On thinking that I’m going deaf, and confrontation

I almost always cut the first paragraph out of each blog post. I do this because my first paragraph rarely accomplishes anything other than self absorption. Writer’s masturbation, if you will.

I’m telling you this because you might spend a lot of time beating around the bush, too. Sometimes we end up hurting ourselves when we indulge in such tomfoolery.

I spent two days in Tulum, Mexico convinced that I was going deaf. I went diving through a bunch of reefs and caves. I was convinced that all the pressure changes knocked something loose. It’s stupid, but these are the kinds of neurotic thoughts I’ll do back flips over on a daily basis.

It took me two days of blue funk to pony up and go to a Mexican doctor. I barely understood his broken English, but he squirted a syringe of what looked like club soda into my ear, then ten minutes later pulled out a ball of wax. He showed me the dime-sized wad before tossing it down the drain and writing me a bill for 1,299 pesos.

The money didn’t matter. The time I spent worrying about the outcome cost me two days of vacation, and that did matter. I could have been sipping tequila on the Riviera Maya—not a care in the world—but I spent two days comatose from my own angst instead.

I want to learn to be better at confronting things early. I want to axe out the stage of fear where I let hours decay while I think about ungodly outcomes. I think if we all learned to do that a little better, we’d be a lot happier with our lives.

Sure, it’s quite possible that you’re the ass-kicking lord of confrontation—by god you better be blogging and sharing some of that wealth—but I’m not. And if you’re anything like me, please raise your glasses, then go schedule some time to reflect on the things you’ve been brooding over for way too long.

Like maybe there’s tension at work and you’ve been avoiding butting heads because it’s unnerving. Confront that.

Or maybe you just haven’t been blogging because you’re afraid that what you say will suck. Confront that, too.

Whatever it is that’s holding you back from living life, unabridged, confront that shit and move on. Once you’re done, you’ll feel stupid for not doing it sooner, but relieved that you finally did.

A lesson in being stuck, and getting unstuck

When I adopted Charlie, it fit. I’m the type of person who likes having someone to take care of, and when I was working from home I felt less lonely. I had always loved having dogs, and this was going to be the first dog that was all mine. Up until last weekend when I finally gave Charlie away, we were always able to adapt to the changes we had to face together.

When Brazen Careerist moved out of my apartment and into a real office things changed, but we were able to adapt. When the business started getting more demanding, we were able to adapt too. Even when we moved into a 900 square foot apartment with my girlfriend, who initially didn’t like dogs, we adapted.

The change that pushed me over the edge was that I felt stuck. Even worse, I felt as if the dog was stuck too. He showed me that he felt stuck by pulling used coffee filters out of the garbage, tossing the grinds all over the carpet or by opening the refrigerator and eating multiple sticks of butter and then vomiting.

Meanwhile, I showed him I was stuck by spending money. Three-hundred dollars a month on average to be exact. That’s chump change compared to what parents spend on daycare for their kids, but for a twenty-something making startup money, doggie daycare is a bitch.

Pun, definitely intended.

When Charlie first came into my life I wrote a post where I said, “you couldn’t take my dog away from me with an army behind you.” I really believed that, and I can honestly say that I tried everything to make it work.

Giving Charlie up was easily one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. There are days when I regret the decision. There are even days where I look down by my fireplace and wonder why he’s not there. But I really have to believe that letting him get unstuck was the right thing to do. Hopefully, it will help me get unstuck too.

One of the most important things I’ve learned from being in a startup is to not let yourself get stuck. When people get stuck, businesses fail. Give it the proverbial “college try” of course, but if it doesn’t work, move on.

Such is the same in other aspects of our life.

I was thinking that at the end of the post I might tell you to not get a dog if your life is unstable, like mine. But I don’t really think that’s right. In fact, a dog might be exactly what you need.

When I got Charlie, I was lost in a lot of different ways. I was in a new city. I had been struggling to find meaningful relationships with people. I wasn’t even sure if Brazen Careerist was going to work. Then I adopted a 2-month-old chocolate lab puppy. He didn’t fix any of my problems, but he reminded me to take joy in the more simple pleasures of life—something that I had forgotten.

So who am I to say that having a dog isn’t right for you? During the two years that I spent with my own dog, I’ve experienced so much joy. And even though after two years of fetching, chasing and cleaning up poop our relationship no longer made sense, I wouldn’t trade the time I had with Charlie for anything.

Getting my act together in 2010, I’ll be blogging here again

I want to tell you about my New Year’s resolution. I know a lot of you hate the idea of resolutions, but honestly I don’t understand why. It’s all about rebirth. That’s what the Babylonians thought when they first came up with it. And who are we to question the Babylonians?

In 2010, I’m going to write more. I wrote a lot in 2009 actually, but most of it was marketing copy for Brazen Careerist. In 2010 I’m going to take things back to a more personal place.

I’ve gone through a lot of changes in the past year, and there’s a lot that you don’t know. For instance, I spent the last year trying to train a dog who knows how to open a refrigerator door. I failed miserably, and a week ago I had to give him away.

I also moved in with my girlfriend, who I’m incredibly in love with. The only problem is that we live in Wisconsin, in a 900 square foot apartment with 1,500 books (mine and hers).

Oh yeah. I spent two days in Mexico convinced that I was going deaf. I went to a Mexican doctor and he pulled a dime-sized ball of wax from my ear. I was fine, and it reminded me to stop being so neurotic.

Those are just a few things that I’m likely to write about.

I thought it would complement all these changes quite nicely if I changed my blog design too (thanks Zerflin). Even though blogging isn’t anything new to me, I hope that the experience I have this time around is as fresh and as fun as the great new look my buddy Benjamin has given to the site.

