All in an Instant

Entering the 101 freeway tonight from Palo Alto, the Big Dipper filled my view of the southern sky for an instant, then disappeared behind trees, buildings and other worldly things.

In that instant I remembered so many other times and places when I gazed up at that collection of stars. It was a happy sight, reuniting the current me with many former iterations of myself, starting way back a long time ago, as a little boy in rural Michigan.

It's refreshing and stimulating to be spending more time down in the valley (Silicon Valley) these days and nights. Lately, as I've considered various options for my next professional move, I've come to realize that many of the jobs or organizations I've looked into bore me to tears.

There's a reason I've hopped from job to job the past 20 years. I'm extremely restless when it comes to work: I am mainly attracted to new, entrepreneurial ventures, and the people who, like me, take big risks to try and make them succeed.

In the world of the entrepreneur, the stakes are higher than in other parts of the economy. Here, you put your reputation and labor on the line, gambling that you can help build a successful company.

Nine times out of ten (at best), you lose that bet.

Thus, after working killer hours for a year or two or three, you have to let that dream go, find a way to recover from the loss, and move ahead.

I've done this over and over; you could say I am a serial entrepreneur of sorts. But I rarely start companies myself -- that's not my core competence. What I do is join them at an early stage, and become the chronicler of their early history.

More often that not, as I've indicated, that history turns out to be exceedingly brief. Very few of the companies I've worked for since my first job on the web in 1995 are still in operation, at least here in the U.S.

(On the other hand, the overseas versions of a number of them, including HotWired and Excite, live on in Japan, or at least did so the last time I was in Tokyo a few years back.)

And all of them can still be found on the Wayback Machine, which is sort of a heaven for websites after they die.

So much of what we do and experience in this era is fleeting, here today, gone tomorrow. That's how most of my jobs have been, and I'm merely an early adapter to the emerging global economy that soon will govern virtually all work on the planet.

***

An instant is all that you have sometimes of somebody or something special. Because of this, or because story-telling is my forte, I prefer most beginnings to most endings.

It's often the case, however, that we are conditioned by our culture to give endings more weight that they may deserve.

Think about it: "They broke up." "She died instantly." "He killed himself." "We lost the war." "He lost the election." "She was laid off." "They got divorced."

Over and over, throughout my lifetime, I have had to deal with this social preoccupation with how very special things and very special people meet their end, and it's bugged me no end for years.

Of course, when the ending is traumatic, there is a natural tendency to focus on the circumstances of death or failure or divorce.

But when we do this, we instantly devalue everything that came before. Should the fact that Marilyn Monroe killed herself obviate her unparalleled contributions to liberating a prudish American culture at the very moment the oppressive 50's were giving way to the 60's?

Of course not. She was just ahead of her time, as Elton John noted in his song, "Candle in the Wind."

You can see where I am going with this. I've endured my share of endings, both personal and professional, but when I look back, I almost never think about the last moments, because I still hold dear the first moments.

I remember the first moment I met everyone I have loved, as well as the first moment I found out about a new exciting entrepreneurial challenge. Now that I think about it, I always knew right from the start that I had met someone, or something special.

I knew, and I still know.

It all happens in an instant. Then, in my experience, you jump on a shooting star doomed, one day, to burn out.

Be that as it may, I'm still the kind of guy waiting at the next space station, ready to jump into the next ship that comes along and feels right -- professionally speaking.

And, of course, the kind of guy who can still fall in love, as well.

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