joygantic

I'll Take Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs for $500, Alex

Yikers.  This is officially, to me anyway, the Summer of the Pile On.  Colliding vectors of physical, professional, emotional and psychic stress have all conspiring to wipe the smile off my face.  Apart from the stressors previously reported (and those that won't be reported) here, the last couple of weeks have seen me have my identity stolen and my house burgled.   

I'm certain that wasn't me swiping my (cloned) debit card at the Best Buy in Oakland to pay for $2,200 worth of electronics.  Nor did I use a credit card to pay for an energy bill in Mississippi and mobile phones in Texas.  And I'm completely sure that it wasn't me who used a second credit card, one sent to an altogether different address than the two previous compromised cards, to order $4,025 worth of "Christian supplies" on the Internet.  It's being handled.

The robbery?  I don't want to talk about it other than to note that I'm very happy with my new home security system and delighted to have found a friend to house-sit when I leave for vacation later this week.

Vacation.  That's what I want to talk about.  Actually, no, I don't want to talk about it I just want to get it started.  I will, for the seventh year in a row, be headed to Burning Man.

This year there will be no %*#! RV, no convoluted and stressful logistics that involve flying  to LA, and no ambitious theme camp.  Hallelujah.  Six of us will caravan down from Seattle this weekend, joining up with seven fine people from Sacramento.  Another Seattlite will be appear later in the week.  That's it, just 14 of us camping in the desert. 

Sure, there will be 49,986 other people there doing the same thing (Black Rock City is on expected to hit its permitted population cap for the first time this year), but whatever.  The word from the early arrivals is that it may be an extraordinarily dusty year, but whatever.  I just need to get off the grid and recharge my batteries.  I'm exhausted and running on empty so it makes perfect sense to vacation in an incredibly hostile environment, right? 

Well, yes.  I'm tired of self-actualizing and currently exhausted by my multi-screen, multi-tasking, fast-paced urban existence.  I want to climb down Maslow's pyramid* for a while and look forward to focusing for over a week on complex tasks like drinking water, seeking shelter, eating, and being with other apes.

* Yes, I realize that needs are likely not rigidly hierarchical as apparently Maslow posited (not that I've read him) and all that, but whatever.

And . . . I'm Back. Mostly.

I thought it had been a few weeks since I last posted, but I just checked and see that I haven't said a peep on this thing in 52 days, which I think is some kind of personal record.

*whew*

A lot has been happening and, as someone who's always seen myself as energetic and pretty open about the details of my life, it's been interesting to watch both my desire and energy to write here evaporate as well as feeling quite suddenly that the most important stuff happening with me are not things I want to broadcast.

It's not that I've been out killing puppies or otherwise doing heinous, shameful things and it's not that I'm not sharing the details of the important stuff with the friends and family I see in person.  It's just that I've lost, for the moment, my public voice. But maybe I'm getting it back.

It's a moment where I've thought a lot about this blog, which in one incarnation or another has existed for over a decade (though the earliest years are either lost to the ether or incarcerated on a Zip Disk I've yet to find). 

The moniker "joygantic," I've always thought of it more as an appellation, was picked for a bunch of reasons but, thematically, has always described to me a feeling--something instantiated in a moment or thing--that just made me instantly feel warm and fuzzy, giggly and elated, grateful and optimistic.  There was a period of time, years ago, when I felt I'd slipped into a blogging mode that was "and then I did that, and then I did this" and I backed away for awhile, thought about shutting down this project.  But I found a voice which was authentic, surely warbled here and there, but seemed true. 

Right now I'm waiting for that moment to percolate up again; it's starting to right now as I type.  Because I don't have any desire to add to the noise or the bullshit that is so easy to find online.  These pixels are mine and are about expressing my enthusiasm, sharing my life, and connecting with people.  It's going to be awhile still before I've fully got my feet under me, but a note from a friend in New York today made me realize that there are some folks out there I love who I don't get to see often in person, who might want to know what's going on.