My goal is to keep writing and keep posting, even when I suck. And hopefully some of it will make you laugh. That’s one of my goals, too.

So here it goes. I’m back in the Blog-O-Sphere.

We launched the new Brazen Careerist today, and why bigger does mean better

This summer has been packed with change for me. I moved into a new apartment—the nicest place I’ve ever lived. As we speak my girlfriend is moving in with me. Huge changes.

“Bigger and better things,” is the first phrase that come to mind, though I don’t think that bigger is the word I should use to describe it.

I’m certainly not living in a bigger place. Compared to the dump I lived in last year, it’s actually a lot smaller. And sometimes smaller is what we want.

We just launched the new-and-improved Brazen Careerist—a career management tool for next-generation professionals. It will help change the way people control their professional identity. We’re going to get bigger. That’s scary when bigger doesn’t always mean better.

What I learned from the transition into my new, cozy apartment is that living in a big place might mean living in a dump. It’s hard to maintain and it doesn’t always feel like a home. One of my chief concerns with the new Brazen Careerist was that the same principal would hold true.

But I’m not scared about that anymore.

I spent the last month and a half reaching out to bloggers in our community to ask for help promoting the Community when we finally go live. It’s something we had never done before because we never felt this passionately about a product launch. I figured it would be a challenge, but after sending over 100 requests, I didn’t receive a single “No.”

I’ve always felt humbled being able to say that Brazen Careerist would be nothing without its community. And after experiences such overwhelming support pre-launch, I don’t even care how cliché it sounds when I say it.

And through that I realized why I had been so scared in the first place. Not because the Community was going to get big and clunky—Ryan Healy has been way too anal for that to happen—but because I am going to have to change the way I work as a Community Manager.

I pulled Penelope aside a couple weeks ago to talk to her about this.

“How exactly does a Community Manager scale?” I asked.

“Where does his/her career path lead?”

“Ryan, you’re doing a great job,” she reminded me.

And I realized that I know exactly how to scale my job. Well, not exactly. The Community Manager role in business is still a little young to know the exact path, but I know that it involves growing along with the Community and continuing to be a voice to as many as possible even when that number rockets through the thousands, to the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and millions.

Long story short, I know that you’re all going to love the new Brazen Careerist. It’s cleaner. It’s more fun. It’s social media. And the focus is finally right where it should be—on you.

And even though you may be a little shell-shocked at first—like my girlfriend feels about her shoes being housed in the same apartment as my 90lb Labrador—the bigger-and-better Brazen Careerist is going to be everything we promise that it’s going to be. And I’m still going to do everything I can to be your voice and bug our development team to make the changes you all want to see.

If you haven’t already checked out the new Brazen Careerist, please go take a look. And if you’ve never joined, now is the perfect time to go become a member.

Our Community Feedback group is open and for business. Let us know what you think!

An Inauguration Day stranger, Memorial Day promises and the inconvenience of change

Four months ago, I was sitting in a bar with Ryan and Dan Healy, and Penelope. It was Inauguration Day. We watched our country make history swearing in the 44th President of the United States.

The room was a can of sardines, but more optimistic. Tangled in a motley web of businessmen, congressmen and college students, we parked it next to a middle-aged bald guy. Pulling out a shot glass from his jacket pocket and slamming it on the table, he asked the barkeep to pour some whiskey.

“Hey,” he said. “Would you guys like to take a shot with me?”

Dan and I looked at one another, then back at the guy. “Sure,” we decided.

“It means a lot that you both are doing this with me,” he said. “I’ll tell you why after Obama takes his oath.”

We sat there, quietly sipped on beers, listened to Biden take his oath, then Obama. Looking over at our friend, I saw tears.

“Cheers,” he said. We took our shots. I forgot what whiskey tasted like midday on a Tuesday. Closing my eyes for a moment, I regained my composure. When opened them, the man was pointing to a pin he was wearing on his chest, a young man in uniform holding a puppy.

“This is my son,” he said. “He died in Iraq four years ago.”

He told us how passionate his son was to go into the Middle East—keen on making the world a better place—only to find himself appalled by how everything was being done. He couldn’t wait to come home and dedicate his life to changing America’s foreign policies.

He never got to do that, but his fortitude lived on through his father. Obama’s Inauguration—in his eyes—was the catalyst for change that his son had dreamed about.

“On Memorial Day,” he said, “do me a favor.”

“Tell my son’s story to someone … anyone.” He just wanted his son’s story to be told. And today, I’m doing the best I can to live up to my promise.

During the month of May, two amazing bloggers, Sam Davidson and Matt Chevy, teamed up to get young bloggers talking about change. I couldn’t think of what to write about. Then I remember the promise I kept to that stranger on Inauguration Day and the lesson that I learned.

It has nothing to do with politics, or foreign policy, or Republicans versus Democrats. It’s about the power each of us has to make a difference today, right now, if we’re devoted enough and perseverant enough to make things happen. It’s a fragile gift, because we never know when that chance might be taken from us.

I’ve been thinking a lot today about the people I know whose dreams of cultivating change were cut too short. Like my friend Kaity, who might have lived on to help save the rainforests if she didn’t die of an over dose two years ago. Or my friend Chris, who would have made one kick-ass electrical engineer if he didn’t die tragically in a fire before he even graduated college. And of course, Sgt. Mark Allen Maida … a total stranger to me if it wasn’t for his father.

As another Memorial Day drifts past, and we all go back to work, school or whatever else we do with our time, let’s try not to forget how easy it is to fall back into idle behaviors. Let’s try to remain focused on the things in our lives that we want to and need to change.

Change isn’t enclosed in bubble wrap. It’s not going to wait until we’re ready to commit. And when the chance has gone, we rarely get a chance like it again.