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.

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.

A few weeks ago, I connected with my favorite cousin from growing up. She and I spent as much time as we could together singing, watching Cinemax and eating Doritos. Around college time, I pulled away from friends and family for a stupid reason. I had a nickname that everyone, including teachers in school called me. I HATED it made me feel small and avoid social situations because I hated being called that name. It’s an Arkansas thing, I guess. I have a great aunt who seems to have no qualms about being called “Mutt” her whole life.

When I left for college, I used my real name and started life fresh. Lots of good came from the fresh start approach, but I regret so deeply that I lost touch with all those people who meant so much to me growing up. I should’ve just told everyone to stop calling me that stupid name!

This morning, I checked in with Facebook and had a friend request from one of my best friends during the high school and early college years. I approved the request and started browsing her friends and saw so many names of people I care about and miss having in my life. Clicking around led me to a memorial page for one of my best guy friends from childhood. He was killed in Afganistan December 30, 2009. He was one of the best kids I knew growing up. His dad is a doctor. They were wealthy. He didn’t have to serve the country by going to war. He had to have done it because he wanted to do it. I never would have known he was gone if it wasn’t for Facebook.

An earlier generation told us about the hardship of walking to school uphill both ways. I think my generation will tell our kids about how we used to loose touch with the people we loved when we moved to a different city. That doesn’t have to happen anymore and it is a beautiful thing.

I’m going to spend some time this weekend connecting with people I miss in memory of my old friend, Jeremy Wise (1975-2009).

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.

Twitter serves as an amazing pressure valve, but it’s much less satisfying that I would like because someone might follow my tweets because of what we do professionally and have no interest in my late night ranting. This morning I woke up with a great idea. I created a different twitter account for “Neal After Dark.” The new Twitter account is where I’ll stand on the porch yelling at the kids to get off my proverbial lawn.

The idea of having place to blow off political steam, where people know what they’re getting if they follow that account seems kind of liberating.

The “After Dark” account is Twitter.com/lateniteneal. Follow at your own risk.

Laying in bed, trying to go back to sleep, I was thinking about the next episode of GeekBrief.TV. It’s episode #400. Cali and I think celebrating round numbers is arbitrary. We’d much rather celebrate the episodes that are good–the ones that inspire funny comments and make people smile or laugh. The 400 number isn’t even accurate because we haven’t always given every episode a Brief number, and if you’re pedantically minded, like we are, celebrating 400 is celebrating an inaccuracy and it doesn’t compute.

The restaurant we’re traveling to is called Bluegrass. It was opened in Highland Park at the same time Cali and I opened a self-storage facility for Extra Space Storage next door. Jim Lederer and Chef Dave Teichman fed us well. In fact, when we were saving money like crazy to get out of debt and buy production equipment, Jim and Dave made us honorary Bluegrass employees and gave us an employee discount. The bar manager when Bluegrass opened, Brad Davis, introduced us to all manor of martinis. Brad was so charming and funny (and generous with his pours) that when Cali’s sister Ariane decided to move to Chicago from Atlanta, we looked forward to introducing Brad to Ariane. We fell in love with martinis and Brad fell in love with Ariane. She fell in love with him too.

So far about 30 people have RSVP’d for the Emergency BBQ Meetup, and it just hit me! Brief 400 is going to happen back where Brief 1 happened!

It’s the place where we lived when we first heard Adam Curry on NPR talking about Podcasting. Adam inspired us with his idealism about the indie nature of Podcasting. It’s where we lived when we first heard Dawn say “Get ready, baby! Get ready! It’s The Dawn and Drew Show, ohhh!” It’s the place where we coined the phrase, “Tyranny of the Day Job” because no matter how well we were treated by Extra Space, the day job was getting between us and our driving desire to podcast full time. It’s the place where we spent a whole weekend with Cali’s whole family the Summer before Curtis Safford, our brother-in-law died of cancer. It’s the place where I interrupted Cali’s shower one morning in October 2005 and told her our next goal was to start a podcast that’s good enough and popular enough that we’ll be able to do it full time.

About a week before our last day at the day job, our Curtis passed away. We packed up the truck fast, dropped off our stuff in Dallas and headed to California for the funeral. Curtis was an IT guy at USC and he’s the person who converted us to Mac. He’s also the father of our most awesome 3-year-old nephew, Loki.

Friends of the Brief (FotB, pronounced FothBas) who come will be able to see where we started, where we lived and taste how good we ate when we WEREN’T eating Ramen Noodles. It really feels like we’re going home.

Plurk, by the way, is now my official curse word.

Maybe its wasn’t so grand a plan. Wikipedia doesn’t cover the exact origins. My best guess is that it began with some royal chef aiming to create a decorative cake for the pleasure of a king.

At any rate, waffles make me sick. It’s just too much concentrated sweetness.

Blogging makes me feel like Peggy Hill.