Mattering
There is philosophical idea, I thought about quite a bit in the midst of trying to survive. It’s the idea of mattering.
I can’t imagine a more fundamental psychological need we all have stronger than the need to feel like we matter. We need to feel like we matter to friends and family, to ourselves and (some of us) to God. When we’re uncertain about mattering, depression happens. You can really see the relationship between mattering and depression when you visit a nursing home. When our older people get moved to a nursing home, they often give up. Some of them thrive, but the ones who feel like they have nothing more to offer that anyone wants, they don’t survive very long.
We all have different ways of validating whether we matter or not. A wife may feel like she matters when her husband and children are considerate of her needs. A public figure may feel like he or she matters based on positive press coverage. Religious folks get a strong sense of mattering from faith, belief and community. I tend to feel like I matter when there is financial reward or through crazy, cool things that happens as a result of my work (having something I created become a question on Jeopardy or meeting notable people I admire). Being married to someone thousands of people agreed with me was special was a big part of feeling like I mattered up until a couple years ago.
16 E Noob was accidentally typed when my phone was in my pocket!!!
So now what?
As I continue to struggle to break out of depression for good, I go up and down, up and down, up and down. The ups are great and the downs are horrendous.
Last year, going through the divorce process, I was emotionally far better off than I’ve been this year because belief (either spiritually true or psychologically self-created) gave me a strong sense that I mattered to God. I also felt like I mattered to myself and to friends and to family in the off-line world. My biggest sense of doubt throughout 2010 came from wondering if I matter professionally because nobody with any power seemed interested in helping me get back to work.
In January, I really stopped mattering to myself. Once a person stops mattering to themselves, it really doesn’t seem to make a difference if we matter to anyone else.
As an only child, raised without very much money and with a conservative ideology, the belief in rugged individualism was fundamentally programmed into my thought system. There is nothing wrong with the ideas of conservative, rugged individualism. Well … maybe there is one HUGE thing when it comes me. There’s nothing rugged about me! I’m a cushy, mushy, sentimental, heart-on-my-sleeve kind of a guy.
I left the place where I grew up after high school, moved to Dallas, and I really struggled to figure out life because my nature is NEVER, EVER to ask for anything. Luria inspired me to want to accomplish something big, and now I’ve got that in my blood. I want to do something bigger that what I’ve ever done. The main lesson I’ve learned in the last year is that I can’t do it by myself. I have to ask for help even though I can’t stand asking for anything. There will be more about that in a future post.
What I want to build seems both overwhelming and simple at the same time. The business I’ve spent the last several years imagining seems totally doable, but I can only start by myself. Ultimately, I have to attract a team that buys into my vision and helps me make it happen. That’s where we get back to the idea of mattering. I have to matter enough that people will want to join in on my dream.
A couple weeks ago, I shot two shows with a talented host who wants to work with me. It was a joy to create something that will make people smile. That was always my favorite part of doing GeekBrief.TV. It made me feel like I mattered because so many thousands of people seemed to enjoy what I was making everyday. It’s a great reason to get out of bed every morning.
There is no guarantee that what I want to do will happen, but I have lots of hope, some faith, at least the size of a mustard seed, and a passion for making Internet TV that makes people smile.
Read MoreTwitter Misunderstandings and Fixing Them
As I go through the loss of my marriage, I’m tending to lean into pain rather than turn from it. Based on what my wife says, I hurt people’s feelings on twitter during the last election. I’m sensitive about that now and hold back what I share on Twitter, Facebook and my blog out of respect for her desire for privacy and because my primary goal is to be kind. Also politics is just about the least important priority in my life right now.
Last night the Tony Awards were on TV. I love live tweeting during award shows, but it’s inconsistant with the personal brand I need to build on Twitter. At the same time, it’s part of who I am, and I’ve gotten to interact with some really fun people, especially during the Oscars.
I was having a conversation with one of the coolest people on the planet and I had a thought I liked so much I tweeted it: “Broken people look for kindness wherever it’s available and share it whenever it’s possible.” @talasyn on twitter replied with two tweets: “I’ll have to disagree. Some broken people do. Other broken people only see the ugly in people. Those are the self-absorbed bkn” and “..cont… And pride is the wedge between broken and surrendered… Stupid pride. I hate you.”
Given my sensitivity, I assumed I had offended this guy. Since I’m leaning into pain, I DM’d him and asked him to email me. I told him I think I can learn from him, and if he hates me, I want to understand why. He did email me and explained that he wasn’t saying he hated me. He was saying he hated his “stupid pride.” He also said some very nice things about me being open about my struggle.
I could have assumed I made this guy mad for whatever reason, and now he hates me. I could have unfollowed him. Instead I asked him, and as a result, I found someone I’ll probably end up having a great meal with one day where we talk about life and God and who knows what else.
140 characters can get us in trouble online, but we don’t have to stay there. People are deep, and I’m learning to explore the depths rather than running away in offense. I can’t always do it. I won’t always do it, but I want to try.
Read More140 Characters at a Time
The complexity that goes into making each person’s life unique is one of the reasons those of us who cling to the concepts of grace and mercy love those ideas so much. It’s easy for me to assume I understand someone’s life and situation and make judgements about it. Even though I try not to, I do it all the time. I see politicians on TV. I listen to what they say, I read about their lives, I watch how they act, and then I round out the picture with assumption. We do the same thing collectively with celebrities. We do the same thing with friends. The more we care about someone, the more willing we are to be to dig deep and get an accurate understanding of who a person is and what their life is about. Even with the people we’re closest to though, we only get a partial picture.
