Question 198 of 365: When is sleep inappropriate?

I observed classrooms for years before I became a teacher. Sometimes I would observe the interaction between students or the way in which a teacher would discipline others. I would watch the passing of notes and the distracted looks of those who longed to be outside. I could see the worst anger boil up within a student who received a bad grade.

There is only so much you can watch, though, without taking part. You can’t sit back and watch alliances form without becoming a part of the warring factions. It doesn’t do to stay aloof, waiting for the discussion to come around to what you are interested in. But there are times when observation is your job, so you must. For the sake of objectivity, I would watch the teacher drone on and the students sit and stare.

This was how I observed myself to sleep.

I watched a facilitated discussion on a book that i had never read, and i slowly laid my head down on the teachers desk at the back of the room, pretending to read on my lap. This is a move I had perfected in middle school, but I had never used it as an adult. At least, not until I was under the drug of observation. It was the constant lull of disinterested students who were forced to speak about a book that they hadn’t read either that relaxed my muscles and lowered my eye lids.

I woke up and realized what I had done as the classroom was staring at me. I apologized and everyone laughed. I never felt so much like a kid as I did in that moment of being caught in my disinterest. And feeling like a kid without your permission is awful.

I am not okay with observing myself to sleep anymore. I’m not okay with letting a situation be responsible for my stupor. I’m not okay with being disinterested in life to the point of losing conciousness.

I obsessively participate. I wring out experiences until there is nothing left. I pluck every moment and listen as my life screams with pain and pleasure and hope and failure.

Question 189 of 365: How can other’s words say what I mean?

On a warm fall night in Manhattan. kids are buzzing around CBGB. From across the Bowery. it could be any night, any fall from the last twenty years-young discontents and their older. slightly mellowed fore-bearers jacked up on caffeine/nicotine/alcohol/other waiting to get their collective rocks off at the seediest, oldest, and best punk club in New York City. But there’s something different about this night, noticeable from the median and then rapidly more so as one approaches the entrance. These aren’t the violently pierced. mohawked. leathered. pleathered, and glassy­eyed punks of yesteryear. There isn’t a single Ramones jacket or safety pin in sight. Nor are they the dirty-jeaned, big-booted collection of indie-rockers. diehards. and straight­edgers of punk’s more recent milieu. The kids here are different. Shockingly. bizarrely so. The kids. it appears. are all right. There are young girls in powder blue, midriff-baring tank tops emblazoned with the word “rockstar” emerging from idling SUVs. waving goodbye to their parents behind the wheel with a dismissive nod. There are clean-cut high school boys wearing baseball hats and overly long shorts and khakis. Serious looking fifteen-year-olds smile awkwardly and switch off their cell phones. There is backslapping. There are high-pitched giggles.

It’s a young and different crowd. in from the suburbs and out in the big city tonight for a concert. Here to watch their version of punk ascend triumphantly and not notice the differences. To sing along wide-eyed and happy. To feel better at the end of the night instead of bruised. It’s November 2001 and I’m attending my very Dashboard Confessional concert. The city is unseasonably warm and wary-what happened two months before still hangs heavy, but not heavy enough to weigh down the enormous anticipation that’s building inside CBGB’s scarred innards. Before the show. I run into a friend who attends NYU. She laughs when she sees me. “l never figured you for an emo kid,” she says. “I didn’t either.” I answer. just there to keep her friend company-her friend who, at is a good three years above the room’s median age. She seems embarrassed to be there-or at the very least to be asked about it. “Are you a big fan?” I ask the friend. “l think he’s really good,” she says.

Just then. the lights dim and the girls recede into the crowd. Some fellows in white T-shirts to my left climb on the back of chairs and start hooting. I catch a glimpse of a small Asian-American teen in glasses standing just below the stage furiously scribbling in her journal. oblivious to the diminishing light. Nervous applause ripples through the crowd. lt’s the awkward hum of a classroom when the teacher leaves to get help resetting the fraying reel. Just before the juvenile boiling point is reached, a surprisingly short and compact dark~haired man walks out onto the stage alone. He musses with his collapsed black pompadour hairdo. swings his acoustic guitar to the front. squints into the expectant crowd. and flashes a rabbity, nervous smile.

