It's Saturday, and I've been away since Monday. I'm coming home tomorrow, and I miss you. As I sit here, high above the streets of Omaha, Nebraska, I'm thinking about us. I know you're sleeping right now, and I wanted to take this time, when it's very quiet, to write you a letter.
If we were a normal couple, I'd tell you that when I met you a few years ago I never pictured where we'd be today. But that would be a lie, and we're not a normal couple.
Instead, when I met this slightly-offbeat, video-game-loving, music-passionate nerd girl a few years ago, I saw a future with her. That future looked different in some ways than the reality that we have today, but the biggest parts are the same.
We have, by everyone else's standards, the strangest relationship that could ever exist. But by our standards, life is pretty much perfect. I'm thankful every single day that I have you in my world; there's almost never a time that I'd rather be anywhere else than with you.
You support me, in all of my crazy decisions. And you're the first to reign me in when they go too far. You stick up for me when I should do so myself, and your strength astounds me. I consider myself fortunate to know that side of you, but to also know the side that sometimes just wants to sit and be held, to know that the world is OK and to not have to be responsible for any of it, if only for a moment.
What's amazing is not only your love for me, but how you've grown to love my children as well. You're more than just a step-mom to them, you're Eli's inspiration in your artistry, and you're Payton's confidant. These aren't positions that are given, because you can't fool kids. You've earned them, because through all that we've experienced, you've chosen to love them as your own.
Sometimes I don't talk very much, and I know that bothers you. But I thank you for understanding that I'm typically a quiet person. Sometimes I get lost in my work for hours (or days) and I owe you more apologies for that than time will allow. But I thank you for never expecting them.
In a perfect scenario, one half of a relationship would be weak when the other is strong. They'd keep moving when the other wanted to give up. I never thought that these existed, but then you and I became us and I found out what living a life together truly means.
I can't wait to see you tomorrow, to hold you and hug you and to bury my head into that place where your neck meets you shoulder; to inhale deeply and feel like I'm back at home, no matter where we might be. I can't wait to curl up beside you, to go to sleep next to you and wake up beside you in the morning. These are the things that I miss when I'm gone.
But you know what's even better? The knowledge that tomorrow doesn't ever end. I know that every day, for the rest of my life, you will be there. I know that we'll grow old together, and that even when I'm 95, I'll bury my face into your neck, inhale deeply, curl up with you and wake up to you in the morning.
Maybe we'll travel, or maybe we won't. Maybe we'll play video games until we're too old to type, or maybe we won't. But no matter what our future holds, we hold on to one another and that's enough for me.
Thank you so much for being this part of my life. Thank you for your loving moments, your belly-dance shimmies and funky outfits. Thank you for dancing to show tunes and being the biggest fan of my music too. Thank you for singing, even when you think I don't like it. Thank you for words of wisdom that I wish I could tattoo on my soul.
Thank you for being who you are, and for bringing me along for the ride.
I'd call this fuzzy math, except that it's really a matter of interpretation and ZDNet has decided to go for the most inflammatory headline that they could find:
“NPD: Apple will lose quarter of tablet market by 2017”
Lose. Not that it will own 50% of a market that is predicted to be 5x larger than it is today, but rather that it will lose ¼th of its market share.
Let's look at the real numbers to see how much Apple will be “losing”.
Ars Technica says that the most recent numbers show Apple holding 68% of a market that shipped 17.4 million units in Q1 of 2012. NPD predicts that, by 2017, annual shipments will equal 424.9 million tablets. By quarter, that's 106 million units.
NPD then posits that Apple will control roughly 50% of the shipments, or 53 million units. 53 million in 2017, versus 11.6 million today (68% of 17.4 million). Or you could write it how ZDNet did (emphasis by me):
“NPD researchers predict iOS will account for a little more than 50 percent of the spectrum by 2017.”
If losing equates to holding over half of the entire market share for a class of device by a single brand, then count me in.
My world was destroyed on Friday. I found out something that changed me, down to the fiber of who I am as a father, a husband and a human being. I can't and won't go into details. I will say that I'm blown away by how humanity can, at the same time, be both wonderful and loathsome.
