So, my first day went well.... thank you to everyone who asked.  :)

Of course, it was a bit awkward.  I mean, you work for eight years in one place and all of the sudden you're thrust into a little world that existed before you got here.  Its really about the little things.  What's my best route to work? How loud to I have to be so Brad and Fred can hear me in their offices, which are about 12 feet away from me and glassed in?   How loud should I be?  Where's the bathroom?  What time do people go to lunch?  Where can I get lunch?  Should I be talking more or less to Kerri than I did to Jeff when he sat behind me?

And the answers?

I haven't figured that out yet, but this morning I just took the 4 train all the way to Union Square and walked back up b/c it was so nice out.  It seems to be too crowded at Grand Central to switch--that might be different when I'm back on my gym schedule.   I don't need to be too loud.  I can probably be loud enough to do it, too, without getting up.  I have a vague idea where the bathroom is, but in all honesty, it hasn't come up yet.  Maybe I should be drinking more water.  Brad gets soup for lunch, which would fill me for, ooooh, about two hours, so that's not an option.  Fred went at about 1, and he took me out minutes before I passed out.  Hench, I brought my lunch in today so I could eat at my normal noon feeding.  As for Kerri, I still haven't figured that out yet.  She hasn't had a coworker in such close proximity for years, so she's very focused on her work pretty much all day.  Since Jeff and I chatted endlessly all day, I'd bet that I'll be less chatty in general. 

So, I apoligize to anyone expecting to hear from me.  It will probably take me a good week to get fully back up to normal.  Cleaning out all of the office and car junk from my apartment would be a good start.  When my apartment is a mess, it definately affects me in the outside world... similar to the way I was in a funk when all my Ikea furniture hadn't been assembled yet when I first moved in.  I'll get there, though... don't worry about me.

I've been terribly out of sorts over the past four days, which is why I haven't posted.  In fact, this is the longest I've gone without posting for some time, but now I'm back.  Let's catch up.  Last Friday was the the last day of my employment at GM, after more than eight years.  It was very emotional, to be honest, and I found myself needing to stop saying goodbye to too many people in a row over a short period, because it was a bit much to take.

Friday started out exactly how you wouldn't want you last day to start out.  I completely overslept, forgetting to turn the alarm clock on.  I woke up at 8:58 AM.  I had the car on my block, but it was on the wrong side, which started at 9AM.  I was turning it in that day, and I still needed to empty it.  The last thing I needed was a ticket, in addition to the fact that now I wouldn't have anywhere to put it as I was emptying it.  So I threw on clothes, and ran like hell down the stairs... only to find that cars were parked on both sides of the street.  I stood there dumbfounded for a few moments.and went back upstairs.  It was almost 9, no?  I checked the internet...  turned out it was Lincoln's birthday!   No alternate side.  So I didn't get into work too late anyway.  Still, it was a shame to have to turn in the car.  I have no doubt that I'll be getting a car by the summer.  I just got so used to having one and I loved driving.  I took a picture of the final mileage as I was turning it in.  Sigh.

I have to say, I did get a very nice sendoff in my final days.  The team had a pizza party for me.  Marcy and I went out for sushi last Tuesday, and Larry and I have scheduling dinner with Dorean and Leslie to schedule.  I even got a Tiffany clock, which they promptly took back from me in order to engrave it.  If it wasn't a Tiffany clock, I'd probably dread what they could possibly write on it, but I don't think Reals would leave a joke message on a brand name item. 

I finally made it out at about 6:30 Friday night.  Everyone else was pretty much gone.  It was all so... well... final.  It really felt final.  Closing the lights in my bare office and heading out was surreal.  In fact, I was playing Closing Time by Semisonic on my iPod when I left. 

"...Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end..."

On Monday, I will join Brad Burnham and Fred Wilson as an analyst at Union Square Ventures.  This is the story of how it happened...

Last September, Marcy popped her head in my office and asked me to come with her to a fundraising meeting with a new group. Being a large and well known program that has been in the asset class 25 years, we tend to see A LOT of groups passing through. And it isn’t just because we’re big… the new funds we see don’t even need that much money... at least not necessarily in the size that we have the capability of putting out. They know we’re sticky money if you meet our bar, which is pretty high. We are committed to the asset class and while its tough to get us to give you money, when we do, we’re in it for the long term.

Anyway, I was pretty busy that day, and almost didn't go, but I know how important it is to have a colleague with you when you see a new group.  Sometimes, you need to bounce ideas off of each other and get feedback to really get a good assessment.  So I went, and that was the first time I met Brad and Fred--when they were fundraising for Union Square Ventures.  Well, actually, it was the first time I met Fred in person.  It turns out I had been reading his blog for a while, but, to be honest, I'm reallly bad at associating people with the blogs they write.  Had he introduced himself as "A VC" I would have realized it.  I'm just as bad with AIM screenames.  I kept thinking, "How do I know this guy?"  I thought maybe it was just because he looked like Gary Sinese.  Only after the meeting when I went back to my Feed Demon did I put two and two together.