“OK.” Chris Carrabba says. “arc you guys ready to try one? The crowd erupts. and, as the first few notes are plucked. what was once a disparate collection of homework-dodgers is transformed into a head-nodding choir. Carrabba’s voice is a bit yelpy in spots, chasing the high notes like an affection-starved pet nipping at the heels of its owner. He has two full sleeves of tattoos on his arms. one of which strums out chunky acoustic chords. “You look cute in your blue jeans / but you’re plastic just like the rest . . . dying to look smooth with your tattoos / but you’re searching just like everyone.” And the audience sings with him. Every single word. with some lingering behind and some charging forward. lt’s like an extremely successful bout of responsive reading. except the hypercharged and ecstatic look on the kids’ faces says they’re not just echoing-they’re emoting.

When the song ends, everyone screams, as much for themselves as for the shy-looking fellow on stage. The guys next to me are practically falling all over themselves. One of them, baseball hat perfectly molded to his head, arms thrown around his friends’ shoulders, screams oul. “We love you, Chris!” The songs go on and on-and the crowd’s voices never diminish. Halfway through, some of the guys are doing harmonies. lt’s hard to tell whether it’s CB’s notoriously low stage or Carrabba`s small stature, but with each successive number the crowd seems to surge up higher and higher-both in volume and mass-until by the end the two sides are meeting each other from the start of each song. Occasionally. Carrabba builds to at refrain and then merely steps away from the mic. letting the devotees in the blank. Someone walks past me towards the back, retreating from the stage, crying. But there is no moshing. no physical injuries. I’ve never seen such well­behaved teenagers in a rock club. Song after song with titles like “Again I Go Unnoticed” and “This Ruined Puzzle” have the kids around me glassy­eyed with glee and reverence.

After a few more rousing choruses. It’s over.

This to me is a kind of sincerity revolution. An experience without snark or sarcasm. It represents what it is that I believe is right about coming together and creating a community within a moment. It is a reset of the disillusionment that came before, and it is better than I could have ever said it.

I have been to a Dashboard Confessional concert, on the very same tour that this exerpt was referring to. It was every bit as sincere and hopeful as these words portray. I didn’t get why that was important until now.

We need some words to all sing together. Not comment on the words and stand back, aloof. We need to all speak in one voice and be carried away by the possibilities of the moment, rather than chase away any possiblity of knowing one another intimately. It isn’t a religion or following a single figurehead. It is a movement away from ego and toward consensus. It is a movement toward belonging and away from being obsessively right.

It is for emotion and connection.

It is against skepticism and stalling.

At some point the things I am passionate about in education, technology and business will have their watershed moments. I just hope they are more like the vignette above and less like the selfish present that seems to deepen within every moment.

You see:

I don’t want to be guarded. I want to sing. With you. About things that allow us to be together. Without parenthesis or ironic twitpics.

Question 183 of 365: Are we possible?

I have plans. Brainstorms and Mind Maps, too. I write out lists and sketch out wireframes. I see folder structures and hashtags, creating them with a few touches on the big glass screen in front of me. And then I step back from all of it, looking to see if what I have created is feasible. I want to know if what I am breathing into being is something that others might be able to take part in. Is my creation just an academic exercise or is it the next step in learning. I wonder if all of my vision is yet again going to come crashing down according to the reality of what we are capable.

I cower at the idea that everything I believe isn’t really possible given the constraints of other people and of the institutions that currently exist. It makes me shudder in disbelief that I could be that disconnected from reality. Existential crisis aside, am I a figment of my imagination? Are the things that I would like to co-create only available to those who have experienced all that I have? I hope as a teacher and thinker, I would be able to make my vision real by just framing it correctly and working with others. But, when  I see the distance between what is currently available and what I truly want, I wonder if I am just a bridge too far.

I want all that I do to sync with others.

Does this sync?

• Learning is co-created
• Sharing is essential
• Tools are multi-use

They aren’t revolutionary in themselves, but they are against everything that I see in the business, education, and personal world.

