two ‘A’s

So, back in the day, I’m working in this games store downtown. A tiny little place, the name of which I can’t recall, in the Paperbox Arcade. Part of my job (most of my job) is to sell Magic cards. Magic – The Gathering. If you don’t know what I’m talking about I’m hardly going to try to sell you on the idea. Suffice to say that the game was big enough in its day to float an entire store.

I was only just learning the game, but I knew enough about it to know that some enthusiasts would pay a silly amount of money not only to buy a lot of these cards, but to buy the rare ones. In this regard I was a step ahead of the owner of the store who, while he knew that the rare cards were worth more and sold them at a flat inflated rate, had no idea what sort of scale to apply.

In comes this earnest and charismatic lad…

…who proceeds to convince me that I should trade him some cards. So I do. “Don’t trade ’em. Just sell ’em.” I get fired. A bit of a stunner, but in the overall scheme of things, well, I don’t remember what the store was called.

Over the next couple months we cross paths a few times. He’s a limo driver and he likes to play Magic very competitively. He likes to be clever. He likes to zing you, but in a way where you see it coming and there’s just nothing you can do about it. A lot of fun to play with this guy. He definitely won more than I did.

Then I start working for a living, for real, and Magic is forgotten. I sell about a thousand dollars worth of cards (no, I didn’t pay that much) for $250.00 (still more than I paid). I’m bartending at Wharfside and life is getting a lot faster. I start spinning at Legends and life becomes a blur….

A couple extremely full years have passed, and I’m working at Legends and Vertigo. I start seeing this impetuous little thing named Andrea, much to the surprise of many (not my type, apparently). I’m scheduled to work the Valternative Groovefest and she, of course, would not miss THIS of all events. She invites her best friend, Briana, who brings her boyfriend along for the experience. In a slinky green dress. Him, not her. You caught the Valternative part, yes?

So this guy in the dress looks very familiar and yes, it is in fact the very same Aaron I knew a few years ago. But slinkier, obviously. (Aaron will now promise me gold & jewels because I didn’t post the pic)

So, having girlfriends who are best friends, Aaron & I see a bit more of each other. We know we like each other. Know we want to be friends, but being guys (or maybe it’s just me) it’s a slow process getting to know each other. If it wasn’t for Andrea’s encouragement to occupy some of Aaron’s time I don’t know if that friendship would have grown. Thanks, Andrea.

Legends fires Pat & I and they blow the biggest crowds they’ve ever had, before or since. My exit move is spectacular. I go to Vertigo exclusively and they’re happy to have me. Aaron’s li’l web-based company is coming along nicely, doing site design & webmaster tools. Diet Coke contacts him about getting some online presence & he is offered a very lucrative position in the States with another company, but he’s happy doing what he’s doing, being his own boss. And Shannon’s & Blake’s. They come to work in his living room each day & suddenly he’s an employer, paying Shannon her first wages out of a cash machine & trying not to look sketchy while doing it. Shannon is immediately and irrevocably cast in the role of First Mate, She Without Whom We Would Still Be Getting Paid Out Of Cash Machines.

Vertigo closes for the summer & I do the circuit, playing in all the major clubs downtown except Boomers, because please. I hear from Pat that the Drawing Room (the Jet Lounge) is reopening & I head in to see what the deal is. Sure enough I get hired & shockingly after working a single Friday they decide they want me to be the headliner at Fever, the single most beautiful room I’ve ever heard of in Victoria. Cool. I still feel a little guilty about that, Matty. Sorry, d00d. Aaron, meanwhile, gets huge office space in Bastion Square for his team of four. We don’t see a lot of each other. Rather divergent paths, you might say. He’s committing to Day People while I’m fully subsuming myself in Night People. He’s asked what his dream job would be, and he says he’s living it.

Arsonists destroy Fever.