There are a lot of "me, too" emerging funds out there.  Just as there were too many funds popping up in '99 and '00, there are way too many people out there raising money, and to be honest, all their stories sound the same.  If I had a dime for every fund with a few guys with short track records and one or two hits that weren't even really their deals, and portfolios sitting at cost, which makes them top quartile for the vintage...  well, you know how it goes. 

Brad and Fred were different.  They had track records going back over ten years.  They had a story--one that made a lot of sense to me.  They weren't going to do "chips and routers"... they're were enough people doing that out there.  They were going to do applications of interesting technologies--in New York of all places.  I remember at the time I was noodling all the blogging going on about the "web as a platform" and I was already convinced that the real money was going to be made building on top of all the infrastructure that had already been laid out.  I had also been working on due diligence for Ignition.  They, too, were extolling the virtues of consumer services and the new layer of opportunities being created, and I really respect their knowledge and insight.  Plus, it all just sounded very reasonable, and I am, if nothing else, a reasonable guy.  I like buying into ideas that make sense to someone like me who might not have a degree in electrical engineering.

Very quickly, USV was down to its last $15 million (they were raising 125) and about to close.  Marcy and I really liked them and so we fanagled our way back into a window to check out the fund.  At the same time, we were going through a strategy review on our philosophy and approach to emerging funds. 

I've been joking around that we didn't come through with a commitment, so Brad and Fred spitefully took an analyst instead.  The truth is, we liked USV, and want to keep track of them over time, but we don't usually do first time funds for a variety of reasons.  I personally never really bought into the "first time fund" idea for people with extensive track records like they had, but there is an added element of risk when you have two people working day in and day out together for the first time.  That isn't to say that veteran teams don't tire of each other and break up as well.  Partnership dynamics are a tough thing to diligence and probably impossible to predict, so you thoughtfully decide where you want to play and you hope it all works out.

At the same time, as you well know, I was thinking about grad school.  I was looking at the future and trying to figure out what was going to be the best route for me going forward.  GM was a fantastic experience for me--all eight years of it, but when you're 25, and you're working with one of the best teams of experienced partner level people in the business, there is a limit to how fast and how far you can move up in responsibility. 

After meeting with Brad and Fred and doing due diligence, I had continued talking to them about the space.  One day, as I was thinking about potential career paths,  I dropped Fred a question over e-mail:

"Out of curiousity, what is the profile of the type of candidate a smaller VC firm  would look for in an analyst/associate role?  What would role would they play in the firm?  I'm filling out all these grad school essays and its just making me think about career options from this point forward in general."

Fred's response:

Would you consider a one/two year stint as an analyst at Union Square before
going to B School?

If you are interested, let me know

Admittedly, I wasn't really prepared for that.  You have to understand what a mainstay GM had been in my life, and while I was still having a great experience there, it was the third time in a couple of months that I had been face to face with the prospect of actually leaving.  First was grad school, and second was the possibility of applying for Liz's position at Fordham's career office.  I took this one the most seriously, though.  Life was trying to tell me something and, once again, I fell into a fantastic opportunity.  I have a great track record with random chance.  :) 

So, Brad, Fred, and I got together and started talking.  I think it was beneficial for them to have almost a year of my blogging to help in their initial due diligence.  (That's what helped clue me in to the idea that blogging could act as a career tool, as well.)  My first interview was like a fourth interview and we went straight into pretty substantive discussion.  They were direct, and honest, and I appreciated that.

So we kept talking as they finished their fundraising and, after the holidays, it became obvious that this was all coming to a head.  I have to say, they were very thorough in their due diligence.  We met again right before they started going through my reference list and that's what sparked this post. 

Perhaps Fred will blog more about what they thought they were getting when they hired me, but I doubt it, because I have yet to directly appear on his blog.  I did get referred to once, though.   That was special...  seriously!  (He's like a blogging rock star!)

Anyway, I'm looking forward to this new experience.  I've been at GM eight years now, four interning in various groups and four fulltime in private equity.  When I first started, it came out of a high school internship.  We worked for a free lunch, and then, in the summer, I asked to be brought on as a paid intern.  I remember getting my offer--a fixed rate per day--and then calculating whether or not that offer was better than my hourly rate in the mailroom of Waterhouse, where I had worked the two previous summers.  I was 17, and I was more concerned with money in my pocket than the upside potential of working for the largest corporate pension fund in the country versus the mailroom of a brokerage firm that was being bought out by a Canadian bank.  Good thing my offer at GM was better.  I might still be in the mailroom.  :)  Point is, I could have never conceived that all this would lead to where it has brought me up to this point.