Sure, I see social networks being leveraged for connections with others and I see people using shared documents to keep up on the latest version. But, in officially sanctioned work, learning is singular because it has to be possessed by someone. Because it requires a grade or a promotion, there is no incentive whatsoever to pull off a massive collaboration. Who will take the credit then?

Sharing has become the background for nearly everything that happens online, but the value of sharing is greatly depreciated because nearly all institutionalized sharing is internal, blocked off to the value of the open web. Facebook isn’t open. A link (without logging in to access it) is open.

A rock isn’t single use. Neither is a lego. Somehow, though, everything that we professional develop about has set limits for what is possible. Multi-use is about not accepting what is laid out in a manual.

I guess I’m not as interested as I once was in having everything perfectly laid out. I’m more interested in pushing what is messy, what is overly hopeful. While others may say that hope is not a strategy, I believe that it is the only thing that allows what we believe ourselves to be to be possible.

I leave you with this children’s poem:

Well they said I was impossible
Yes, they said I was impossible
And that someone who behaved like me
Couldn’t be, couldn’t be

But I knew that I was possible
Not completely unbelievable
And the one they said could never be
It was me, it was me

But there’s something else they didn’t know:
You can change your shape and you can grow
Out of nothing into something new
Something made up into something true

Though it happens quite impossibly
The impossible turns out to be
Possibly

Question 151 of 365: How do we predict the future?

Everyone is trying to devine the next big thing. Reading the tea leaves on Twitter or letting the alerts drift in to the inbox of your choice. We are all looking to get in on the ground floor of the next version of the web (3.0, 3d, etc.). We are looking for what could be, in every cute logo or interesting color scheme.

I keep thinking that I will know it when I see it, too. I look back on what was the next big thing, and I knew it then, right? I saw Google way before they were Google. I was searching with them back in high school. I should have just invested in them when they went public. I didn’t, though, and so many other people are in the same boat. And that is why we keep looking for the next Google.

That’s not the only reason, though. We keep looking because we want to know the future. We are looking for reasons enough to invest our time or effort, if not our money. But we keep looking in the same places. We are looking toward app stores and startups with vowels missing.

Predicting the future requires a little bit of crazy. It isn’t going to be the same companies, although they will be major players. It will be someone that sees something completely different from the same set of rules and situations.

While I know this isn’t going to be it exactly, here is something that the future might be:

There are a special glasses for making things appear to be in 3d, but I believe that there are new glasses coming. I believe that there are glasses that block out every other frame of a movie. The reason they do this is because there are two movies playing, interlaced so that the glasses will display only one and block out the other. The sound will match for the one you are watching. You will be able to sit in the same theatre or in front of the same screen and watch two separate films.

This is crazy talk. It doesn’t exist, nor will it. There are two many unanswered questions. There are too many things that don’t make sense about something like this, but this is the future. The future of ridiculous technology that seemingly is more intrusive and convenient at the same time. These glasses are impractical. They are the unfortunate offspring of wanting to be completely immersed by the media you are consuming and wanting to be with others who are interested in being with you but not in consuming the same media that you are.

The future is in sharing the same space but not the same experience. The future is in finding connections without having to know all of the same people or the same facts. Differentiation is the future, whether that is with glasses or with a single online profile that knows more than it lets on.

The next Google is going to be the first company to let people be who they are with one another. They will present technologies to get people together. People have been trying this for years, but it is the one thing that is still severely lacking. The physical devices have presented screens to separate our learning and understanding. The ones that are coming are ones that bring it all together.

The ones that have already had their shot at this rather elusive prize probably won’t get it quite right. Google, Apple and Microsoft pay lip service to the future, but they really are trying to shore up the markets that have made them profitable. They won’t see someone coming up on the outside with a crazy gadget such as those glasses. They will see it as something that can’t possibly catch on, and then once it does, they will try and copy it or buy them out. But it won’t work this time. This time, the future will be too interested in creating itself anew. And it will.

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Question 123 of 365: How much are we inspired by comfort?

So, I’m blogging from an iPad. I’m that guy. I’m sitting here with my bluetooth wireless keyboard resting on my lap, looking over at the gorgeous screen being propped up with the new super-durable case I got today. All of this is so new that I really have no frame of reference, but if this particular moment is any indication, I think it is the most comfortable I have ever been while writing.