After the shock wears off, I decide this town is done with me. I was leaving on top. I spend the summer working the Rooftop at the Strath, get a great tan & even convince Aaron to come have lunch with me a couple times a week. We make the transition from acquaintance to friendship that summer. In a fit of recklessness Aaron & I get cell phones- Mikes. We have to put both of them on his account, because I had credit that flashed neon red alert signs visible from across the street and because we are under the impression we can share minutes that way. We have so much fun but eventually he has to ask me to stop pinging him at work, because it’s work after all. Well, sure, but you can’t expect two boys with walky-talkies to behave in class, can you? It’s a very full summer, full of adventure for me, and full of burgeoning enterprise for Aaron. We joke about how much fun it would be to hire a dj for Wondermill.

I move to Vancouver. Bigger, brighter, faster. I’m always broke. I live in a palace & I live like a king, and somehow I’m doing it all on about a thousand bucks a month. Rent is $750.00. It helps to know the staff of half the joints on Granville. Aaron is very patient as I slowly fall farther and farther behind in my bill payments. His company is the biggest little fish in the sea. His staff grows to seven and the clientele adore Wondermill.

Legends asks me to come back, and after they accept my entirely selfish and vindictive terms I consider the offer to play three nights in Van and three in Vic. I get a chance to visit Aaron at the new digs and defying death we set up Spidey in his first perch. Aaron & I spend some QT and despite (read: because of) the fabulous (read: fabulous) time I’m having in Van, it’s slowly killing me and for the first time I consider Vic’s potential as a home again. Then Legends manages to snag Rod for a much better deal and I’m saved from temptation.

After a year in Van I receive a message. Doug wants me to come back to Vic to open a club. I debate. I ponder. But in the end it’s Doug and he made the effort to track me down and how can you not answer faith like that in kind? I move back to Victoria after 13 wet (it did not rain much) months in Vancouver.

Aaron’s company is by any account a huge success. He still has a sense of wonder, of awe, at this thing he has spawned. At the top of a very high hill, he set a little ball of snow rolling, and momentum has had its way. He’s only infrequently involved in frontline sales now. He has people to handle that for him. He’s rarely consulted about coding decisions. People were hired to do that too. He’s the Ideas Guy now. He finds himself wanting to write about the whole experience, to take this dream workplace to the world stage, to prove that “work does not have to suck.” He adamantly declares that his company stands for its employees, and that’s how it should be.

I’m suitably impressed. I’m, in fact, humbled. You always knew that the charismatic & earnest entrepreneur would make it happen, so really his success, on that level, is no real surprise. But just like he was to one day leave me a sticky note saying “Damn, dude! Listen to you! You’re talking the talk!” I find myself awakened to what real people can do, regardless of training or certification. Curiosity, my friend, is the mother of innovation. He poked it to see what it would do, and it sorta sprung up all green and electric around him.

Fever (II) is behind schedule, as nightclubs or restaurants invariably are. I agree to open the teen club as soon as it’s ready, so we can keep the cash flow moving while we do a proper job with Fever (II). The teen club, however is also behind schedule. Doug’s great and he sends a few bucks my way to keep a roof over my head, but I have no real means and the situation looks… thin. My situation comes up in conversation with Aaron one night, after relocating Spidey, and completely out of nowhere he says, almost as an afterthought, “I think you’d be really good in sales. Why don’t you come work for us?”

As he says this I am hit by the realization that I, very much, want to be a part of Wondermill. What I actually do for the company is a minor concern. I just want to help Aaron supercharge his dream. I love finding ways to use my connections to advantage for my friends, and just like that he’s doing the same for me, but in a major way. Maybe it’s because I still owed him $800 for the phone bill? =)

Aaron & I go for walks. We talk about the Mill, and girls, and religion. We talk about his island cabin where he’ll spend half the week and drive back to town in his truck for the other half.

I’ve said several times in this blog and elsewhere that I’ve never worked harder. I’d never been part of something where I wasn’t the leader and soley responsible for success, or an insignificant lackey who could be replaced as easily as changing the name on a time card. Wondermill motivated me, and while I haven’t been a superstar of galactic proportions as far as sales guys go, I’d like to think that I’ve managed to justify Aaron’s instincts. I’m sure there were times when Cara rolled her eyes but she never said he was wrong, so maybe we convinced her too.

