I worked on things to fit what she said where her dreams. Modeling didn’t work because that business is just weird. She groked it and that business doesn’t like girl who grok it. We then started writing a book. Harry Potter was taking off and we started writing a book set in New Orleans with a flood threat that skidded to a halt with Katrina. My next thing was podcasting inspired by Dawn and Drew. The Crappy Christian Show quickly evolved from Luria and me getting drunk and talking into a mic into a ministry type thing to share the idea that God may love gay people just as they are, without any expectation they change. I didn’t want to be in ministry and Luria certainly didn’t.

Steve Jobs announced the first iPod that played video and I worked to make that iPod play GeekBrief.TV. That worked well. We started making money. Mevio was a great partner. Luria wanted more, and people in her life convinced her she was the character I wrote every day. Her belief that she was Cali Lewis grew into an argument that led her to leave our marriage.

I still want to be writing tech news as Cali Lewis and producing GeekBrief.TV. I don’t get that as an option, and I’ve come close to launching alternative visions. I almost released a gadget show yesterday.

Here’s the deal though … I don’t want to work on a next thing that is anything but temporary. My heart can’t currently believe in long term. I want to work, but I’m not ready to say, “This is the thing that replaces Cali Lewis and GeekBrief.TV for me.” Even my dreams for Bacon.TV in partnership with Wright Brand Bacon isn’t that powerful!

The Mayans predicted the world ends at the end of 2012. Obviously, that’s silly just like when that preacher dude did it twice in 2011. But you know what? So what! What will happen if I live this year like it’s not only my last year, but yours? That’s what I’m going to do.

Tomorrow I launch a temporary thing I can believe in and I think it will inspire you to do something better than you planned to do in 2012. It isn’t serious because I’m not ready to be serious. It’s just about fun.

I’ve lost my life goal of being married to a beautiful, smart, and kind girl. I’m not making that kind of goal again. To make it through. I want to live as though it’s not only my last year but yours too.

In January, I wanted to die so bad I stayed in bed the whole month taking Benadryl every time I woke up. It was bad.

While waiting for the Benadryl to kick in, I studied suicide and learned the most peaceful method involves an oven bag and helium. Beyond my religious baggage, the thing that kept me hanging on was a belief that I might be able to work on something that matters more than GeekBrief.TV did.

I want to be doing GeekBrief.TV. Since it was my idea and I wrote all the shows, I can’t come to terms with losing it. It should be mine. I invented my dream job and I don’t want to do anything else. Life says, I don’t get the option I want.

Luria and I agreed before mediation, I would get GeekBrief.TV and she would get Cali Lewis. To me that would be the best, bad end of our marriage and business relationship. When we got to mediation last November, she changed her mind. She was suing Mevio for reasons I can’t even begin to comprehend. Mevio’s lawyer, Bobby and mine said let her have GeekBrief.TV. Mevio told me that they would win and give GeekBrief.TV to me to control. The mediation process is HELL. Mevio told me I would earn back equity based on performance of the show. Having my baby (GeekBrief.TV) messed with by outside forces wasn’t okay, but I trusted Mevio at that point more than I trusted Luria. Right now, I barely trust even best friends. I made a huge mistake trusting Bobby at Mevio, but I don’t think it was the biggest business blunder I made.

In February, the depression burned off like fog does in San Francisco. I went from feeling doomed to feeling excited about my future. It happened over night.

I was taking care of my grandmother and her sister until the family could get them in a better, safer place. I started reading my home town paper and creating a vision for something I could do there. There was an article about Let’s Think Productions shooting a short film there. That gave me huge hope. I made a list of people in my home town that were making a difference, and I worked on getting to know them.

All that, and I still haven’t gotten to my biggest business blunder! When depression went away, I was open to any opportunity. The opportunity to produce the “Making of The Bloodstone Diaries: Thief of All Things” happened and it was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in my life. I got to work with talented and nice people who produced very cool things for me to shoot and edit. From that, I made this …

My best friend from growing up has a daughter who is an amazing ballet dancer. She asked me to shoot photos and film the annual recitals. Intrigued by the opportunity to produce something I haven’t produced before and looking for ways to make money, I thought it would be cool to shoot the three recitals like a film and offer DVDs for sale to parents. The ballet school has around 500 students, so on the surface the idea seemed solid. It’s easy to shoot. It’s easy to edit. It’s easy to make DVDs. If I sold DVDs for $20 each, I figured it could be a nice bridge between GeekBrief.TV and what I wanted to do next.