I don’t have the heavy laptop weighing me down. I don’t have to worry about the battery giving out. I don’t even have to care whether or not I’m misspelling things because the autocorrect on this thing is ridiculous.

Not only does this make me an incredible nerd, it also makes me so pampered that I feel guilty about it. While my tech lust for this item and the productivity that I knew it would represent is nothing compared to the feeling that I know I am incredibly lucky to be able to spend money on such a device that is so inessential.

And it makes me wonder whether or not I will be as inspired to create worthwhile stories while I sit so comfortably. It makes me wonder if “having” really will make me passionate to want more for myself and for others.

I was always really put off by the last line of Gene Wilder‘s version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In the movie, he Willie Wonka says, “Do you know what happened to the boy who got everything he always wanted… He lived happily ever after.” (Or, at least that is how I remember it.) Even as Charlie, Grandpa Joe and Willie Wonka himself are lifted high above the city in the Wonkavator, I think that this appeals to our need to “win” at the end of the day. It doesn’t reflect just how important the daily struggle is. And, it certainly doesn’t allow for any thinking time to consider just how much the act of “wanting” can lead to the act of creation.

If Wonka is about creating new and amazing concoctions, he should be promoting that for his young apprentice. He should be telling Charlie to continue to dream because now that he has reached his goal of caring for his family, he can have new goals and new wishes to start progressing toward.

This is not to say, that I feel as though I have everything that I have always wanted by sitting here on my couch and typing away at a quarter-inch thick keyboard. It isn’t to say that by simply being able to touch my browser I no longer want anything else to change. There is a lot that is still missing from the experience (I just tried to figure out how to attach a screenshot to an e-mail and couldn’t). I just know that I am comfortable now, that I don’t have to worry about anything else coming in and distracting me (mostly because the iPad doesn’t do multi-tasking yet).

I live in a comfortable world. I eat food every day. I shower with clean water. I have a filter in my refrigerator that makes pure ice cubes. My children have toys to play with and their own rooms. I sleep on a mattress and not the floor. I am privileged, and I know it.

What good can come of this? Isn’t having an iPad and these ridiculous accessories just another way to show off a technological elitism? Isn’t it a way to focus all of the attention on materialism and comfort instead of the real problems that other people are having? It is all just an academic exercise.

I’m sure after a few days, it will be like I always had these tools. I will start to think about a fictitious equity for them. My access will become a perceived access for all. It will happen because it always happens.

Web 2.0 isn’t ubiquitous. It is just prevalent.

Smart phones aren’t changing the world. They are just changing their users.

Social networks are making us more comfortable with sharing information than we have ever been before, and so we do it without even thinking. The value of an anecdote, a picture, or a home movie has gone down so drastically that there really isn’t anything that we say or share now that can’t be said or shared from the comfort of “everywhere.”

While I am not going to be giving up my iPad after 2 days with it, I feel like I might try to make this comfort different. Perhaps, this is the kind of comfort that I will be able to share. My wife is going to Kansas City this weekend to visit her sick mother.

Perhaps, she could use some comfort.

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Question 111 of 365: How hard is it to be born?

It is all a matter of perspective.

My typical perspective is that it is hard to give birth to something. My wife  knows more than I do about this. She is intimately aware of the discomfort, the sleeplessness, the depression, and the sickness that occurs in the process of creating a human being. I know about the worry, the late night runs, and the intense planning for every possibility with my future child. Even still, I have never considered it from my child’s viewpoint. I never thought about what it must be like to go through all of those things and experience those particular stresses from the inside. Moreover, I have never considered the process of birthing anything else, like a company or a school, from the perspective of that entity. At least, not until today.

Today I heard this idea: “The hardest thing to do is be born.” It was merely in passing. It was in between discussions, between powerpoint slides. But, it stuck with me.

The hardest thing to do is be born.

I immediately thought about my kids and I thought about what I am attempting to do with this book. Is it their intention to be born? Have they conspired with the universe to struggle into being? Do I even have a choice in the matter?

