I began wrapping up work with some relief. I began applying for and getting callbacks for product interviews. I began cooking again, working out, being a very good housewife. My dog got long walks. My husband got multi-course lunches. No one was unhappy. I began looking really forward to about heading back to the safety of a full-time role somewhere. Then as I was packing up one evening, someone came knocking at my door.

tldr - looks very different from a 9-5. It isn’t an overstatement to say at this point that at this super nascent “day 0” stage, everything can feel eternally on the brink of life and death. But it’s been such a ride; it’s thinned my hair but added so much richness to my life.

When you’re running a business that is trying to be a force for social good and financial good, please for the love of g*d don’t condescend to your end user. Please root for them instead.

Yesterday evening I got to learn about Stanford’s new Masters in Clinical Informatics program by sitting down to dinner with a couple of their class. Julia, one of the organizers, had somehow managed to coax management into offering a formal budget for informal dinners at True Food (food was great) so the class could chat with healthcare startup leaders.

Tomorrow is the day that every women’s health / “fem-tech” (though I don’t prefer that word) organization will milk for all possible press value: International Women’s Day. Gird your loins, Linkedin! etc. Neither the d.school nor us had this in mind when we decided on a workshop date, but as it happens, today is in fact the day before the day! Coincidentally that is also word for word the phrase one of our speakers used to talk about the eternal cycle of minutia and mental overhead that she now deals with as a working mom (on top of all her other personal and professional duties).