There were three recitals. There was a gymnastics show, a dance show and a ballet show that took place over the course of a weekend. I heard from parents the event was torture, but for me it wasn’t. Okay, some of the gymnastics recital was torture, but the dance recital was an amazingly entertaining show that I would have paid to see and the ballet recital was beautiful.

After shooting the first show, I had to go to Office Depot and get an external hard drive because I realized I was capturing a LOT of data. I shot with two Canon 5D Mark IIs and rented a $5000 lens for tight shots. When we finished, I had over 20 hours of footage to edit down to half that. My promise to finish in a month was not even close to possible.

After syncing the two shots, I started cutting. I made a huge mistake. One camera shot 30 fps and the other 24 fps. The result of that mistake cost me a huge amount of time rendering to verify my cuts. In theory, it should have taken me about a month to edit what I shot. In reality, it took the whole Summer. Stumbling blocks continued to arise and it wasn’t until Monday that I got to get that haunting Steve Jobs quote out of my head: “Real artists ship.” I shipped.

I spent $30,000 to make $2,000, but beyond the cash, I put a massive amount of effort into the project. I hope some kind of karma is involved. I wanted to make recital films that are better than any other recital films ever made. When I see what I made, I think I failed. I don’t like the end result because my wide lens wasn’t good enough and I had to compress for standard definition. In HD, it looks better, but that’s too complicated for average moms and dads to grok.

Producing these DVDs was my biggest business blunder because it was a one off opportunity to make survival cash when I could have been working on something that would have provided on-going revenue. Caring about friends is a great way to be happy, but it isn’t the best basis for making business decisions.

Starting today, I’m looking for an opportunity to pour myself into someone else’s dream for Internet TV. I want to continue to be a pioneer in Web TV, but I’d like to take a break from being the primary dreamer (unless the dream is funded).

If you’d like to work with me, even though I made a huge mistake, I’m neal at neal.tv.

Tonight on PBS, a documentary series launched called America in Primetime. There are four episodes that you can catch on your local PBS affiliate for the next few weeks.

The first episode is called Independent Woman and I LOVED IT! My psychology goes all weird because I’m a very feminist straight man, which means I love strong women and yet I want to have sex with women … very complicated.

With GeekBrief.TV, I worked with every fiber of my soul to create a strong independent female character called Cali Lewis. To build this business with my ex-wife, I did a smart / stupid thing. I off-set everything I contributed so that people would believe the Cali character was a strong and true … geek woman. Now I struggle with the authenticity of the most successful thing I ever did.

If Luria hadn’t been pulled in other directions, my mission would have been all good … I guess … maybe not! I wanted to create this strong female character in the mold of Lucille Ball, Mary Tyler Moore and Roseanne Barr. I didn’t really do that. I created a picture of what I thought was right. I made a character that said the right things about geek culture and gadgets, but ultimately it was my little pretend world. Cali Lewis, during my tenure was me. But didn’t those men who wrote those shows I love do the same thing?

Luria got seduced by the Beaker guy. Based on what she told my attorneys during the divorce process, he wasn’t paying her. That makes me hurt for her.

That’s my past. I don’t want to let her go. I think she’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever known. I think she made a huge mistake to trust that Beaker guy more than me … and screw me, but I still hope one day she’ll come home.

People tell me to let go and move on. No thanks, but I’m choosing to move forward without letting go of my past. I really care about what this PBS documentary was about. I want to live in a world where strong women make a difference, because quite frankly … men haven’t impressed me much (except for Steve Jobs).

What I do next in life and tech will matter. I hope it matters to you.

I’ve struggled for a year leaning on the concept of God and there is something very powerful there. Trusting that idea gave me hope and peace, but it didn’t pay the bills. What Luria did to me wasn’t nice and wasn’t fair and letting go of it hasn’t been easy because there hasn’t been closure. She left. I asked, why? At first she told me nothing and then she started just making stuff up as if that would make me okay with everything. Made up reasons for leaving don’t help. I get that I made her miserable in the last two years of our marriage because I tried everything I could think of to get John out of our marriage.

With every ounce of my being, I’ve wanted to kill myself because I didn’t know how to deal with Luria and John. One of the things that makes me believe in God WAY more than the Bible is that killing yourself isn’t as easy as you’d think. I researched every possible method and got scared off by the failure rate. I no longer want to die. I want to live and thrive and I want Luria to be successful. I have never been angry with her. I’ve only been angry at John and holding it in isn’t getting me anywhere. It’s like poison inside.

