The Month of April

Environment: Perch coffee (on the SLC coffee passport)

SPARC

I continued in my role as project manager for SPARC Health, and spent most of my time either managing the current cohort or planning for future cohorts/events. SPARC is nearing an inflection point with SPARC Labs where we may begin to generate actual income through projects with industry and education system partners, and I also spent a bit of time planning for those, interviewing potential candidates, and trying to up my networking game.

I'm becoming optimistic at the future of SPARC for selfish reasons, in part because I'm starting to grasp a more complete picture of where SPARC fits in the ecosystem, but also because it is turning into the opportunity I had originally reached out in pursuit of: a chance to learn about startups and entrepreneurship. The cohort has been a great crash course on its own, but the potential of a SPARC Labs incubator or fund would provide direct, hands-on experience learning alongside startups who are going through the motions in real time. We'll see how things progress in the next month, but I'd be surprised if I'm not busier with SPARC come June than I am currently.

C1x

I ended last month with a laundry list of improvements to make to the base functionality of C1x + Deep Stats, and a decision that the social feature needed a complete rework. The improvements of the social feature has stayed on the backburner, but I did implement all other improvements on my list into C1x, both from testing by myself and Michaela and from comments from a touring pro who has been kind enough to provide feedback.

C1x now has a lot of the functionality that it probably should've had at the start, is a much more refined and polished product, and has tons of advanced features for disc golfers (like this touring pro) who are serious about the analytical side of their game. All of this went out in the latest update which was plugged on C1x social media (naturally I found a number of issues immediately following that release which I've since fixed in C1x), and now the main thing left is to go back to the drawing board on the social feature.

My goal is to knock out a base version of this feature, dubbed "C1x Seasons", within the next couple of weeks, and to then take a bit of a break from C1x. It's at a point now where I love using it for my own casual and tournament rounds, and am ready for it to be more of a side project instead of a daily priority.

Disc Golf

Injuries have continued to be an issue in disc golf. My back is generally better with some minor pains here in there, but my new complaint is some type of nerve issue in the index finger on my throwing hand. I'm pretty sure this was also caused by disc golf, but has been a pretty annoying source of pain that seems impossible to avoid when I play. I had some goals for improvement which weren't quite achievable dealing with pain on every throw, but I still made some progress that I think can be carried over to future competition.

In spite of my injuries, I still cashed at a couple of events and took down a couple of leagues with some great play. This included winning my first sanctioned league with a 1033-rated round, and an opening 1055-rated round at the Salt Lake Open. I won't mention how the other rounds went, but I think I'm beginning to grasp the importance of visualization before shots, and when it works it REALLY works, even with injuries. A good reminder that the potential is there, but also a reminder that I need to take better care of my body and put more time into the sport if I want that potential to become consistent.

Michaela and I also competed in a couples tournament called "Luv Dubs", which had a putting competition followed by an alternate shot round. I won the putting event and we got second in our division (third overall) in the tournament which was pretty exciting. Our score improved by 8-9 strokes from what we shot the last time we played the event which was pretty cool to see, and was great preparation for USWDGC which Michaela is playing in June.

Other

My day job has continued to get busier with two new projects, and the struggle for maintaining energy through all of my typical endeavors has proved challenging. SPARC has also provided quite the number of networking opportunities, which has introduced a new drain on my energy pulling directly from my very small social battery. I'm hoping this is a muscle I can exercise and grow moving forward.

Still keeping up with Substack and chess lessons, and I picked up a new hobby in running this month. I've committed to pacing a 16-mile portion of a 100+ mile ultramarathon that a friend is running, so I need to get in shape. I've worked up to 4 1/2 mile runs at this point and am running twice a week, hoping to push that to 7-8 mile runs by the end of this month. The race isn't until September, so I've got some time.

A new sand volleyball league started up that I've been playing in weekly, I did my first cult workout class which was quite hard (never again), and I'm still trying to improve at the guitar (though my finger injury hasn't helped). I'm hoping to use the coming month to take a little time to rest while also thinking about what I want to get out of disc golf, SPARC, and life in general. I've had a number of people (mostly through SPARC) ask me this general question over the past few weeks, and I haven't had a great answer for them.

Onward,

Dylan