The hardest thing to do is be born.

I am always so wrapped up in getting things done that the insurmountable process of creation always seems so much in my control, as if it would never occur without my help. But my creation is the one being born. It has a vested interest in being born well, and it struggles and pushes forward to complete the process, no matter if I help or not. It grows, however incrementally, and I can’t stop it. The only thing I can do is to feed it the right things and exercise it and take it in for checkups.

My Isabelle was first. We saw her fingernails and her lips and her lack of hair through the lens of a newfangled 4d ultrasound, and we knew that she was growing and moving and working so hard to create herself. We saw her hands move and reach out to grasp at the dense tissue around her. We knew that these things were happening, but seeing them is something else entirely. There is nothing like watching the created in the process of creation. There is nothing like watching growth occur, even if in tiny increments.

But what are the fingernails of a startup? What is the lack of hair in a new school? What are the premature hands reaching out toward in a project? If it is so hard to be born, shouldn’t we be going in for ultrasounds and seeing progress the same way that we would our own children. While I recognize that they are different and they should be different, I don’t think that birthing something of worth really should be left to chance. And I no longer believe that it is entirely in our control either. No matter what, the DNA of a creation is going to guide the process along and our influence is not always going to be positive.

Just to ensure that I am doing it right, I would like to see a pregnancy chart for an organization. I would like to see what the trimesters are going to offer me and what obstacles I would likely have to overcome. I would like to know what the morning sickness is like for some of the projects that I am a part of creating. I would like to know how changes to the biological makeup will influence the outcome. I want to see the Punnett square possibilities for eye and hair color. And yet, I still want to be surprised too. Just like with my own children, I would like to see what unforeseen beauty is created when the right mix of founders get busy.

The hardest thing to do is be born.

It should be hard. It should be worthwhile, too. An idea is conceived. It is housed in a hostile environment many times, but the people that care about it should be able to protect it. So long as it is cared for, the DNA will replicate and complete its mission. A fruitful idea requires frequent assessment and progress monitoring, and for this it needs people who know what they are talking about. Just as I couldn’t tell a boy from a girl in our original ultrasound, I can’t tell whether or not my ideas are progressing effectively.

I need expertise to see if the hard work that my idea is doing is going to lead to any long-term health effects. In short, I need idea doctors and nurses. I need them to see the whole and the parts and to analyze what is progressing appropriately and what is not. I need them to produce an ultrasound picture for me too. One that I can show off to all of my friends and family. I need them to reassure me that everything is going to be just fine too.

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Question 110 of 365: Can we change from the outside?

Advice is a funny thing. It is often sought, often misheard, often rejected, often obnoxious, and often invaluable. This is all at the same time, mind you. Whenever I am asked to give advice, I know that there is very little chance that the changes I am advocating for will be followed as I have voiced them. I find myself looking in on effects of my advice from the outside. Much of the time, I don’t have to deal with the ramifications of my advice. I usually just get to jump from that conversation into another one where I won’t be around to see the effects of everything that I have contributed. And yet, the subtle pressure that I have provided, does seem to resonate and have an effect.

If I were going to describe the effect it would be like this:

I bought a Galaxie Twelve Smith-Corona manual typewriter. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made. It has a ribbon that never ends and that can be almost infinitely wound and never get old. Every time that I rest my fingers on the keys, I know that I am about ready to make serious damage. I really pound on those keys, and you have to. To get the type to show up correctly, you have to mash down hard as if each finger was a fist with enough fury to push the letters into being. The sound of each striking key is metallic and harsh. It is loud as it cascades off of my office walls.

I get people coming into my office all the time asking me what I am doing with a typewriter. They are flabbergasted that someone “like me” would actually use such an antique. Then they see the margins set and the paper pulled in correctly, and inevitably they want to know what I am writing about. I never get this question when I am typing on my computer. While I could conceivably be doing a great number of things with my computer keys, I never get asked what I am writing about. Somehow, the computer in a public space is private and the typewriter is not.