In the last year, I’ve dealt with them creating anonymous Twitter accounts to smear me. When I was doing great and thought the divorce was over and I was ready to move on, John posted on his blog that he was suing me. He took everything from me and then said he was suing me?

I hate the fact that his stupidity mattered to me. By Christmas I felt so hopeless that I hung out with some of my best friends really thinking it would be my last Christmas. In January, I rarely got out of bed, but then in February, just like fog lifting off of San Francisco, I stopped being depressed.

The words of that Dixie Chick’s song, “I’m not ready to make nice” resonate with me. They can accuse me of stuff to justify what they did and no matter how ugly that is or how powerful they are because they have money and attention, they cannot send me as low as they sent me by being crappy people.

All I ever did in my marriage was work to make Luria famous because she wrote me a note before we were married saying she wanted that. It isn’t an easy thing to make happen, but I think I did it well!

Since August, I’ve struggled to know how to rescue Luria from the influence of people who were using her…not to get her back in my life…just to get her out from under the influence of people who would do what they did to me and to her.

In August, they did something so nasty to her and convinced her I was to blame. Only they could have done it because only they had access to make it possible. I go to bed crying night after night at the thought she thinks I would have done what they did.

From here on out, I’m standing up to them. No one, even her family, gets that she’s being used because we put a PR hungry man on GeekBrief.TV and when I went crazy trying to get him out of our life she chose him and now lives a life promoting him.

Fine! I’m not ready to make nice, but I am ready to start a new show that does shiny, happy tech news and isn’t about self promotion or just getting rich. I don’t care if anyone knows my name. I want to get back to doing what I did with GeekBrief.TV … just loving technology. I can’t do that if I bottle everything up and pretend everything is okay.

Next week I’m shooting a pilot for a new show. I’m excited and scared to death, but I’m done letting a creepy, rich guy intimidate me.

I wish I could be angry with Luria. I’m sure it would help me move on, but until she left, I’ve never known Luria to be anything other than the most awesome person I’ve ever met. It’s Luria manipulated by John that I have a problem with and pretending that my problem doesn’t exist just hasn’t worked. I also can’t find a way to blame Luria because I’ve known her half my life and her nature is kindness. It’s very much like her operating system has a virus and that virus is John.

That man took my life away from me. He wrote me in an email after Luria left saying, if I would have turned to him rather than God my marriage would have been saved! I’m glad I didn’t turn to him because I don’t believe in him.

There are people who say I should keep this to myself and move on, but doing that just eats me up. The truth is, I don’t really know what to do to get over what they did to me. I hired an attorney who believes divorce should be nice because I couldn’t accept that Luria would do something so mean. I still don’t believe she would. I know I turned her off because I think John is the worst man I’ve ever met in my life and I told her that over and over and over and over. It was when I told HIM that that she got mad at me, but not at first … only after talking to him about it. As soon as he thought his access to the Cali brand and GeekBrief.TV would end, he started turning her against me and it was totally possible because his constant involvement in our life turned me into someone who was miserable to be around.

My heart wants no one to pay attention to my need to let this out, but if I don’t let it out, it will kill me.

People liked GeekBrief.TV because it was built on love. I’ve had to watch some episodes recently and something is very clear. If you watch the episodes before when we put John on the show and after, you can see the joy being sucked out of our lives.

If Luria would have left and moved to San Francisco or New York because she got tired of me, I would be heartbroken, but I would be her biggest fan. That she left and gave what I created to a very bad man is not something I’ve figured out how to get over.

Pretty much all I can do is shrug and say what her wonderful grandmother always said about situations you can’t control, “What are you gonna do?”

Here’s what happened to GeekBrief.TV. We put a guy (John Pozazedes) on an episode because he funded an amazing application he called Woopra. It’s a web analytics tool that, if you are a techie, is worth your attention even though I HATE the man who pays for it. The software is awesome!

When we put John on GeekBrief.TV, he became obsessed with us. He wanted to be at our house at least four days every week. I was interested in him because he has the heart of a teacher. I can only speculate, but Luria seemed to be interested in him because of the way he praised her. Having him in our life a bit seemed like a good thing to me, but having him in our life as much as he wanted to be in our life was creepy.

He asked me to create a show where he bathed in money to show off how rich he is. He turned me off, but I guess, turned Luria on.

Luria wanted me to create a show with him and the end product was a show called WealthNation. If this guy was so successful, I thought it would be cool to get him to explain how to be successful. He couldn’t. From what I gathered, he made his money as a stock holder and really doesn’t have a clue how to make more, beyond putting his stuff in the hands of a brokerage firm.

