Category: just thinking out loud

In a general regard, I think that having pride in what one does is one of the more difficult achievements on my list. I think this mainly comes from the fact that many people work simply to support a lifestyle or to cater to a social norm of contributing or earning one’s place. It’s essentially throwing 40 hours over five days to enable the freedom of weekends and weeknights which “make up” for the time chained to the desk. Not really an ideal way to be in my own personal opinion.

For me however, I get an immense amount of pride in investing my time and energy into activities that I then show off to others as an example of my successes and achievements. Oftentimes it relates to work, but it also includes convincing a pretty girl to date me or finding an extra touch of speed on the soccer field. It could in fact be something as simple as figuring out how to work all of the appliances in a kitchen, but I really was focusing on external oriented factors here – specifically making my family and friends proud to be associated with me.

I think that the concept of respect amongst friends is an odd one, but it’s something I value very much amongst my friends. The odd part to me is that I can’t have a friendship without a degree of respect, but I think that there are those who only surround themselves with people who fear them or revere them, both of which are poor substitutes for respect. To be feared is, I would think, the preferred relationship a dictator, whether benevolent or not, wants with his citizens. It’s something that lasts until someone is willing to stand up and point out that the situation is a house of cards at best and a complete facade otherwise. Clearly someone is oftentimes many someones as the situation in Iran, Myanmar and elsewhere have demonstrated, but nonetheless dictatorships are often about boosting ego more than establishing true understanding and development of the parties involved.

What then about reverence? I can’t find a striking difference between this and fear except that it’s much quicker to disappear. It takes much less for reverence to replaced by indifference than for fear to be replaced by courage. That said, the insincerity of both seem to make this paradigm much more circular in nature than linear.

I personally find that being across the circle from both of these substitutes as allowed me to have what I would call true friends, and honest relationships. When I allowed myself to be revered, it often ended with a realization that things couldn’t be as they seemed because, as the adage goes, if it feels too good to be true, then it probably is.

The reason I want to focus on the external here is because I feel like if I set as a goal for myself working, innovating, creating at a standard at which my friends and family will be proud, then how could I not be proud of myself given the framework in which I build these relationships? It allows me to have an external barometer which is better calibrated than my own intuition as to whether I can hold my head up high and say that I have achieved. It’s truly a badge of honor to allow others to lead that charge for you.

In 5 years I want my brother to say that he’s proud that not only am I his brother, but that I’m a person who improves { “human interaction”, “communication”, “problem solving” } through a commitment to excellence. He won’t make it easy, but that’s what makes the journey to get there fun.

I’ve been working a lot on a career development plan (which in this case is over a 12-18 month range), and I’m really excited about both the opportunity that I’m being given to execute my vision as well as the mentoring that I’m receiving in refining both my development as well as my understanding of what I need to accomplish my end goals. Today, however, we took things in a slightly different direction. The question at hand…

What do I want to be in five years time?

Wow, excellent question. One to which the answer has changed a lot over the last few years.

Freshman year of college, my only goal was to be the name of my generation that everyone remembered. An Alexander the Great, Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin type. It turns out that one can’t plan to become a piece of history. One has to be the victor who writes history.

Then I think my answer to that question became innovative in nature. I wanted to re-define the way people do things. That’s quite the goal if you think about it. My parents still use Yahoo! for search, but 70% of the market now uses Google instead. Think further to put into perspective how hard it is to change people’s habits. Think racial, gender and economic fights for equality. I don’t want to dive too deeply into the specifics here as it’s still an idea that I’m exploring, but I fundamentally believe that innovation is core to what I want to be.

Today my answer was three part:

• Proud
• Respected
• A Leader

As my hour of writing is over, I’ll dive further into each as part of tomorrow night’s writing.

I wonder if we’re no more than just a sum of our darkest secrets. And, if as we release them into the wild, we cease to be bound by the restrictions of the space and constraints which surround us.

Is it not the fear that these secrets will be revealed which shame us into becoming who we are? Would we not find a peace and a general calm in the waters if these secrets did not keep us bound to a dream we never wanted to accomplish or a commitment we never wanted to oblige?

After one year away from home, the lesson which looms largest in my mind is that one will constantly lose, and one will constantly be disappointed, and that the survivors are the ones who can find the silver lining in leaving behind someone who you hoped would finish the journey with you. All I know is that I’m thankful that I’m the kind of person who has a difficult time abandoning people because I can’t imagine how artificial everything must be if you are the opposite.