So here's some of what's been going on over the past 60 or so days, in no particular order:

• Dia moved to San Diego on July 4th.
• I've been eating more ice cream than usual.
• With no couch I set up a tent in the living room for a week.  It was like a fort.  Or a dog crate.  Good stuff.
• Occasionally I get pain in my stomach from my surgery--I can feel the muscles adapting to being pierced by staples--but this seems to be part of the never-explained healing process since things that hurt for a while stop hurting and new, adjacent things hurt.
• I have been working hard to make the acquisition of our company a success, despite having low energy reserves and a flaky short-term memory.  I am having some success.
• I spoke at a conference in DC and wowed the audience.
• I've been to NYC, San Diego, DC, VA, Chicago, and San Francisco since I last posted.
• From the sixth row, I watched a gaunt Steve Jobs show off the new 3G iPhone, but have not yet bought one.
• I bought a flat panel TV and an X-Box and have decided that GTA4 is a form of meditation.
• This last weekend I spent 36 hours unsuccessfully trying to get to the East Coast.  My airline sent me an apology email.
• I officiated the wedding of two lovely people I'd met twice before.
• I saw my brother and sister-in-law for the first time in . . . too long . . . and had the best time.
• I toasted my mother who's spent the past 10 years surviving breast cancer.  And I got to talk to and hug my dad a lot.  I'm happy to report I just love my parents.
• I planted some squash, basil, and tomatoes.
• I've spent some lovely time with Erica and with a host of other dear people that I don't see often enough . . .
• I "acted" in a couple of videos that will premiere in a few weeks as part of friends' burlesque performance.
• Today I made the first To-Do list I've made in four months . . .
• I bought two couches: A cheapo IKEA thing that currently occupies my living room, and a lovely lovely couch that's coming in October.
• Today I took a picture of Alex the cat peacefully sleeping in the sun.  Sadly, he will not be with me much longer.
• The countdown to Burning Man has begun and I'm so so looking forward to my annual New Year celebration.  Now more than ever.
• In general, I'm at the beginning of a period of examining habits and assumptions and general ways of being; I'm rebooting. 

Hallelujah. There Might be Hope After All.

Big News! (Four Years in the Making)

In 2004, I joined a handful of talented people working to turn  a business plan, scribbles on a whiteboard, and some investor money into a successful company doing something I thought was fascinating and at the center of a profoundly important global trend.

We launched a first-of-its kind service, won paying clients, expanded globally, launched more first-to-market services, and built a reputation as the leader in our space.

It hasn't been easy and hasn't been without its bumps, but more often than not we've been able to do the right thing at the right time, with great integrity, usually having fun in the process.  Along the way we've grown and built a business that feeds 80 people and their families, which makes me proud. 

It's been an amazing and exhilarating experience that just entered an exciting new chapter; today M:Metrics was acquired by comScore, the global leader in measuring the digital world.

It's a great move for both companies and I'm excited about the things that are now possible being part of a larger (but not gigantic) company.  As an entrepreneur, I couldn't be more delighted than to have been there at the beginning and helped take us through a successful exit that made our investors and employees some money.  Very personally, I'm happy that one of the sources of work and stress that's been piled on over the past few months as we negotiated this process has disappeared.  We did it.  Now we can get back to work. ;-)

Things Are . . . Things

Apart from the silly Zune post, my last substantive communique suggested that Thor was angry with me, a post which upon a re-read had me feeling stupid and shameful.  No, not because of the underlying events, but rather that despite having dutifully read my Edith Hamilton in college I bungled the mythology allusion.  Thor has a hammer.  It's Zeus with the lightning bolts.  Duh.  A quick review of Hedwig showed me the light.

Things are . . . things. 

We are in the process of buying an awesome condo in the Hillcrest neighborhood of San Diego and the current plan is for Dia to move there around the 1st of July.  I'm healing well from my unexpected surgery.

Things are . . . things.

My dear friend Suzi has told me, when asked how things are: "Well, I'm feeling feelings."

That about sums it up.

Watch for Signs that Hell May Be Freezing Over . . .

I just saw someone who I know--who does not work at Microsoft--listening to a Zune. 

Eight Belles

I’m not a sports fan.

That’s a statement that might seem curious given that I grew up on a consistent weekend diet of ABC's Wild World of Sports, played organized sports (mostly soccer) for years as a youth, and in my teenage years briefly dreamed I would follow in Peter Ueberroth’s footsteps and eventually be in charge of staging the Olympic Games. 

Hindsight tells me that my love of playing sports had far more to do with loving being active and enjoying the social component of being on a team (I love teams) than actually loving the sport, my desire to stage the Olympics was really about my fascination with events that draw people together (c.f. Burning Man), and my love of Wild World of Sports was all about hanging out with my dad and--crucially--being genuinely riveted by "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat."

These days, I tune into sports only for the crux:  I watched the last quarter of a couple Final Four games this year, I watched the last half of the Super Bowl. 

I was in LA on Saturday and on the plane ride down read the New York Times pre-coverage of the Kentucky Derby.  My friend Karen in NYC has gone to the Derby for years and sung its praises.  I was in Kentucky for a lovely wedding a few years ago and got a glimpse of the horse farms and the gorgeous rolling countryside, so I felt some vague social connection with the event.  The race lasts, like, 3 minutes and based on my NYT reading was fraught with drama.  I was in.