That's part of what is exciting about joining Union Square.  I have no idea where it will lead me.  Perhaps I'll move on to grad school afterwards and come back on a GP track somewhere.  Maybe I'll wind up joining a startup, or doing my own.  To some extent, my success so far has afforded me a certain amount of predictability and stability in my career relative to a lot of people my age... and I'm very lucky for that.  But now, I think its the right time for a shakeup.  I thought Stanford was going to be that shakeup, but life has an interesting way of playing bait and switch at key moments.

So, on Monday, I'll start working with Brad and Fred, two people whose accumulated experience I plan to download as much as they'll let me for at least the next two years.  Am I nervous?  No, not really.  I think when you know you're making the right decision, your clarity of vision calms you.  Anxious?  VERY.  I know there will be a ton of things I want to dive into--one of the great things about a small group with a wide open mandate.  A group of LPs has given these two professionals (with a hopefully helpful contribution of support from yours truly) a mandate to go forth and make money in the second generation of the web and media convergence.  Plus, I'm anxious to prove myself, too.  I know they could have had almost anyone and I really want to make them glad they chose me--everyday that I'm there.  If this isn't a chance to do something utterly fascinating with my time, then I don't know what is.

I've started running at night again, like I did at Fordham.  At least three or four times a week, I used to run sometime between 10 and 1... maybe about a mile and a half or two miles.  I didn't care how cold it was out...   I was out there in shorts and a t-shirt.  In fact, it was better when it was cold out.  I loved the feel of the cold.  It wasn't a jog.  I was running...  almost running away from the cold, or away from something, or after something.  The music set the mood.  My favorite song to run to was David Bowie's "I'm Deranged" from the Lost Highway Soundtrack.  I listened to that outside tonight.  I just looped it again and again.  Running around the campus at Fordham was great..  I'd run out the door of Hughes Hall, down towards Walsh Library and around the back of Martyrs.  When you ran past Martyrs, you could see the first floor suites and you'd get these little vignettes of college life...  mostly just people watching TV or sitting around chatting.  You'd catch sight of window decorations from the upper floors, too... neon beer signs, Christmas lights, banners on adjacent walls.  I ran behind South and then North, where the Rambulences parked, and past Fordham Prep.  Past the tennis courts and McGinley Hall, by Eddie's Parade, where you might catch someone else running just around the Parade path.  What a boring run that would be.. just around and around Eddie's.  Around Keating and past Millenium, Tierney, and back up towards Walsh Hall.  That was a sketchy stretch, because you had that parking lot where they kept Facilties vehicles and then JMH...  two places you weren't going to run indoors to, but you'd always bump into people along that stretch.  You'd be running at them for some part or behind them, and you could sence their uneasiness.  Right past I went, right by Finlay and instead of a right turn to Hughes, I'd go past it and back around Martyrs again, and not stop until the tennis courts.  Then I cut right and walk it off back to Hughes. 

The streets were empty and the wind was frigid tonight, but I felt great when I got back inside.  My arms were red from the cold and the water from the shower confused my skin.  I remembered showering in Hughes.  The bathroom was usually freezing b/c someone was always leaving the window open.  I couldn't figure out if the water it was cold or hot, because my body was so cold from the outside.  I felt great.  It makes me tired before bed and it gets rid of all the stress that my body unconsciously picks up even though my brain is pretty well trained to ignore it.  I think I'm going to make a regular habit of this again. 

Recently, I was at lunch with some private equity folks and they asked me an interesting question... well, rather, they revealed that they couldn't quite get a handle on what it was that I wanted to do.  They saw and appreciated the myriad of activities I had gotten myself into and couldn't quite paint a picture of how this was all fitting together and leading somewhere.

Its a legitmate point.

I also think its kind of interesting.  You have some people out there with no goals and no requiste activities and obviously that's not too admirable.  You have others who have goals but really don't do too much to actually pursue them, and to me, that's even less admirable, because they've identified targets, but out of sheer laziness or fear, fail to motivate themselves to reach them.  Then, you've got other people who have goals, and, in fact, start out with those goals, based on little to no experience whatsoever, and then fully commit themselves to those goals.  That almost reminds me of the "strong and wrong" concept.  How many people go into investment banking or accounting, do all the things they need to do to get hired by Goldman Sachs or KPMG, and then soon realize that they had no idea what they were getting into, because it doesn't match the kind of lives they want to lead?  Yet, by all measures, these were admirable and respected pursuits. 