All of this comes from trying to make sense of my fourteen months away. I’ve spent the last year in what seems like a constant state of loss. The enumeration, at this point, feels petty and would distract from the greater point. Each loss though has really put in focus the idea that when people leave that it’s usually… the right phrase escapes me. But it would involve an element of fear, an element of shame, and an element of quit. Is there a word that describes such a state? If I spoke German, I’m sure that I would find a way to just glue them all together, but language fails me in this moment. I think the drain on my energy and emotions is that I strive to invest 110% in people. You can’t give that much to anything and not bear the full weight of the result when the result goes against you. It’s a completely crushing, debilitating state of being. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I think that as we’ve moved away from oral histories and now stress what’s written, what’s wiki-ed, what’s memorized, we’ve lost one of the simplest and most profound methods of improving ourselves and the communities in which we find ourselves. We’ve lost the ability to listen. One strong piece of advice that I would give to anyone is to learn to listen. Listen to anyone who is willing to tell you a story. If they are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, then listen to learn to lead from them. If they are a recovering alcoholic, then listen to understand their humility. Across the full range of types of people there are stories which will make you a better person as long as you’re willing to listen.

I was reminded of this yesterday as I was taking a lap around the block. It was buzzing as Bay Area residents from all over were piling into AT&T Ball Park for an inter-league matchup between the Giants and Athletics. The local shoe shiner was sitting in his perch, and just observing the world around him. I’ve stopped and spoken to him in the past, and he will often chew up an hour of your time before you know it. Sometimes he’s angry at the way he’s being treated (either by residents who think he’s an eyesore or the police who are asked to enforce public nuisance requests); sometimes he’s vulgar and offensive (often a result of getting high); but most of the time he just talks about the world he sees.

Yesterday he was watching as people arrive to, “watch those millionaires chase a little white ball” and he just couldn’t make head or tail of how these people spend their money, live their lives, and yet don’t have a real connection with more than a handful of people, if even that. He made a big claim in asking whether any of these people had 10 friends who actually cared about their weekend. “They’ve got a phone full of numbers, and not one person to talk to”

I thought about this myself, and I realized that this is a problem that I have myself. I have a phone book full of numbers, and I don’t reach out and speak to any more than three or four people. I have some number of Facebook friends, and I don’t care about over 90% of the status updates that I see in my Facebook feed. I follow on Twitter conversations that mean absolutely nothing to me. The quantity is preventing me from both engaging and even at a more fundamental level participating. I know that ten is an arbitrary number, but, nonetheless, the intimate network with which you surround yourself should be one from which you both gain value and are able to grow. Today that is not the case for me.

What’s the solution?

For me the solution is going to be a more committed effort in maintaining a fewer number of relationships at a stronger clip rate. There are many arenas in which people fall (business, personal, family), and this first phase for myself is going to be focusing on family and personal relationships. By making these relationships stronger, the goal is to make myself better as well. And it all will start by making sure that I listen.

In the last few months, I’ve found myself fighting very large battles, and more often than not losing them.

It’s tough; that’s really the only way to describe it.

I’ve discovered in this time that it takes an unbelievable amount of personal strength to decide to stand back up when you’ve had your legs kicked out from underneath you, but that it’s almost impossible if you don’t have a hand to help pull you up. It’s some combination of utter humility and sheer will which affords you the strength of the former without shame in the latter.

I don’t understand yet why it’s so difficult to allow someone to see you in your most fragile and vulnerable state, but there’s a real fear there. This is one hurdle over which I don’t find myself successfully climbing anytime soon.

I’ve discovered in this time that the reflection you see in the mirror has a tendency to lie to you. When all else fails, you should be able to rely upon your experiences and, knowing that you’ve survived tough times before, you should expect yourself to survive these tough times again. But you just don’t. I’ve found that it has much to do with the inability to fall back on habits which you always relied upon in trying times. When those habits can no longer provide the comfort or safety they once did, one’s habits become constant reminders of what was, what might have been, and what will no longer be.

This endless mind game turns what would have been a peaceful memory into a constant struggle to escape the very things which defined who you were.

I’ve discovered in this time that people will constantly find a way to disappoint you in an effort to not disappoint themselves. This is one of the real wonders of the social creature known as man. Inherently I will protect myself because to sacrifice for you is to compromise my identity; my persona; my existence. And yet, the whole point of coming together is to compromise the self for the benefits of the duality we become. To think there won’t be challenges and hardships is foolish, but to imagine that separation is a better state is plainly naive. Nonetheless, we continue to find ways to disappoint and to separate.

But at the core of it all, regardless of everything else, it’s just plain tough to keep losing.

Let it not be suggested however that this means that one should stop fighting.

I realized recently that the toughest part of moving out to San Francisco is how much I’ve had to grow up. It seems funny to think that I can finish college, or be 24 years old, and feel as if I haven’t prepared myself for the real world, but that’s the unfortunate reality in which I currently find myself.

Some things are just a matter of trying things out which I have never tried. These are actually fun. As an example, I’m learning to sail. My world in Raleigh, NC wasn’t one where I would pick up sailing on any given weekend. I’m no good at it, and that’s okay. Learning to become good at something is pretty hard, much less learning to become great at it. The need to be excellent is still something by which I define myself, but I’ve come to understand when to be excellent, and when to simply experiment. This was something I needed to learn, and it’s something that I can point to and say that this has made me a better person, engineer and entrepreneur.