I turned on the TV at 3pm, knowing that post-time was 3:04.  Perfect.  My sports victory/defeat button was gonna be pushed in, what?, ten minutes or so of TV watching?

The Derby is interesting to me from a business perspective.  Typically--think Super Bowl--the advertisers and sponsors are out there trying to get TV viewers to buy their products.  Their beer, their pizza, their car.  But the Derby is different.  Thoroughbred racing is not a middle-class sport and the ads reflected this even though it's on broadcast TV.  While I haven't seen this written down anywhere, it was clear that NetJets bought the "jockey pants sponsorship"; every jockey was pimping for fractional private jet ownership. And Yum Brands--Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC--was sponsoring the event not so they could sell more pizza/tacos/chicken but rather "to attract more individual shareholders."

A weird little window into social class, broadcast for all to see.

And then the race.

Starting from the outermost stall, Big Brown just dominated.  It was glorious to watch.  Riveting.   Just amazing.  OMG.  Wow.  "Thrill of Victory"?  Check. 

And then the second place horse, Eight Belles, "broke down" . . . which I've come to understand is apparently horsey talk for "won't live long."  The filly was cooling down and just collapsed with compound fractures (!) in both front legs.  She was euthanized on the track.

WTF?!!

"Agony of defeat" is one thing, but dying for sport?  "Sorry kiddo, you failed to win, we gotta kill ya."  That's basically the plot of a Steven King novel I read when I was a kid, but here it was on TV.  And the TV folks were ill equipped to handle it.  There were faint mentions of Eight Belles--a shot of the equine ambulances on the track, a note that she was injured, a brief statement from the track doc that she'd been put down.  And then . . . nothing.

I don't have any great thoughts about horse racing and what's wrong or what's right. I love the rush brought by the "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" but remain completely upset that a gorgeous being had to die to complete that story.

I don't have a coherent ideology to draw on here to make sense of this, but I've been feeling dirty ever since.

Eight Belles . . . sorry.

 

Everyday Matters*

I was thinking of putting the blog on hiatus, but then for nearly a month it kind of did that by itself, didn't it?  Things have not exactly been joygantic of late, though I believe I'm in the midst of a necessary period of hunkering down, figuring shit out, dealing with life and at the end of this tunnel I will be standing in a vast green meadow of loveliness, re-energized, passionate, and focused.  Actually, I'm most of those things now--to some degree--but as I'll explain my energy has been going elsewhere.

Recently I've become convinced that Thor is sitting on a cloud in the sky looking down on the world and--perhaps he's drunk and feeling mischievous--periodically says to himself "Ah, that Mark guy, let me toss a lightning bolt at him!"  Again and again.

Lightning Bolt #1: Crazy, intense work.  I'm in the midst of a bunch of stuff that's good, time consuming, and pretty high stakes (at least as far as work is concerned--my perspective has recently been adjusted, see below).

Lightning Bolt #2: Dia and I are splitting up.  We've been together for almost 15 years, married for 12.5, but this relationship that we've both cherished is no longer working in its current configuration.  The reasons are simple and complex and I've no desire to broadcast them.  We love each other and are about to figure out what that means when we're no longer living together; she's moving to San Diego sometime in the next several weeks.

I don't know about you, but dealing with either #1 or #2 would be more than enough to have on my plate at one time.  To be honest, I've been a bit of a mess.  But that crazy Thor, with his Nordic sense of humor decided he'd see what happened if he fucked with me further, thus:

Lightning Bolt #3: Three Mondays ago I flew to NYC for "important" business meetings.  Less than 48 hours after arriving I had an excrutiatingly painful medical emergency due to an "incarcerated abdominal hernia." Good fortune and good connections land me the best possible care, culminating in surgery. Two nights in the hospital on a morphine drip were followed five nights staying with Dia at a friend's apartment zonked on percoset and a flight back to Seattle last Friday. I've been resting, am no longer on meds (that much), and am back at work thanking my lucky stars that things worked out so well.

So it's been a very, uh, eventful 2008 in general and an utterly insane April.  Figured I'd let y'all know what's up.

_____________

* I love a double entendre and in this case it might be a triple, because Everyday Matters is the name of an absolutely wonderful graphic novel that lifted my spirits in New York.  Sally added it to an incredibly thoughtful care package my company sent me while I was recovering which included The Way Back Home (thanks Lori!), flowers, and a crucial set of sweatpants (I still can not fit into most pants owing to swelling and bloating).  Thanks Jaimee.  Oh, and by the way, note that a graphic novel and a children's book are perfect diversions for someone on pain meds.  I read both immediately but was otherwise unable to concentrate enough to read an actual, text-centric book.  I did, however, watch the finale to Rock of Love II.  Twice.  Do you need any further evidence that narcotics should be regulated?