And then you've got where I am...   pursuing, yet seemingly without goals.  By my own admission, I do not have a singularity that I can neatly point to as my "goal."  I have potential points of arrival, and each passing day collapses another Schrodinger wave function, narrowing the possibilities through my choices, even if I have no particular inclination towards a particular result.  I become, therefore the end result of a series of choices based on particular inclinations, yet without an overall guiding inclination.  Therefore, I am not "aimless" but I might be accurately called "without aim." 

What of it?  Does it matter?  Wherein lies the potential problem?  Well, if you were completely without an overarching plan around your activities, you run the risk of overextending yourself... committing to so much unrelated nonsense, all without synergy, that you fail to accomplish anything.  Therefore, you need to draw the line between what fits and what doesn't.  How to do this...   Well, one could conceivably use this "goal" concept, but I'm not entirely sure that's the most effective.  Most people will admit that there are many roads to Mecca, and so using a goal as your hard and fast line to figure out what belongs in your life doesn't seem like it would be devisive enough.  Too many things could potentially lead you to your goals.  There's no "one way" to be a banker.  Some people major in History at Dartmouth and become bankers, while others are Finance majors at NYU Stern with a minor in math.  No, what is really a much better way to draw the line on what makes it into your Palm pilot or not is your own natural affection for an activity.  "Do what you love."  While it may sound wishy washy, the average person doesn't love much of anything, if we're all honest with ourselves... I mean, real love... true passion.  I have passion for new ideas.  I have passion for working with people who love to learn.  Sometimes, I find that in students.  Other times, entreprenuers or VCs.  The best VCs are undoubtedly lifelong students.  So, while I might not have a definate end result in mind, pursuit of my passions have consciously and deliberately singled out certain activities over others.  I could theorize where they might lead, given potential trajectory analysis, but to put forth those potentials as the overarching guiding principals in and of themselves would not only be inaccurate, it would also taint my natural ability to let my passions discern for themselves what I should be spending my time on.  They would be tainted by my alligence to a "goal" and hesitation to readjust goals once they are chosen... for what is a goal that changes everyday?  So, while my lack of a clear goal statement might confuse others and prevent them from catagorizing me, it also keeps my life as sincere as it has the potential to be.  As long as I do what I love, I will love what I am doing... and with true love for something comes sincere motivation and the desire to excel (a word which has no cap, I might add), greatly over and above the desire to reach a goal, and then... well... stop.

When I was a sophomore, I lived in Hughes Hall.  It was the worst dorm you could get... a former classroom/office building, they stuffed four of us in two bunks in each room.  The walls and rugs were all various shades of brown.  Its only redeeming quality was that it was right smack in the middle of campus.  I had a dry erase board that a hung on the hallway door.  Everyday, I would put up a quote of the day, because we were close by the elevator in the first floor and we got tons of walkby traffic.  That is, until someone wrote "fuck you" on it.  I ignored it and kept posting...  until they took the dry erase board and threw it in the trash.  I retrieved it and continued to post, until they tore the board into pieces, even mangling the metal frame.  I pieced it back together, though, and hung it up again.  Then, finally it disappeared altogether. 

I put myself out there... I always have.  Sometimes people agree with you, sometimes not, but I've never understood the hate and the meanness.  Don't like the quotes?  Ignore them... but tearing my message board to pieces?  I just couldn't grasp that and it always troubled me that there existed that kind of meanness.

Tonight, someone posted on my blog in a way that upset me over something really important to me.  People say everything is free game when you put yourself out there like this, and while I believe that, the meanness still troubles me.  There's a missing post now that won't return and it was a post that meant a lot to me.  Thanks...   and thanks for busting up my dry erase board.

So I didn't take a lot of family pics, because, to be honest, they looked just like the Thanksgiving pics.  Same people, same venue....  the only thing different was when my brother Scott and his family joined is around 7:30PM.  They were supposed to be in earlier, but they got stuck in traffic on the Belt Parkway.

On my way into Brooklyn, I got caught in some traffic on the FDR, so I got bored and snapped off a few pics from the car...

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Once my brother's family got in, I took a few pictures...

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Exhausted from four hours of begging at the table...

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I haven't posted in a few days, but no worries, I'm still here...

I'm reading the Bhagavad Gita right now...  its a book I learned about when I took a class at the School of Practical Philosophy last year.  I just started, but even the introduction is thought provoking.  The gita is one of the central texts in Hindu literature, and without going into lots of detail, which I'm sure to follow up with during the course of my reading, it offers up a unique insight into the religion and its teachings about philosophy.

