Jason's Father rowing along the Alafia River in Florida.

Rowing

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I’m originally from Tampa, Florida. For my first 9 on this planet, I lived near the Alafia River. My Father, before his passing at the age of 36, worked as a Park Manager for Lithia Springs Conservation Park. I have many fond memories of exploring that park, it’s natural springs and trails. My father’s love for the outdoors continues to inspire me today.

I remember days spent swimming in dark brown water while alligators watched from the shore. Oddly, I felt more comfortable in a river with visible dangers than the deep ocean waters that surrounded the State. No life is perfect, and for much of my childhood we moved around a lot for various reasons beyond my adolescent comprehension of details shared. I’ll say it was a dramatic childhood at times, but being a white male, recovery came quick.

If you’ve been tracking our progress and reading our Blog, you’re likely wondering when the travel content starts. Seems like a lot of historical context and content on values. And you’d be right. That content easy to come by, establishing trust in a corporation that will store your personal, sensitive data takes time. And given the assholes in the news today, I thought you’d like to know more about this “white guy.” And having never done this before, and not particularly excited about continuing what others before have done, I instead wanted to form a company with a clear idea of what it could mean for our future. And the fundamental challenges we believe it will help us over come.

One of those challenges is us. Collectively. All of us. We didn’t evolve in a digital world and it has greatly affected our ability to trust each other. Everything is produced. We’re all a brand now. Congrats. If our species is going to arrive alive in the future, we need to empower more of us to think creatively about solutions that could help us create sustainable, balanced lives. Today we waste time recreating the wheel. It’s balance we wish everyone had an opportunity to try. It’s great, 5 stars, highly recommend and its easy to find too, when you don’t have kids, no debt, stable health, access to clean drinking water, healthy foods, and if you have white skin and a penis it will find you. Everyone else? That’s who we’re here for.

Much of our reality is shaped by people who’d prefer you remain unbalanced. You’ll spend more money to find it. And like them I could choose to create products that create the essence of a balanced life, only to quickly fade once stress finds you.

We could do that. It makes lots of money. But we decided to go a different direction. Rather than obscure your reality behind augmented or virtual reality or whatever they call the digital filter they’ve put over your senses. We’d instead unlock the data you’ve been sluffing off and use it to your advantage. Providing you statistically relevant clarity and fact based, best practice human-in-loop automation that does what we want tech to do. Automate the routine. Wait on hold, change a flight. Let you who your next customer is and the last time they passed through, and if they expressed a favorite service or product.

Daryl and I did not found this company to attain the fame or riches of the 1%. We believe failure to act now will make all monetary systems useless as our future devolves into the worst Hollywood could imagine. Did you know the Walking Dead was still on? Fifteen Seasons? I suspect a few were taking notes.

The future is dark. It repeats. And we’d like to try something different.

The Day Dream Technologies company is focused on leveraging today’s best practice solutions for common business problems. Nothing new here. The large fortune 500 companies use this stuff 24/7 to guess what you’ll do next.

Meta has been doing it from the jump. Your data is an inexhaustible source of valuable information, even after you die. All of the tech companies have built their wealth off harvesting it. Not surprising; we did the math, found their cost reasonable, after all our lives aren’t that interesting are they?

After decades in healthcare information technology, designing, building, and supporting software that managed every second of the human experience in a hospital. What many would rightly assume is a high-risk, stressful environment for everyone within its walls. Even for those who work there. I’m not a Doctor, or a Nurse. Daryl is a Surgical Tech, and I was raised by a single mom going to nursing school. I learned quickly that I’d suck at anything clinical but I got computers.

I created a successful career with that experience. Having deep observations of humanity through a clinical perspective. I watched how these Professionals took on the most stressful, physically demanding roles and provided amazing care to those in need. When I was diagnosed with CML in 2014, these same professionals ensured I was diagnosed quickly and my cancer was put into a chemically sustained remission.

This event changed our lives. At 35, just 1 year younger than when my Dad passed, I was diagnosed with Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia. Today expensive medication can keep it in check, and the impact on life expectancy is nominal for compliant patients. I’d say cancer takes up 30% of my body’s capacity. As we age that capacity drops, how fast depends on how well you manage your health. As a child of a Nurse, we do our best knowing anything less means death.

There are a lot of reasons to give up in this world. To stop rowing. Maybe you don’t like the direction the boat is headed, maybe you don’t like the people on the boat. Or maybe you’re just generally over being on a boat all together. It’s uncomfortable, moves a lot, and often finds itself at the center of drama seemingly shopping for trauma nearly 24/7. At least that’s what our ad supported news would have us believe.