I am affecting not only the paper itself, but everyone who may sees it and hears the sound of its creation. Essentially, I have demystified the process of writing by inviting other people to come and observe and take part. I am taking away the unholy veil that seemingly is in front of our every act at work. As my fingers are continually cushioned by the oversized keys and as the page moves upward showing that I am actually accomplishing something, I know that the effect I am creating for myself and others is one of reinvention. By making edits and contributions in such a way, I am telling myself that it is okay not to engage in the same sorts of technologies and circumstances that are created for me. It is appropriate to question my level of comfort with any given task. It is also okay to completely reject the conventions and make sometime more concrete than abstract, more real that virtual.

I think that all of my advice boils down to pretty much the same thing, anyway. It is all about demystifying the work that you are doing and making it more real. When I advocate for using Google Docs rather than trading around word documents it is to make sure that people can see what one another are thinking and work together towards a common goal. It is about establishing the same expectations for everyone within a given project rather than hiding the fact that some people do more work than others. When I advocate for using a backchannel at a meeting or conference it is to demystify the way in which we process information. It is to ask everyone to participate in something that they could easily let happen to them. And, when I advocate for creating online spaces to ask big questions, I am attempting to capture learning. I want it to be visual and memorable.

I do not have some silly brand of advice to change the way that organizations work or to improve the working environment for all stakeholders. If we did nothing else besides demystify our work for others, we would be well on our way to creating better environments and organizations. If we were able to describe our purposes and our processes to the outside world (or even to our coworkers), there would be much more ability to relate and work together. Yet, somehow many of us function on the hypothesis that if we shared our secrets, everyone would be able to do our job. We want to perpetuate the myth that knowledge is still the only kind of power worth having.

Connections are the power that we should be pursuing. They are the value that we should be providing to those we work with. The wonder of a network is not in the content that is currently there, it is in the content that is coming because of the connections that have been established. The spaces that we inhabit whether online or physically should only be judged by how many connects are visible and how much work can be transmitted via those connections.

So, here is what I think makes the most sense:

• Create online spaces for collaboration where people can see just who contributed and what their connection to that shared knowledge is.
• Create physical spaces for connection where people share stories about their work.
• Create both physical and online spaces for disruptive behavior (like typing on a typewriter) so that our expectations can shift beyond what it is that we need for the given moment and think about just how we can grow.

And that is how I propose to demystify my work and change from the outside what is going on in ideas and places that I will never fully see realized.

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Question 105 of 365: Are we still allowed to be embarrassed?

You never know if you can fit underneath a metal folding chair until you try.

I used to sing really loud just about any time I got the chance. Ask my childhood neighbors about my lawn mowing falsetto or headphone isolation. I really didn’t have a concept that this wasn’t what other people were doing. I just knew that it made me happy to “project” and feel the conviction of the words as much as I could.

Ultimately though, singing loudly in unison is where it is at. That is why choirs are wonderful. You can surround yourself with a bunch of folks who like to sing for all they are worth. It is also why knowing the rhythm, the words, and the repetitions matters. There is nothing worse than singing loudly while standing next to a whole bunch of other people who like to sing loudly and being entirely out of sync with them.

I think I was 7 when I first noticed this phenomenon. During a particularly passionate religious gathering (another time when it is okay to be around loud singers), a particular song was being sung by a large congregation. This song happened to have a series of “Hey” refrains within it that were to be sung after the right phrases. I was incredibly good at screaming out at those parts and thus adding my own little flavor to the experience. Unfortunately, I didn’t truly understand the nature of the song, because just as it became soft once more, I shouted out the loudest “Hey” I could.

I knew that I had screwed up immediately because everyone (or seemingly so to my 7 year old brain) turned and looked directly at me. It was then that I decided to try and fit underneath my chair. I hid there just long enough for my father to see and come rushing down from his place in the mini-choir up front to try and coax me out. This was not a proud day for my wish to sing out loudly at any chance I got. I was embarrassed to be that off the mark.

And yet, I was allowed to be embarrassed. I was even expected to make that kind of a mistake a 7 year old. I was comforted in my mistake by the fact that other people had done the same thing, even recently. I am afraid now that we are not allowed to be this embarrassed of the decisions we have made. I worry that no one is diving underneath their chairs because of their missteps.