Anyway, the introduction answers the question "What kind of yoga (teachings) does the Gita teach?" with the following:

jnana yoga - the yoga of knowledge   An aspirant uses his will and discrimination to disidentify himself from his body, mind, and senses until he knows he is nothing but the Self.

bhakti yoga - the yoga of devotion   The follower achieves the same goal by identifying himself completely with the Lord in love.  By and large, this is the path taken by most of the mystics of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

karma yoga - the yoga of selfless action   The aspirant dissolves his identification with body and mind by identifying with the whole of life, forgetting his finite self in the service of others.

raja yoga - the yoga of meditation   The follower of raga yoga disciplines his mind and senses until the mind-process is suspended in a healing stillness and he merges in the Self. 

So the question is, what kind of spiritual aspirant am I?  Do I seek the Self, which is really a conception of a higher power, through knowledge, devotion, service, or discipline? 

hmm...    I'll have to think about that.  The tough part is, its not necessarily as easy as "What kind of person are you?"  Its more like "When do you feel you are your truest inner self?" 

So, the date of my Learning Annex class is March 16th.  Don't worry...  you will all be getting advanced warning as soon as it goes live on their website.  I'm anxious to see how many people show up and I think it will be a larger group than they expect.

By March 16th, my life may be entirely different.  I may be working in a different place (Greenwich or somewhere else).  I will know whether I've made Stanford or not.  Hopefully, I will have closed on an apartment to buy.  Softball will be starting soon... but not GM Softball, which I haven't decided if I'm playing yet, but Fordham Alumni softball.   I will have played a season of dodgeball.  By March, I might have a deal for a book...  just not the one I originally intended to write.  By March, I will be more than halfway through my 25th year... without feeling a day over 17.  Somewhere along the line I used to think that I'd be married at 28.  That seems awfully close, with marriage seeming awfully far away. 

Everyday I feel closer to what I should be doing, without knowing quite what that is yet...  from interning to writing the paper to teaching a class to mentoring, and seperately from interning to being an analyst to working on business development and perhaps to getting closer to markets and companies right in the thick of it.  This is all leading somewhere...

"In the soft darkness that hides the future from the over-curious, I content myself with this; that where I will be will not be where I am."- Jeanette Winterson

It just occurred to me that I don't actually have a family or holiday category for my site.  I guess that might say something...  I'm not a big fan of the holidays, mostly because my family is a lot smaller than it used to be.  We used to have at least 15 or so people stuffed into either my mom's house, my grandmother's, or my mom's now black sheep sister.  Divorce and death have taken their toll, though, and now, admittedly, the holidays are a bit meloncholy for me.  However, I did reengage myself a little bit this year with the camera, fully intending to blog the holidays in our family.  I also learned that I'm a goofball and didn't figure out how to use the autofocus on my camera until after the photos were done.  So, some of these didn't come out that great, but rest assured, the Christmas pics will be clear and crisp.

Nana and Puba...  I try not to get her excited, because she'll pee on the floor...   the dog, that is.  Puba is actually much older than Nana.  She's 98 in dog years, while Nana is a young 86.  Nana is mom's mom.  She's Sicilian.  Both Nana and Puba have bounced down a flight of stairs in the last few years...  Nana fell backwards down a flight of steps at my brother's old house in Chicago and wound up with a golf ball sized bump on her head.  Puba fell down our basement steps the other day, apparently, and was completely unscathed.  These old gals are unbreakable.

This is my dad checking out the neighbors behind us in the backyard.  They're gutting their house, but instead of moving the furniture from room to room while they work, they just dumped it all in the backyard...  totally uncovered.  Its raining now, and there's a microwave out there for starters.  Bizzare.

They got a new dining room set.  I think it looks nice, but it turns out that small people don't fit in the chairs very well, because they're too big.  My mom's cousin Denise couldn't reach the floor with her feet.  So we only had eight people:  Me, my parents, Nana, Mom's cousin Denise, Jackie (my great uncle's widow), her new boyfriend Jim the Pilot, and my brother Steve.  Steve hates being photographed, but I did get him to take one with me at the end.

Holiday traditions: 

Mom making me a leftovers dish to take home. Dad doing the dishes.  Puba foraging under the table for scraps.  My strawberry tart.

   And yes, Steve does exist.  The funny thing is that Dad's cousin Danny once thought that we only had two brothers in our family...  the guy knew us for 25 years and didn't know Steve even existed.  That's why we used to call him The Phantom when I was younger... he was always off working or at the gym.

Best picture...  My parent's wedding picture in a frame in the dining room:

They're married for 43 years now. 

So after I walked out of the Starbucks this morning, I walked down this street with a sign to "Coit Tower".  There was a long set of steep stairs up this hill and a spire at the top of the hill... looked like an interesting place to go, plus I wondered with the view might look like from up there.

