A retrospective

I was talking to my friend Paul (no, not you, Paulie, the West Coast one) and was doing a little life planning: We've worked together on all sorts of schemes, not least of which was the BrainReady project back in 2007, plus a few other product ideas... He's at another one of those life crossroads: He just took a new job, moved the family again, loves his new life, but is finding himself living a few pennies short a month of adequate... and was looking for ideas for how to take the next step.

The problem is of course that in his chosen career line, there's a limit you hit being a worker that can only be exceeded by being an owner. It's a line I've had to dance with myself - and my first try at ownership (aka sales) was a failure, and I went back into my hourly world... I'm trying ownership again, but keeping my feet grounded in my skills to earn my keep hourly as well... and it's looking good. But back to Paul: When you work for a big company like he does, and you're at the top of your paygrade, you need to find outside ventures.

Thankfully he's not the type for MLM schemes.

So we're talking and it occurs to me that he is semi-famous: A top ten single in the early 1990s, working with Thomas Dolby, a good ten thousand people who pay attention when he irregularly posts in his Myspace... and he loves to write just like i do. I counseled him to start telling his story - not hide behind a name (like we did with Brainready) but just be himself and start telling stories about his band, about growing up the son of a Maestro, about working in San Mateo during the DotCom bubble... start weaving his narrative.

How does this make money? Well, it doesn't, actually. Not directly. Maybe these people will click on an ad on his site... but the point is, if the stories are told well, I think people will read them, and tell others about them. And then he will get links from other sites... and suddenly he has attention.

And with that attention comes opportunity: perhaps it's writing for other sites. Perhaps it's leaping into the techno punditocracy, speaking at TED. Perhaps it's a book. Perhaps it's a sitcom or a movie based on these experiences (the 90's are a very untapped nostalgia market). Having a degree of semi-celebrity gives him a leg up I certainly don't have. And all it takes is a site and the willingness to write.

I hope he does do it: I think that by putting his stories out there, he'll get people interested, and something will find him.

The whole discussion got me thinking about my own blog... what I formed it for, how I've updated it. I went back to late 2005 when I started it, and discovered I'd posted over 667 times. That's an average of 3 times a week for 4 years now. I certainly never formed it for fame (objective: achieved), but just to write. I love to write, and this site gives me an excuse to do so.

I have always nursed a mild fear that what if Blogger went away tomorrow - what would happen to these stories? I've meant to copy these posts off to a Word document for a long time, and tonight I finally did it. And it took up 830 pages in Word - and the pictures didn't even copy in. That's my writing.

As I copied, I didn't read a lot, but i skimmed and realized this time covered the loss of Mark, the arrival of Isaac, SEVERAL jobs (and dramas), the creation and dissolution of BrainReady (and my publishing 3 books), my discovery of fitness, my life as a fitness instructor, my migration to a traveling life, a lot of vacations, and a shocking number of hard drive crashes. About a million good quotes from the kids, and a lot of posts about food that I love...

Revisiting these pages reminds me of some of the areas I haven't really explored recently, and I think I'll be posting more about my thoughts and inventions in addition to the life narratives... and I think there are some stories from the wayback machine that haven't been told yet that I'd love to get out there.

At any rate, it has been a real pleasure to have a forum to share these thoughts, and while I have no idea how many people do read this (I think I'm safely over a dozen these days), I do want you to know that I really appreciate you taking the time to know me. Thank you.