I keep on seeing justifications for wrong doing rather than simple contrite embarrassment. For example, when Google unveiled Buzz within gmail and didn’t fully consider all of the implications of their wide open privacy policies and sharing setup, they encountered huge backlash. All eyes were on them to fix it, which they mostly did. However, instead of simply admitting that they had not fully considered just how important people’s contact privacy is to them, they passed it off as inevitable part of being a “beta” product or of working with customers to find an ideal solution. These kinds of embarrassments are covered over for PR reasons, and yet, I believe that if Google were to have felt the sting more clearly and attempted to crawl underneath their decision to really reconsider their approach it would have garnered a lot of respect. If they would have simply taken the service down for a few hours, talked with some users in an open and honest way (perhaps much in the way that my father took me aside and consoled me for making an awkward decision) and then relaunched with their seal of approval, they would have a viable group of early adopters. As of right now, it seems as though that group is dwindling more by the day for such a service.

Embarrassments should be felt and remembered. It is enough that I remember this event as clear as day as it continues to inform my decisions on trying to do the same things as those others around me. While some people would say that I am advocating for learning from failure, but I see it is as something greater. Failure is a part of every day life. It is common, it a part of the action and reaction of doing your job or being a part of a community. Embarrassment is the feeling of being totally alone and isolated from anyone who is making you to feel embarrassed. While it is an awful experience while it is happening, it is the stuff that character is built directly upon. It is the stuff of origin stories and roads to success. Embarrassment is worth feeling because it allows us to share a common bond of disjointed being. It allows us to have the out of body experience necessary for reflection and change. But this only happens if we let ourselves be embarrassed.

You cannot justify your way out of singing when everyone else is silent. It is best to show your understanding of just how much you were out of sync. So, get down on your hands and knees and start crawling.

Question 104 of 365: How far will we dig?

My grandmother owned a mountain. Well, maybe not the entire mountain, but in the middle of Ohio, it is about the closest thing to a mountain as there is. And near the top of it, my grandfather built a huge farmhouse. He built it in two stages, and we called the pieces the old house and the new house. Even I did, and I had never known the house without both halves.

The house sat on the side of this mountain so that on one side it was one story and on the other side it was two. It provided for a beautiful deck overseeing acres and acres of forest. And below the deck was a walkout basement and courtyard. If you wanted to, you could climb up underneath the deck and see where the earth met the house. And I wanted to, all of the time.

I would dig up the arrowheads that laid buried in the soil where the house was set into the mountain. It was the coolest, dirtiest place a boy could find in the summers that we used to go up and visit my grandmother. I knew that with each handful of dirt that I sent down the hill, I was unearthing something that no other person had ever seen before. What I didn’t realize is that I was also weakening the foundation and eating away at the supports as well.

You could make the case that I did no damage and that all of my arrowhead hunting was simply not enough to make the house slide off of the mountain and into the ravine below. But, I would say that given the chance and enough summers, I would have dug that house right out of its home.

It is the same kind of digging that I seem to be doing now, with the same level of curiosity. I seem to be digging underneath stable houses in the hopes of finding my own treasure. I am digging underneath traditional education to see just how far the supports can hold. I am finding lots of trinkets and experiences in online learning. I seem to be making up stories of just how things could be in the same ways that I made up the stories for the rocks and roots I found underneath that old house. I am digging underneath technology just to see if it is worth anything. I am digging underneath business to find the most creative ways of solving my problems. I receive shade and a wonderful work environment from all of the things that technology and business have afforded me, but at the same time, I am actively trying to undermine the very thing that is giving me shelter.

And the people that live in the houses I dig under have no idea that this is happening. They seem to go along with their lives oblivious to the fact that it isn’t just me digging anymore. There are hundreds of thousands of people who would like to see the foundation be undermined. And not all for the same reason.

Some people are digging away at traditional schools because they aren’t working for their kids. Some people are interested in scooping out large pockets of earth in business because of the rejections they have faced in trying to break into a biased corporate culture. Still others are hacking away at the earth in front of them, trying to bring down the technology houses that seem to only provide a sterilized version of ownership and creation of content.