The thing that’s changed which is most frustrating, and really earth shaking for me, is that I now find Raleigh to be a bubble where everything was a certain way, and where things don’t change, but maybe that’s the consequence of going to school ten minutes down the road from home. I know that things have changed, and I know that in its own way Raleigh is growing up, but for me, right now, it’s become a place where I was, not where I am going to be. That’s really hard for me because I always thought Raleigh was home, and now I’ve come to realize that it’s a place where I just don’t belong anymore.

I never knew growing up was going to be so hard.

My room mate received a bundle of daffodils on Thursday night. They had not yet bloomed, and were just long green stems with buds on top which were waiting to become something more. Almost by the hour, one could watch as the buds started to transform and become tips of a petal, into a petal, and finally into a full flower. It took about 36 hours from when I first saw them until they fully bloomed, and I have to say it was probably the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.

The NC State’s Men’s Basketball team lost to UNC today. It wasn’t a great game, and there was definitely a large discrepancy in both talent and desire. This post, however, isn’t about the frustration of being an NC State fan. That’s chronicled well in the hearts and minds of Wolfpack nation. This is instead one fan proclaiming his embarrassment that the men’s basketball team did nothing to commemorate the late Kay Yow.

When Kay Yow passed away last Saturday, I think that there was an immense level of shock throughout the population of people who have ever had anything to do with Kay Yow in one shape or another. Over the course of my 24 years in North Carolina, I was a fan, journalist, and disciple of Kay Yow’s career and philosophy. I read everything that I could find about Coach Yow, watched all of the multimedia pieces compiled by NC State’s Technician and the Raleigh News & Observer, and watched all of the specials which were played by the various TV networks. Just listening to the women’s game on PackPass this past Thursday, I knew that the weight of losing their coach, and wanting to win their first game back in her honor, was too heavy for these young student-athletes. Clearly, the reach was much larger than one basketball team.

Unfortunately, the reach did not include the men’s basketball team. I was more embarrassed by the fact that there was nothing more than a small black patch on their jersey’s to commemorate her memory than by the performance which was put forth against rival UNC in the match today. Kay Yow’s presence on this campus pre-dates everyone on that staff except for Associate Head Coach Monty Towe, and not even a pink ribbon. Going the full monty and wearing pink jersey’s in Yow’s honor may be asking too much for a group of young men, but imagine this scenario.

The men’s basketball team wears the pink jerseys, and regardless of outcome, auctions off the jerseys with all proceeds going to the Kay Yow/WBCA Foundation. There are only 12 of them, and they were worn in an NCSU/UNC game. How much money could that have fetched?

Let’s say the problem was that wearing a color jersey at home would lead to the team getting fined $100k. Have the Wolfpack Club start a fund to pay the fine, and then, on top of that, convince some donors to challenge the student population, young alumni, the alumni association, etc. to come up with certain percentages of that money, and they will match that percentage as a donation to the Kay Yow/WBCA Foundation. As an example:

if Student Government can organize and raise $25k, which is about $1 per student on campus, then the Vaughn family would have donated $25k to the Kay Yow/WBCA Foundation.

But no, none of this will come true because a simple black patch with white letters spelling out Yow on an illegible corner of a jersey is enough to honor a woman who was THE face of those who do not give up. Today the student section was pink, Wolfie wore a pink jersey, and the coach of the opposing team wore pink shoelaces, but the NC State Men’s basketball team didn’t realize that pink for one day would be a fantastic message to send for a generation of fans who need to remember and grieve when giving up is more difficult than it has been in a long, long time.

One day, mutual friendship will be unnecessary as mutual decency will be the standard norm, and humanity will emerge as our greatest asset.

I’ve been in California for two months now. It’s amazing how quickly that time has passed. I started a new job, moved to a new city, bought new furniture (ended up building it all!), made new friends, and the list seems to go on and on and on.

I only realized how much time had gone by when I called my younger brother, and realized that he was already moved back into his dorm, and getting ready for his sophomore year in college. It’s bizarre to me how I used to have such a rigid schedule – fall semester, spring semester, internship, repeat – for so many years, and in the blink of an eye, it all changes. But I think that’s what makes it that much more exciting. In 2 months, we have released our AIR app, added a public feed system, and really started to lay down a foundation for our future. It helps that we got an additional round of funding, and brought Bain Capital on board. I’ve also learned so much about all the wrong ways that I was doing things. My biggest lesson learned:

It’s always worth doing it the right way first regardless of the marginal costs you will pay to set it up and get things working. Doing it otherwise will always cost more in the long run. Too often the allure of short term optimization leads to long term inefficiency.

I think the next period of time, whether it be a few months or the next year, is going to see me really grow up as a developer, and hopefully as a person as well.

On that front, I’ve really found myself going back to the fundamentals. I’m reading like I did when I was in middle school, and I play soccer in nearly all of the free time that I have. By exercising my mind and body, I’m confident that I will neither burn out nor become one-dimensional. Both are states that I fear I could easily fall into, but so far I think that I’ve taken the steps necessary to come out on the better end of that battle.

And so now I wait to see the future unfold, but don’t worry too much because standing around and watching isn’t something I plan on getting used to.