The sun kind of washed out the second and third level of stairs above this....  its such a curious setup, right up from the end of this side street.

At the top of this set of stairs, halfway up the hill, there's a really great view.  PS... this post is now a race against my laptop battery.  Can't find a plug in this Starbucks.

Odd pink castle up the hill...

You gotta be kiddin' me...   

"Hey, where do these stairs go?

They go up..."   

- Ghostbusters  (One of the most well written comedies ever.)

Who says people in California are strange?  This woman appears to be completely normal.  Of course, I'm not sure I can say the same thing for the owner of this house.

Well, maybe I do have some photographic talent.  Although, a untrained monkey probably could have taken a good shot from this spot given this fantastic scenery.  Obviously, that's the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance.  Perhaps New York should start painting some of its bridges.  How about painting the Verrazano bridge yellow?

I'm here.... literally.  The little black asterisk on the top left of the map marks my spot...   but I'm also right there in the reflection.  Cool, no?  My tat my reflect my inner badass, but this picture definately reflects the inner dork.  Check out the panorama of photos at the top of this hill by the Coit Tower below...

Sweet.

You know what, I'm not even going to include a picture of the tower itself, because its not nearly as cool as the view.

But you know what is cool?  This guy's door...

I took that on the walk back down the hill.

The rest of the day I spent mostly driving.  I drove down to Palo Alto to have lunch with Valarie from CM Capital at Zibbibo.  I had a puttenesca pizza... good stuff. 

I did visit Stanford, but I didn't take any pictures.  I don't want to jinx it, because then I'll feel like a goofball.  After Stanford, I drove around University Avenue...  there are some great houses down on the other end.  I love looking at houses.  I took an architecture course in Regis and every time I look at an interesting design, I mentally add it to the list of stuff I'd like in my own house one day.  I think it would be great to design my own house--with someone special of course. 

A really special architect.  ;)

Oh, Holian will appreciate this.  On the drive back into the city, I snapped off a quick photo on the highway..

   How sweet is that Vette?  Its like a '70 or so.  I also saw a new Mustang at Stanford.  I can't decide whether or not I want a new Mustang or an older car like this.  I guess it depends on whether or not I'll be driving to Greenwich everyday.

     Thinking about grad school and figuring out where my next challenges are going to come from has made realize just how much of a constant GM has been in my life.  I've been there since February 3, 1997.  Just the idea of not being there is a little strange and just that building itself has become sort of a mental safety beacon.  I walk around midtown with friends or on dates and enivitably I walk by it and point out to anyone who doesn't know yet, "I work here."  Walking around its halls has always felt comfortable and there was never anyone there I felt I had to be careful or timid around, from Allen Reed on down.  Oh, I applied for other internships and jobs in the meantime, but nothing else provided the challenge and the stimulation, so it was never really an issue.  Even when I signed with JP Morgan, my start date was so far away that I'm not sure the realization that I would be leaving GM ever truly hit me.
     And now, leaving in the next year is a realistic possibility--in fact, its a likely occurrence.  Its not necessarily scary...  its just...  different.  Its a lot to think about.  At the same time, its exciting.  The one thing I'm definately not used to is having to convince anyone of my ability.  I was sitting there writing applications and I just wanted to write down what I told Larry--that I would bet any amount of money that, when all is said and done, however you want to measure success, that I would come out in the top quarter of my Stanford class in twenty years.  The trouble is, like investing in venture, is that there isn't a commonly accepted set of predictive criteria on leadership, so you present who you are, and you just leave it up to some admissions counselor to decide whether or not you're a top quartile candidate.  Its very frustrating.  You just want to reach through the computer (the app was online) and grab the counselor and go, "How can you not see that I'm great!?  I'll outhustle any of these goofballs."
And that's what it really comes down to--outhustling your competition, which is difficult to show in a short trial.  That's why I did so well at GM.  I had four years to show them I was worth hiring.  That helped, because I'm not particularly flashy as a candidate for anything. 
     That's what happened to me when I tried out for baseball at Regis.  Its hard to show up with 80 guys trying out for 18 spots and singles hit your way onto the roster.  I remember this one at bat when I was playing for St. Ephrem's...   I must have fouled off about 8 or 9 pitches.  The pitcher was visably frustrated and it just popped into my mind that I was absolutely getting a hit.  I just decided to get a hit.  Now, maybe that's just drinking the Kool Ade, but it was so clear to me in my mind that I was going to get one.  On the next pitch, I smacked an eye level fastball right up through the box on a line drive--nearly decapitated the pitcher.  It was really a laser.  Yet, how can you show people in a short trial that you can do that? 
     So here I am with three or four possible paths that my life could take over the next year, but I'm not exactly holding the cards.  I hate feeling like I cannot affect my life and that I have to depend on outside forces.  I've always believed that your life is what you make out of, and that, to a large extext, you can pretty much brute force your destiny--if only because few others believed you could and no one else was really trying.  I still believe that in the grand scheme, but these little individual decision points that I need to leave in the hands of others are inordinately frustrating for me.  Last night, I saw the Incredibles, which was incredibly entertaining.  There was a preview for Star Wars (which I don't seem to be as big a fan as everyone else's), but it made me think of Obi Wan's ability to influence the decisions of others.  I'd like to just be able to wave my hand and get them to say, "This one has promise, we should take him on."
    I'll tell you though, this is where blogs become interesting.  Someone made a comment the other day about how blogs might change the nature of job interviews.