When we share bits and pieces of our lives 140 characters at a time on Twitter, people read what we write, take what they know about us and fill in the blanks.
One day earlier this month something facinating happend on Twitter. Anyone following @calilewis and @nealcampbell might have seen two tweets about Oscar Wilde, one from each of us. The easy assumption was that the two tweets were related. I tweeted, “@2degreesofalie Oscar Wilde.” One hour later Cali tweeted, “One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing. - Oscar Wilde”
Oscar Wilde is way off topic for both Cali and me. Anyone paying close attention to both of us would assume the two tweets were related. Since my tweet came first, it would be easy to assume Cali saw me tweet Oscar Wilde and then tweeted an Oscar Wilde quote. But she didn’t. She hadn’t read my tweets that day and I hadn’t read hers. My tweet was an answer to a trivia question. Cali just happend to tweet that Oscar Wilde quote an hour later by coincidence.
Last night I tweeted a reference to a Sarah Silverman tweet. I think Sarah is one of the most brilliant comedians alive, but if you don’t know her sense of humor, you could very easily be offended. I would re-tweet her all the time, but I don’t because I fear people reading wouldn’t get the jokes. Sarah tweeted, “F**k-ups always have friends named Neil.” I tweeted, “I feel the need to RT @SarahKSilverman, but I don’t feel comfortable re-tweeting salty language. 
”
Someone made the assumption that my reference to that tweet had something to do with Cali. It didn’t have anything to do with anything other than Sarah making fun of the name “Neil” and me thinking her joke was funny just like I think most of her jokes are funny. I clarified everything with the guy on DM so everything is good, but I wanted to write this post because I’m working on assuming the best about people and sometimes it’s a challenge for me.
Sharing our lives with each other in real life and online is a risky proposition. We risk offending each other, hurting each other and even just misunderstanding each other. It’s even riskier when we share our lives 140 characters at a time. It’s also rewarding and well worth the risk. The reward of sharing our lives is that we encourage each other, inspire each other, and when were really lucky, we make each other smile.
1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” It was written at a time when mirrors weren’t anything like what we have now. I think of a reflection in water or a stainless steel pan when I read that. The verse is about understanding God, but the idea of seeing things imperfectly, or “in part” like the older translations say, applies to how we understand each other too.
My goal is to assume more good things about people than bad things. I don’t always reach that goal, but it’s still the goal.
Read MoreDaniel Brusilovsky
Having personally done embarrassing things on the Internet, I can imagine what Daniel Brusilovsky is going through right now. According to Mike Arrington’s post on TechCrunch, an intern “allegedly asked for a Macbook Air in exchange for a post about a startup.” Cali and I thought of Daniel right away. Then Daniel posted an apology on his blog for a line that “was crossed.”
I can’t remember how long I’ve known Daniel, but I think it’s been since 2006. Before he really started making waves around Silicon Valley, he and I used to chat about new media, school and how he was connecting to big names in technology. I remember pinging him on iChat sometimes when he was up too late and telling him to go to bed!.
If Daniel did, in fact, ask for/accept a MacBook Air in exchange for a post on TechCrunch, that’s a bad thing. If he didn’t know it was bad before, he knows it now. The best part about being so young is that he has plenty of time to redeem himself.
Daniel is probably the best networker, I’ve ever met. I’ve admired his ambition. I’ve watched him go to school, work at QIK, attend tech events and put off sleep to accomplish as much as he could as quickly as he could. Daniel has tons of potential and this doesn’t change that. If he learns from the mistake and continues to pursue his dreams, I still look forward to watching what he’s going to do.
I hope the adults that Daniel has reached out to in Silicon Valley will reach out to him and be there for him. Let’s give him the chance to redeem himself and shine like those of us who admire him always thought he would.
Read MoreA Hard Reset and Fresh Install … personal edition
Even though I have a Masters Degree in Psychological Counseling, it didn’t equip me with objectivity about myself. I have stuff from my childhood and teenage years that I brought to my adult life and marriage that I used as an excuse to be shy and self-loathing. None of my personal baggage is big enough that it would have been that hard to overcome, but I’ve still allowed it to cripple me socially.
I’ve been reaching out to a handful of friends, and I started personal counseling this past week. I’ve learned a lot and had some breakthroughs that have allowed me to come outside my head for the first time in a long time.
I grew up listening to gospel music and always liked those songs about laying down burdens and moving on, but never really took them to heart. It turns out, it’s a lot less hard than I thought it would be.
I gave up alcohol at the end of last year and it’s just been amazing how quickly years of missing joy rushed back into my life. I buried all the baggage I carried in drinking at night and obsession about doing a great job with GeekBrief.TV during the day. I can’t exactly give up work, but I am taking a couple of weeks off. Except for helping out with the writing, Cali and Dave Curlee are taking up the slack so I have the opportunity to perform a hard reset on my internal OS.
Last night, I went with social media guru, Giovanni Gallucci to hear a guy I admire so much in the world of new and social media, Chris Brogan. It was my second time to hear him speak. The first time, I walked away inspired to think about what he said. The second time I walked away inspired to do what he said. His message is pretty simple: do things for people without any expectation they’ll do anything in return for you. In two words … BE NICE!
So here’s my question for anyone who reads this. As I take time off work to reset, what can I do for you?
Read MoreExistential Crisis at Work
Existential crisis, derived from existentialism, is a stage of development at which an individual questions the very foundations of their life: whether their life has any meaning, purpose or value; whether their parents, teachers, and loved ones truly act in their best interest; whether the values they have been taught have any merit; and whether their religious upbringing may or may not be founded in reality.