Gradually Aaron is able to let more & more of the frontline go. The day-to-day process of keeping the machine running is up to us. Aaron lets his brain sprint along. He reads everything there is to read and he jots notes and he forgets at least as much as he remembers, but when it comes down to it you can count on him for direction, and under that flag we prosper.

We decide collectively that as much as we’re enjoying success, most of us don’t know what to tell people when we’re asked what we do for a living. Mentioning online advertising instantly earns the response, “Oh, are you those popup people?” Honey. Honey, no.

So we start to think about where we might apply our skills to best advantage. We have excellent tech. We have capable bizdevvers and a world of charisma. We even have some actual business training now. Aaron feels sharply the need to rise to the challenge. He really wants nothing more than to be part of a happy, thriving, creative venture. He is, after all, an entrepreneur.

The amount of debate that goes into the decisions we make is actually not worth getting into. It’s hard. Suddenly there is stress in a company that has never really had to deal with it before, unless you count that time the web economy crashed and it was only some very slick realignment of the business model that saved Wondermill.

We hire more staff. The company effectively doubles in size in six months. In more ways than one, we explode. Creativity is a hot superconductor and development surges forward so fast that some of us are left behind. The landscape has changed. It’s like the Mill just sprouted wings. Aaron is very happy to be creating again. This is how I like him best. He might bounce around like a muppet on meth, and he might try to hump your leg after a few drinks, but this is distilled Aaron. Conceiving. Shaping. Poking. Curious.

Curious, and charismatic.

Aaron has always said that you have to try things knowing full well that some of them will break. You need things to break, or you’ll never know how far you can push them when it counts. Try ten things, and if one works then count the whole venture a success.

I’ve never had reason to question my confidence in Aaron. He’s a creator and a dreamer and, somewhere in there, a romantic. He’s always pushing me to get the hell out of town & follow my dreams of spinning to a crowd of three hundred thousand in the Berlin Love Parade. He’s very much like me in that I tend to push people in the direction I think they want to go. They need encouragement, yes? Someone to tell them it’s okay to take the risk. Sometimes you can miss the subtleties though. Aaron thinks it’s a sacrifice for me to work at the Mill supporting his dream. To which I can only respond- then what was your dream? Didn’t you want to build a place where people would love to work? A place that inspires?

I don’t make friends easily. People give me odd looks when I say that. More accurate to say that I don’t let people past the walls lightly. Aaron & I took a long time getting here. I didn’t make it any easier with my (rather) dry sense of humour. He’s toughened up in the time I’ve known him, and I suspect I had a part to play in that. Sarcasm and I go way back. My friendship with Aaron has not been without strain. But my life is fundamentally altered for having known him. And I like where I am now. His influence on my character has been nothing but positive. I learn from many of those around me, but only a few inspire me. And he does that.

He’s 30 today. Younger than I am but as rich in hard-won wisdom. The past year has been profound for him. Turbulent could barely begin to describe it. His dream has been channeled & focused & redirected & accelerated until you have to look closely to see it there still. Not lost, no. But… the shine of its polish is a hard shine. Perspective, I think, has come along at the right time.

He let love beat work this year. Some of us get no end of amusement out of that. Evgenya has every right to be a little smug. And Jason & I can grab a piece of that too, for the holy hell we gave him when he told us he’d broken up with her. No time for a relationship, he said. We didn’t quite march him back to the phone, but close enough to get away with it in the script. She is such a good match for him. And we love her, which is really more important.

30 is going to be such a landmark year for him, and not just because it’s easier to remember. Love, inner peace, adventure, time to write, and, assuming he doesn’t wander off with Ev to some obscure telescope in Lithuania, a few friends for java & philosophy.

Aaron, you are a rich, rich man. And I am richer for having known you. Thanks for being you.

Happy Birthday, brother.