Deirg (I figured I'd post a picture of her, since I'm going picture crazy lately and she does represent a good third of my social life as one of my two best friends) said last night that she would never feel comfortable with an employer reading her blog.  Personaly, I didn't have an issue with it, and in a way, I welcomed it.  In all honesty, this is as close to a record of who I've been for the past eight months as anything...certainly more fullsome than an interview.  Sure, maybe there are some off color jokes, but if people aren't comfortable with that, then I'm probably not suited to work for them.  Politcal comments?  Yeah, that could hinder me, too.  But, its me.  I'm not apologetic for any of it and I think its a lot of the kind of insight people are looking for in an interview.  To me, interviews have always been more about personality and drive than qualifications.  When I interviewed Jeff the Intern, he had little experience with Access, and no experience dealing with institutional investing.  He knew nothing about private equity either.  But,  what he had was curiousity and drive.  If there was a model to do that he had to learn from scratch, I could count on him to figure his way out of it.  Would I rather have had someone who had created cashflow models for portfolios?  Well, actually, no.  Because, how would I know where their knowledge ends.  Everyone's knowledge ends somewhere... more importantly is where they are going to take it when they reach that point.  Will they strive to learn?  Stay late or wake up early to noodle their way out of a perplexing problem?  I can throw a lot at that kid and I just know enough of it will stick that he'll figure it out, which is how I think of myself.  I can't tell you how many times I've cut Larry off and said, "Just give it to me, I'll figure it out."  That's personality...  that's tough to diligence in an interview.  Yet, I don't think most people would be comfortable with an employer delving into their experiences on such a personal level.  Me?  I say, "Bring it on."

Do you know why I like Google Mail Notifier?   

Because, as I'm rushing out of my apartment to leave work, it lets me know if there are any last minute, potentially career altering, messages I need to mull over on my way into work.

When I was at Fordham, I loved walking around that campus... walking around in my world. I got that same feeling at the Boathouse. Everything was within reach, and you could just reach out and touch it--affect your surroundings, connect to other people. I'm struggling to recreate that feeling in my own life. Sometimes, from my apartment, the world just seems so big... I feel very small when I'm in here. I need to get out of here. If Stanford becomes my ticket out, I'll leave early... maybe not actually leave, but take next summer off... just be free to do whatever I want. Should I quit my job and just work on my book? Seems silly... b/c who would buy a career book from someone out of work? I suppose I could ditch Stanford and just go to grad school here... get my MA in Counseling and work for Fordham in the meantime. If I don't make Stanford, I might do that. I don't know. For almost eight years, my job has been the place I wanted to be, and now, I'm not so sure... I know I can do something great, but I don't want to ruin the chances of that by doing anything stupid.

If I could just wake up, work out, counsel students and run programs all day, kayak on the weekends, and play softball once a week, I'd do that for the rest of my life. There are days this weighs on me more than others. I've started not liking Sunday nights... feeling like I should have accomplished more during the weekend and not feeling like I've accomplished enough to start the week.

I was just IMing Anne and she wrote, regarding the impending jump to grad school...

Besublime5: plus, you have savings
BeSublime5: after working 3 years
BeSublime5: it's goin broke that's the salt in the wound

To which I replied:

Ceo21: Dude... I'm loaning this sucker out
Ceo21: I'm not tapping my equity
Ceo21: Its an MBO of myself.

I love that concept. Grad school is like a management buyout of yourself, using a lot of leverage. haha

In fact, it gives me a bit of inspiration around the theme of my new blog when I move from Blogger to Typepad.

I think I need to get out of here... at least, for a little while.

I remember a conversation I had with a Jesuit scholastic on one of my Emmaus retreat. He had dated before he became a priest, worked at a job in the legal profession, but he realized he needed a change. As he put it, he just realized that "If something was going to happen with all that, it would have happened already," meaning job, family, house, etc.