As soon as I realized he didn’t have a clue, I departed. Luria continued to work with him. I emailed him and told him I wanted him out of our life. He was nice … and then Luria left … and he emailed me to say if I would have turned to him rather than God my marriage would have been saved … at that point … I knew I was screwed.

The brand I created … Cali Lewis … was intended to be the Martha Stewart of technology. Instead,it has become a promotional vehicle for a man married to two women at the same time, Holly and Vi. My heart is to empower women, but I ultimately empowered a very crappy man who will probably respond to this by accusing me of stuff that just isn’t true.

UPDATE: I can’t prove that it’s Luria’s John, but a John left a comment from a hotmail address saying this….

Wow, I haven’t checked on this trainwreck of a site in quite a while, but it’s… actually gotten worse. Just.. wow.

Between claiming you created everything to do with “Cali”, that you were the most awesome husband ever, and how the divorce was all about “what Luria did to me”, with nary a mention of how terrible a husband you actually were, I think you are the purest and most refined example of what it means to be a narcissist. I’m talking an incandescent example of such.

It’d be impressive if it weren’t so damn sad.. wait, didn’t you just get married again recently? Yet you’re still the saddest sack on earth? That must make the new wife feel sooooo appreciated.

It sounds like the John I know because its abusive and mean and inaccurate. I was an awesome husband until John pushed himself into our life. When he wanted to be at our house every day, it drove me crazy. When he texted Luria all the time and flirted with her very inappropriately, it drove me crazy. Luria left an unlovable me … no doubt about it, but if you question anything. Watch the old shows. Yes I fell apart. Everyone paying attention saw that, but the only fight I every had with her in eleven years of marriage was about John.

Get married again? That reflects some thing John wrote on the blog post saying he was suing me, but anyone who knows me knows I don’t believe I’ll ever be married again because I can’t imagine trusting a woman that much.

Unless something falls through, our house will be sold next week. I guess technically, I’ll be a little homeless while my wife and I wrap up details of the divorce and I prepare for what’s next.

I’m planning to put stuff in storage and rent some short-term apartment while I prepare to go on that writing trip I wrote about a little over a week ago.

I’m drawn to Eastern Europe and I hope that’s where I’ll end up. The first place I considered was Thailand, but Thailand is a hot place and I’m happier in cooler climates (but Thai food is so good!). After Thailand, I considered Estonia. Estonia is an intriguing place because it’s a country that cares about technology. It’s where Skype was created. As I drifted around the map, I started to really focus on Budapest, Hungary, and then a couple days ago, I learned about Dubrovnik, Croatia. If you don’t know about Dubrovnik, take a look at these images! My best friend in college was from Poland and he taught me how to say “She has nice face” and “She has nice breast” in Polish, so if I choose Polland, I have something to say when I get there.

Really, I don’t know where I should go and really I doubt it matters. Life isn’t about the destination, it’s about the journey.

This is a trip about stretching myself and doing things outside of my comfort zone. I don’t particularly enjoy going to the grocery store alone. Staying in a hotel alone is even less fun. The idea of going to a different country without Luria’s partnership is the single most scary thing I can imagine and that’s exactly WHY I have to do it. Doing things that scare me tends to be worth it in the end because I grow. I want to grow. I also want to write. The main purpose of this trip is to write a book and I registered what I think is a great domain, awaytowrite.com. While I’m away, I will produce a show or maybe more than one that I will publish through Mevio.

If you know anyone in Eastern Europe who could answer questions, I’d appreciate an introduction. My email address is neal at geekbrief dot com.

We recognized some really good strategies that can be replicated, and I’m now applying what we learned from building Cali’s brand to my personal brand. One of the things we did to grow her followers was to give things away. We didn’t do it often, but it was effective when we did. Scott Bourne is the king of using give-aways to grow his influence on Twitter, and I recommend studying what he does if it’s something you want to try.

Some people are only on Twitter to enter contests
This may not be shocking to anyone but me, but I was shocked to learn some people are only on Twitter to enter contests. They follow people to enter and Re-Tweet entries over and over again. I had an interaction with one woman who was working to make it as an assistant director in Hollywood. I asked her why she isn’t using Twitter to develop a personal brand. Her answer was she hadn’t thought to use Twitter like that. If she tweeted about her life as a struggling assistant director, it very well could be fascinating and who knows what that could lead to? I’m sure something more valuable than a chance iPad.

