drone Recovery summer was up to Bolan Lake Lookout. Like Kerby Peak, I found that Isaiah was more alert and aware up at Bolan Lake, and he even smiled for me as we were goofing around at the lookout. After Kerby Peak, Bolan Lake Lookout was the next place I wanted to share with Audrey, so that we could make the place behind this picture a little more real for her. Read more →

I put the most brutal and meaningful hike to celebrate Isaiah first up in the week. Isaiah and I did Kerby Peak back in 2016 and it nearly broke us. Kerby Peak was one of the few spots where Isaiah became lucid and would talk to me, which was a common pattern I’d see in only the most remote and hardcore of natural locations. The further away we got from cities, the more Isaiah opened up, pulled down his hoodie and engaged in conversation. I wanted Audrey to experience the beauty and hardne...