I think I need to leave NYC for a while... to shake loose some friends I keep going back to for who knows what reason, and to test some friendships to see if they can withstand a dramatic scene change. I want to know who follows me with calls and visits. There are some people that may choose to come along, but I can't wait up for anyone. What I am going to do is going to be a positive influence on the world around me... and I can't force it on people who don't want to be a part of it.

My boss and I talked today, because I needed his recommendation for the application, and that opened up a whole pandora's box of issues related to my place in the firm. He said something interesting to me. He told me that he thought I had plans that were greater than what I could do there. Going into the conversation, I felt like maybe there were things above me that I couldn't get to... I didn't expect him to turn the tables on me and tell me that there weren't enough things I could do there to be as great as I could be.

When I was a Regis freshmen, I got intimidated by my surroundings, because no one told me what I had the potential to accomplish. I learned that lesson late, and tried to make up for it at Fordham.

In the last day or so, I've found clarity of vision. I understand now how Stanford fits into my life... because its the best and biggest thing I have the potential to do right now, and I shouldn't be shooting for anything less than that. I don't want to look back on my life over the next few years and think I left anything on the table. Let's see how far this can go. I want to let it ride.

This is going to be big. I can feel it.

So I definately just stole a towel from the gym this morning. I've never done that before. It was in my hand and I just walked out with it. I didn't notice it until I wiped the sweat from my forehead about halfway home and realized that I've never been able to do that. :)

Anyway, so I had a random run in with someone I knew in high school yesterday and it got me thinking. Its really interesting when you are younger that you get into accepted modes of thinking about certain people... people who were out of your group, or in your group but then seperated. You fall in with a certain crowd and inevitably, their ideas about certain people become generally accepted thinking. Later on, sometimes you are lucky enough to cross paths later in life and realize that these were pretty decent people after all... of course you realize this after you figure out that the crowd you may have been in wasn't all you thought it was cracked up to be either. Its a lesson I've experienced several times and I need to do a better job of remembering it. Just because they are your girlfriend's best friend or rooomate, doesn't make them your friend, too. Just because the crowd your in parts ways with someone, doesn't mean they aren't worth keeping around in your own life. Be very careful to judge people by association, because perspective can skew things in odd ways.

Its funny. When I ran into this girl, Lauren, she asked who I still hung out with. Its been over a year since I've seen or heard from Dena, and having this genuinely pleasant run-in with this girl just made me wonder whether I need to be more discerning about who I invest time with in my life.

I was talking to people about the Hudson River yesterday--we did a Hoboken kayaking program with Sandy. Someone said that the river flushes itself out twice a day with the tides. I wish my life would do that sometime. When you work at the same job for a while, things start to build up--little things that you just can't seem to get off your plate. You have little scraps of paper scattered around your office to remind you of all the things you were going to do, but have yet to get to. It just doesn't stop, you know--especially in private equity, because everything is so long tailed. GPs raise money for months and months... unless you give them a quick no, they hang around the hoop forever. I think that's what I liked about school... the fact that things come to an end at regular intervals. Semesters end, years end. Every three or four months, your life came to a close and then you had a little bit of a new beginning. You'd get new people in your classes, and the new classes would take you new paths around campus, at different times. Your work from last semester was done--there was nothing more you could do. It had a natural end.
There's so much on my plate right now. I wish the semester would end so I could have a fresh start. Perhaps our move to CT will do the trick.

There are few places in the world left uncharted, but there are many lives yet to be discovered. You can't really go to a place that hasn't yet been walked upon by many, but you can be lucky enough to have someone open up to you in a way they have not done with others. These are the times in my life I feel I have discovered real beauty in this world. There are no souveniers to be bought to remind you of these moments, and no digital pictures to be taken. I can only hope to visit these places within the hearts and minds of others again, to bask in the warm glow of their inner light. There are 8 million people in this city, and if you can get to know a handful of them really well--well enough to know their hopes, dreams, and fears, you should consider yourself very lucky. We too often fail to make other people secure enough to confide in us, and other times, we fail to confide in others enough to let them into our world.

Get out there and visit someone's life today, or you'll just wind up "sitting around in Terra Nova."

Priorities and goals for the remainder of 2004...

1) Get book published, either through the publisher its at now, or on my own.
2) Get into Stanford's MBA program.
3) Start career guidence blog/website for college students.
4) Spend more time with friends and less with acquaintences... maybe host some dinner parties to combine this one and #7. Nothing like synergies. Dude... I could even combine it with #5!! wooooo
5) Buy a better digital camera and start capturing more of the best moments of my life... encorporate photos into blog.
6) Solve the laundry backup problem in my apartment... probably best done by actually paying to have it done.
7) Go back to cooking more and eating out less.
8) Finish third in my fantasy baseball league... The Jesuit Outcasts will win money this year!!