It's bad, but the cliff face hasn’t fully collapsed. We still have time to make informed, balanced decisions to soften our landing and help humanity weather through what could be a thousand years of something much worse; bad weather, no water, and civil war. The literal collapse of society or if you like, The Walking Dead IRL without the virus, just rage.

Daryl and I reflected on our life, our experience and skill. Our decades of knowledge embedded with highly skilled people under stress. Being neurodivergent with no kids or distraction we watched, we helped, and we realized we could more. We set out to create something we believe in, something that will empower more people to achieve their dreams and help everyone connect with the world around them. To recenter on reality and connect with people we share space with.

Since there’s really nothing new about our plans, we thought we’d spend more time sharing our “Why.” After all this won’t come to life without you. So here’s why you should pick up a paddle.

Day Dream is founded by a group of people that see value in physical connection. One of the reasons why our experience away from home remains unpredictable is because our media and associated interest don’t want to miss the opportunity to provide value. Airlines will waste your time and safety traveling to a snowed in airport, just in hopes you’ll board a flight their systems told them would never leave, hours ago. It seems every company has lost it’s creativity in how to provides value and instead relies on tricking you with emotionally charged words.

It's fine. I’m not against capitalism. It seems to scratch that itch for humanity, through its broken reward structure we kind of get what we want in the moment, despite the social and environmental pollution it leaves behind for our kids. Despite this I think we can reuse it.

The problem with capitalism is… can you guess? Yeah… It’s Us. We’re the reason we can’t have nice things and we should really come to terms with that before it literally ends us.

See, marketing doesn’t want to tell you that you suck. We all do. Don’t feel bad, you were born that way. We all are. To stay alive you had to be a dick. We don’t fault it. After all our instincts to keep us a live through any means necessary is why I’m typing this out right now. Where we fail is in recognizing when we need to dial it back. To tune our DNA designed programming to the moment we find ourselves in. To accurately recognize our surroundings and react reasonably to stress. Stress is a killer and promoter of some nifty ideas.

I realized after 10 years with cancer, my body doesn’t handle stress as well as I’d like. Some of this I can change, and others I cannot. It’s affected my capacity for physical work for example; hours of physical labor can have drastically different, not often great, effects on the body. And these are things no one outside can see. No one can read my mind, no one can know all of my context. We are all black boxes, hence why your data, captured by your phones, computers, banking transactions, communications, is all so valuable. When processed it can make corporations nearly psychic.

My career in healthcare data showed me the value in processing large amounts of data. It doesn’t always have to have your name attached to be useful. We’ve created laws to manage how healthcare data is accessed, shared, and processed. Something I suspect we’ll see replicated for social media once we truly unpack what Meta, Elon, Microsoft, Google, and Apple have been up to. Again, I’m not against it. If data can be leveraged to create better products I’m all for it. Despite knowing that Apple extracts a massive amount of information from my life via its phone, computers, speakers, and relationships. I use their products because I spend less time figuring out why something isn’t working, something I did all day long at work, I wanted to make sure to avoid at home. Simple tech, well designed that focused on my user experience first.

This recognition that not everyone wants a Swiss Army Knife. Not everyone loves to unpack the complexity of technology, I believe most of us exist in the middle. We love tech that makes work easier consistently. We love tech that provides intuitive interfaces with commonly needed tools. No one likes digging to the bottom of their tool box for a screw driver. We natural keep tools we need close by, adapting our work space to our style and experience, working to create a reliable outcome in any situation.

A few of us have stopped metaphorically rowing for likely common reasons. Some have started rowing backwards, hoping to slow progress, to stress the system to failure so they can “control” the boats narrow, naturally constrained path. I want to create a company who’s sole focus is on inspiring people to row together by providing accurate, transparent, and real-time data that helps people make informed decisions and anticipate failures, just like large corporations do today with analytics, marketing, resource scheduling, and project management software. To bring together tools that help small teams do great things. To help people explore their world and find context, or inspiration for the next idea that could soften our landing through what could be an amazing period of human ingenuity if we all simply chose to row.

Your support of this company is not for the products it creates, but its mission, vision, and values as a public benefit company focused on people, planet, and profits.

Support and Share our Story by participating in our Beta program, joining our Waitlist for future product releases for Professionals and Communities. And follow our social media. These metrics help demonstrate interest in our Mission, Vision, and Values. We are your Neighbors, Friends, Colleagues, Teachers, Nurses, and Developers who want a better future for All and we’re tired of waiting for Amazon to deliver it. True change will come from us, not Jeff or Joe.

Promotional image of 3 screens of My Day Dream: Experience mobile application.
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My Day Dream: Experience

Fun interactive planning, finding, and sharing of new experiences all while keeping you in the moment. A Lifestyle Manager that keeps you in mind.