Rock Chalk Jayhawk Dance Montage (and More!)

My brother, who's awesomeness I've touted previously just received tenure at the University of Kansas as I mentioned below.  While some folks might have sent a calmly composed email to notify the people in their life, that's not how Brian rolls.  He busted out this jubilant video announcement complete with career highlights, rollerblading, and dance montages from his favorite movies.  It rocks, even if you've never met him.

Oh, and if you're (a) not a sports fan, (b) are from the West Coast, or like me (c) both then "Rock Chalk Jayhawk" sounds like pure nonsense.  Which actually makes its origins (with a university science club in the late 1800s!) all the more interesting.

Tenure!

My brother received tenure at the University of Kansas yesterday.

If you're not familiar with academia you may not understand why tenure is such a big deal.  It's a designation that generally is equated with "a job for life" or, more specifically, an imprimatur that the professor in question has met the high standards of their profession and has the "academic freedom" to research whatever the hell it is they think is important.

Tenure is a key vehicle for ensuring that our society has people who think about, research, and teach things that are unpopular.  And getting there requires an academic track record of research that's accepted and vetted as important and high quality by an academic's colleagues at their own university, in their field outside their university, ad ultimately a series of gatekeepers at the department/college/university level have to sign off.  It's the biggest possible deal for for an academic.

It's been a long road for Brian.  This achievement marks a key juncture in a career that he's  been building for--what?--fifteen years?

Wow.

I'm happy as hell for him and proud as can be.

Spring Sprung Sprang

Today's the first day of Spring which I know 'cause Google's logo was filled with tulips.  But it was reinforced when I was standing in the pouring rain wishing I had sunglasses on because the sky was so bright.  Ah, Spring in Seattle.

This year I gave up the entire contents of my intestines for Lent.  And to show my religious devotion I had a fever for 36 hours.  In honor of the baby Jesus who would be sacrificed for our sins, I curled up in a fetal position and prayed for hours on end.  Though there shall be no false idols, I worshiped at a porcelain god and was duly punished. 

I shake my fist at the damned stomach flu that's weakened me, moved work deadlines to my weekend, and necessitated the cancellation of planned manly drunkenness and skiing planned for a weekend bachelor party in Canada. 

Perhaps it's the cosmic forces of the universe telling me that a weekend of drunkenness and skiing would land me in the hospital.  But I'm annoyed I won't be able to trot around in my new, stylish, high tech, orange parka (thank you REI dividend!).

Seriously, the last time I felt close to this horrible was 20 years ago when I found myself alone, with dysentery, on a houseboat in Kashmir, watching my bloody diarrhea go straight into the lake creating a feeding frenzy among the little fish that apparently thrived on the trauma of travelers.  Sorry.  That was gross.  But that was also the only point in my life when I really thought "you know, it wouldn't be so bad if I just DIED right now."

I didn't come close to that threshold this time, but it sucked and I do wanna reach out and hug my mom (an RN) for her medical advice and my dear friends who texted/emailed support and care offered to bring me whatever I needed. Thankfully I had tuna to feed my blind cat and managed the energy to buy Gatorade so dehydration was avoided.

TMI, I know.

<sigh>

But I walk on . . .

Round here, not much to report except:

• My minor sound bite this week on Morning Edition prompted multiple friends to text/email me, reminding me that mass media is, well, mass media. (And reinforcing that when your PR ace puts talking points together, you should stick to them. Doh!)
• Our data on iPhone made splash, which is awesome, though I wish the New York Times hadn't made me out to be such a fanboy 'cause my thoughts on the device are more nuanced.
• My brother sent me an article that made me change my underwear and confirmed again that it was a good decision to give up rockclimbing.  I posted it to MetaFilter.
• I need a haircut (shaggy on the sides, balding in the center--can't we have some equity here?)
• I'm in Seattle all next week.  Unless I go to LA on Monday.  Or NYC on Wednesday.
• Having turned in my expense reports for the year to date I've realized that the expense of keeping me aloft in my gig would be a fine living for more than half of the populous. I'm completely unsure about how I feel about that.
• I'm not sure there is any bigger way to feel like an asshole than to be approached by a homeless person while talking on your iPhone and preemptively (and truthfully) say "sorry man, my wallet's in the restaurant" and have them respond "I just wanted to say God Bless You"

Over and out.

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