So as I sit here on Sunday, watching news stories about the latest technology crap, my world has a different perspective. On Friday morning I was taking a shower and shaking my head about someone who was griping about the technology news cycle. Today I'm wondering how I will go back to work within that cycle tomorrow.
I've spent this weekend with my wife and my kids and everything looked perfect to anyone viewing from the outside.
But it wasn't.
For me, I reach the point that emotions become so varied and intense that all I end up feeling is numb. It's not that I don't care, but rather that I care too much and that numbness seems to be my body's way of avoiding (or dealing with) emotional overload.
I used to be able to get lost in my work. But that was a different point in my life, when my work was just my work, instead of being so formative to who I am as a person.
How can you write with passion when all you feel is your brain in varying shades of beige? How do you tell a startup founder that their huge, emerging story is anything but, in the grand scheme of things? How do you carry on with what you've been doing, when all you want to do is scream?
The answer is that you don't. You don't carry on. You've been changed. It's up to you (and me) to decide how you're going to let that change affect you. But to simply carry on is to ignore what life has given you. To just carry on as you always have is to ignore the chance you've been given to learn.
I believe that human experience is entirely subjective. People are only able to set their 1-to-10 scale based upon what they've experienced as being a 10. But their 10 may be your 2, and you have to respect its position to them.
So tomorrow I will wake up, because the sun still rises. The grass is still green and the honeysuckle still smells sweet. I will wake up because the world itself hasn't changed, only mine has. My 10 has a new definition, but it's up to me to respect that someone else's 10 may be my 2…or my 12.
I'll wake up tomorrow and I'll do what I do because I love it. There's still respite for a broken heart in doing the things that you love.
But I won't carry on. I refuse to simply carry on. I will learn and I will try to understand and with any luck at all I will take my Friday and use its lessons to help form my tomorrow, for as long as tomorrow continues to come.
I get it, we use the term to be politically correct. But the fact of it is that the term African American is disingenuous at best, and more likely just insulting. I repeatedly see discussions in the US media about the lack of African-American entrepreneurs, how African-Americans are discriminated against around the world and so on.
When did we, as Americans, become so self-absorbed as to think that anyone who is black has to be African American?
I know loads of entrepreneurs, CEOs and …well… people who would be considered black. Very few of them could be in any way considered American.
It's the same logic here that begets people thinking that all those of Middle-Eastern descent have to be Muslim – or worse, potential terrorists. The same logic that people where I live use when classifying anyone who speaks Spanish as a first language as Mexican. Though really, it's a complete lack of logic.
It's an ignorance that has so pervaded our culture that it blinds us from seeing things as they truly are, rather than the ill-informed, preconceived notions that we choose to believe. I'm not fool enough to think that racism and stereotypes will simply go away if we stop talking about them, but there has to be a better way to describe someone than by their skin color.
This is a question that I have asked myself a lot over the past few years, but even more after watching Micah Baldwin talk at Big Omaha last year. The talk (video is here) very literally changed my life, so I hope you'll take 30 minutes to watch it.
So I had to ask myself this question even more often over the past couple of years as I've progressed in my work with TNW. To put it into perspective, I left a great-paying job, where I was miserable, to work on something that never came through with money. I was unemployed for 10 months, taking anything I could to make ends meet. I moved to Tennessee, took a job and lost it to a layoff 6 weeks later. I took a second job and immediately wanted to quit, because it wasn't the right thing and I was in love with this idea of writing about startups and technology.
In just shy of 2 years, I've gone from a part-time contributing news writer at TNW to being the Managing Editor. I got here because I work with the best freaking staff on the planet, and I do right by them every single day, as best as I can. I love them, I appreciate them and I know that I don't have a job if they're unhappy and they leave. Their happiness is a huge, motivating factor for me every day that I wake up.
Along this trip I've learned a lot of lessons. I've learned that having a partner in life who loves and supports you is more important than anything, except maybe loving and supporting them as well. I've learned that taking a day to spend with my kids won't make the world come crumbling down, and they respect me a lot more because of it. I've learned that the hardest thing I've ever done is to make sure that everything I do is the right thing.