People are on Twitter for whatever reason it makes sense to them. Some of us are there for friends. Some of us are there for news and information. Some of us are there to market, and I guess some of us are there to win things. Almost once a day, someone told me they followed me for a chance to win the iPad, but they were glad they did because they got value from the information I share on Twitter. I learned that just because a person only tweets to enter a contest, it doesn’t mean they aren’t paying attention to who they’re following. It isn’t a two-way conversation for most of them, but ultimately if they weren’t interested in what I tweeted, they unfollowed when the contest ended.

A few people get mad if they don’t win
Every time we’ve given something away through Twitter or GeekBrief.TV, a few people have gotten upset with us after not winning. It isn’t something I really understand, but it’s good to prepare yourself for it so you’re not caught off guard. I try to respond sympathetically. My wish for every person who likes me or hates me is that they should have an iPad, so I’m disappointed for the people who didn’t win. The old commercial was about buying the world a Coke and everyone living in harmony. That sums up how I feel about iPads.

twitRand is limited by the Twitter API
twitRand is the best way I’ve found to pick a random follower, but the Twitter API has limitations that keep twitRand from being a perfect solution. From what I understand the best solution would involve sucking all the tweeted entries into a database and selecting from that. I had a conversation with someone after the contest ended and he might build something that does just that. I would pay a fee to a company that handles entries and insures the process is as fair as technically possible. I learned about tweetaways.com after the fact and that might have been the best solution, but at the time I announce the give away, twitRand was all I found.

Re-tweets work, but are they worth it?
Since I made the mistake of not developing my personal brand at the same time I worked on the Cali brand, I’ve had to correct that quickly. I’m still working on it and have a long way to go!

I don’t like the idea of contributing to noise on Twitter so I had to compromise THAT value in order to kickstart my personal branding campaign. Having people retweet my brand helped me increase my Twitter stats, but I’m sure it annoyed people too. One guy was so annoyed he created a parody twitter account and followed people who were following me. Some thought it was me. Ultimately, he made it clear he isn’t me and was just having fun at my expense and I can definitely live with that.

The biggest problem with the re-tweets is that I fear they’ll never end even though @TheNobber already one the iPad. Lots of people re-tweeted the links without ever going to Neal.TV to learn the details about the contest. All-in-all there were just over 6,000 tweets referencing Neal.TV during the time of the contest. Only a small number of people continue to tweet the link, but it could conceivable continue for a long, long time. Maybe I’ll start DMing them one at a time to let them know.

Overall, I’m happy with the results. There are things I would do different next time, but I can’t say the negatives outweigh the positives. After the contest ended, I lost about 150 followers and now the number is slowly growing again. The contest increased my numbers by almost 4000. Numbers in social media, when you’re doing it right, are about influence and credibility. My hope is that I either add value to people’s lives when I tweet, or that I make people smile by linking to something funny. My previous mission was to do whatever it took to help Cali succeed. I hope my new mission can be to help lots of other people succeed in using Web video to enhance their brands, and maybe I can continue to win along the way too.

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:

Someone tweeted:

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.

Writing the show hasn’t changed much except that Luria writes much more than she did when she was here. It’s been interesting to see the different types of stories she chooses than me. I tend to write about gadgets. She tends to write about tech news and Web services like Google Docs. The Brief we will release today is about stuff we both wanted to cover. I wrote some of today’s show yesterday, some this morning and she wrote some to. Because of Google Docs, it’s always been easy to collaborate on a script.

After the script is done, Luria shoots it herself. She has our lights and the camera and the teleprompter. She shoots in front of a green screen in one take with one fixed shot and then she transfers one HUGE file to me, via FTP. The uncompressed footage is typically 4-8GB per episode. Sometimes it takes five hours, and really, that’s the biggest downside of the setup.

I have all the editing gear. As I download the file, I do preproduction graphics that will be used in the episode. When I have the file, I drag it into Final Cut Pro. It usually takes less than an hour to edit. Occasionally, when there are unusual graphics or video features in a particular episode, it takes longer.

I compress the show into three formats using Sorenson Squeeze. It does an excellent job, but it’s slow (and expensive). Then I upload the four formats to Mevio and post to the GeekBrief.TV Web site.

Except for news that needs to be more timely the workflow has worked well. It’s always fun to trouble shoot our way through new challenges.

I’ve been standing with one foot in my old life with her and one foot in my new life without her. How I feel depends on the direction I’m looking. I’ve had time to cry, pray, go to counseling, go to church, read books, talk to people who have gone through this before, and by now, I’m doing pretty okay. Pray for us both if you pray.

That’s all I’ll say about the personal stuff. Follow me on Twitter if you want to know what’s next professionally. It’s much more shiny and much more happy than this.

Thanks for watching!

Neal