From MakerBots to Lean Startups to Charter Schools, we are all digging away at the house up above. And it may well crush us if and when it falls. And yet, we continue to dig, despite the danger. We continue to dig because we know that the stories of digging and the chance for finding a truly amazing artifact are more than worth it. We believe that what we learn in the shadows of a big house, getting our hands dirty and figuring out what is really holding the structure up is a much better education and experience than sitting up on the porch and admiring the view.

And if we survive the dig, we may go away from that mountain and start to build a house of our own. We may construct a sturdier and better house, with reinforcements on the foundation and a more hidden earthy exterior. But others will find a way to dig at our edges too. They will be just as curious as we were to see what really is really holding the structure up. They may want to know just what we covered up in our rush to build. And we will deserve it every bit as much as the folks that we are digging at now.

Because all houses on the side of a mountain have a cool underbelly. They are all playgrounds for curious people. And it is only those with the will to attack something as big as a house with nothing but their own fingernails that will succeed. It may take many summers to get anywhere close, but eventually we will start to expose everything. And that is a good thing.

Question 86 of 365: What is on the internet?

I remember looking at the TV guide when I was a kid. I used to take it out of the Sunday paper and put it into the remote basked after I looked at the summaries for Home Improvement and Boy Meets World for the week. I would scan across the 8 O’ clock hour and see exactly what was a possibility for my entertainment during “prime time”. There was something special about having a time slot to hold sacred and plan for. Now, some people would mourn the death of appointment television, but I don’t. I love my DVR. The thing that I mourn is the death of the TV guide.

The question of “What’s on TV” is mostly irrelevant now that we can watch the best shows and movies on-demand. Now that we can even program recordings in advance, there is none of the excitement of setting up a VHS to record at the right time and on the right channel. There was always a chance that you were never going to see that episode again, that there was something special about even reruns being random at best.

There was a simple choice in the days of “what’s on TV”. You either watched what was on, or you turned it off. There was no capacity to make what you wanted come on, no lack of control over just how much content you were going to consume. And that is why I miss the TV guide. When there was one source of truth for content, I could actually be “in the know”. Now, I have no chance.

If someone were to ask you what was on the internet, what could you possibly say?

Each social network is like its own country and there are entire continents of the internet that I have never explored. Because of my interests, there are connections I cannot possibly put together. Because of the infinite nature of online video (and all other media), I will never be able to see all of any one thing. I will never know every perspective or be able to fashion what is going on in any given minute, let alone an hour of the internet.

And yet, we are still trying to get ourselves back to the TV guide days. We are trying to fashion channels on our new TV boxes (Boxee, Apple TV, etc.). We are trying to make things completely searchable, but easily understandable. We build portals for ourselves in the hopes of constructing an Internet Guide. Through the pulse of Twitter, the summary of major blogs, and even ready-made alerts all make sure that we can stay on top of any general sentiment being created, but it isn’t a guide for the future, not even one week the way the TV guide used to do for us.

So, the only option is to make it more personal. What’s on “my internet”?

Here is what I would like to see:

I would like to be able to tell a web-based service exactly how much time I have for entertainment this week and I would like to find a perfectly tailored schedule of web videos, interesting blog posts, and engaging Twitter conversations. I would like to see a prime time schedule one week out for what is on “my internet.” While I like the ability to move around and focus on any aspect of the web I like, I am finding it harder and harder to get excited about spending time with any sort of content. Three just isn’t anything to look forward to without a TV guide. When I can watch and interact with something whenever I want, it doesn’t matter if I watch because I alway “could” take part if I wanted to.

Until an “Internet Guide” really nails this, we will always have a hugely high-level view of what is ON. Until something really gets that people want to be escorted to engaging content on a regular basis without losing all of the mystery and excitement of a story arch or season schedule, I don’t think that we will have truly made it to the best of what the web has to offer us in the way of entertainment or engagement. We need to blend new with old, and right now, we are aren’t. We are simultaneously throwing away all old paradigms as no longer working, while still holding on to the notion that everything will somehow look the same in the future. As someone recently told me, we are in the internet’s awkward adolescence. I think think that not knowing “what is on the internet” is just one symptom of that awkwardness.

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