You know what's amazing? I wake without guilt. I know that, no matter what comes my way, I'm going to do the right thing. Even if it means that people won't like me, they can never say that I did things that were shady or wrong. And I'm a salesperson (read: con man) by nature. For me, it's really, incredibly difficult to do what's right instead of what I think will be ultimately profitable.
But I love it.
And the payoff is massive. I'm not talking about money. Money is only motivating up until you don't have to worry about money anymore. I'm talking about the payoff of knowing that I'm helping people. Sometimes it's a startup that desperately deserves to get known. Sometimes it's my non-techie friends who I see talking about stories on TNW. I'm helping build bridges and connect people. I'm helping to solve problems.
Which is also amazing.
I don't really consider myself a “sales guy” anymore. Now I'm a problem solver. I derive pure joy from helping people solve their problems and my job presents me with new and different ways to do this every day.
But I wouldn't get to do it if I didn't do the right thing, every single time, no matter how painful it is.
Tomorrow, I hope you'll wake up and make a conscious effort to do the right thing every time you have a chance. I hope you'll blog about what you found. I want to hear your stories.
I really don't know whose side to take here. On one hand, I don't buy very many ebooks because I consider their pricing to be outrageously expensive. On the other, if publishers (and thereby writers) are making solid money, I have a hard time arguing Apple's point.
But it does still seem shady that Apple and a few other publishers went together to “set” pricing. Whether or not that actually happened? Who knows. I'd be willing to bet yes, if I were a betting man.
Maybe I just don't get it. I've never been a fan. I do desperately love great hip hop, but I've never once considered Kanye to be a purveyor of it.
.
Someone school me. Show me something that I've somehow missed, or managed to miss the appreciation of. I really want to understand why anyone gives Kanye more than a passing glance.
I get my best thoughts and ideas in the shower. Or while driving. Probably because it's the only time that I'm not connected to the world around me.
As I'm in the shower last night, I was thinking about the most successful entrepreneurs that I know. The first thing that popped into my head is “man, what a smart group of people.”
But then I quickly realized I was wrong. They're not the smartest people, but they're absolutely the wisest.
Smart people code, or develop algorithms, or understand what it means when someone clicks one button but not another. Smart people are vital to the success of entrepreneurs, but great entrepreneurs tend toward wisdom versus raw intelligence.
The best entrepreneurs that I know are wise enough to see solutions to problems that affect humanity, not just humans.
Wise entrepreneurs are amazingly effective at avoiding problems. Smart people are amazingly effective at solving them.
Wise people have grand ideas, and understand that they need to hire smart people to turn those ideas into realities.
There are defined roles for smart people, just as there are roles for wise people. I'm certainly not downplaying the importance of intelligence, I'm simply observing that the most amazing entrepreneurs with whom I've had the pleasure to work have also been some of the wisest people I know.
Are you smart, or are you wise? Now here's the funny part about that question - You aren't the one who can answer it.
My huge thanks to Ben, who managed to put more effectively what I've been preaching for years.
Startups, we media folks really do love you, so please don't be afraid of us. The vast majority of us are absolutely not out to hurt you or your company in any way.
Maybe I'm biased, but I think that Dustin is doing an incredible job of curating some really great writers for the network that Svbtle is becoming.
Seriously, just head to the site via the title link above, and browse what my fellow Svbtle-bloggers are writing. Yes, there's definitely a tech slant, but it's not like the stuff that you see scrolling through your Twitter feed.
My friend Cali said today that she missed her last year of undergrad because it was the last time that she felt smart. I can relate, but I also relish the feeling I get when reading the work people who are exponentially smarter than I am.
Maybe they're not smarter than you, but it's still the best stuff that you'll read every day.
Some good ideas in here, and I hope Pair listens. But the idea of classifying anything as a “relationship-management task” with my wife sounds like treating my marriage like a business.
I'm sitting on 3 different stories right now that I want to write, but I can't just yet because I've not managed to figure out how to write them without them just sounding like commercials.
One is about Time Warner Cable, and the moves that the company is making with its Business Class service to help new companies. I've contacted some competitors, but nobody really wants to talk. That makes it very difficult to have the piece look like it is fair and unbiased.