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Check out my reindeer feets!

She loves them.  Today was the first time I’ve seen her make any effort whatsoever to engage with her feet.  Way too much work for not enough return, historically.  But footsies with antlers are apparently a motivator for exploration.

The Chaos session was a fun one today (though they always are).  We are tearing ourselves apart trying to decide which project to throw our energy at next – the zombie love story, or the praying mantis story?  They are both strong ideas.  Both are pretty much ready to shoot.  The idea is that we actually shoot and produce something of our own here, because a team needs big visible wins they can point to with pride.  So, unable to decide, we are going to do both.  I’m pretty sure we can shoot both in three days, and wrap post (for both) in two weeks working around other commitments.  No, I’m not producing in a third world country that has no labor laws.  They’re charming little shorts.  Well, one is charming.  The other carries a bit of wow factor.  Both, then, are deserving, and relatively bite-size compared to our usual megaliths.  We’re thinking of tackling this fabulous project in late January, depending on our access to talent and makeup.  Matt’s talking about coming down for it, which is entirely appropriate.  It would be a terrific way for us to start the year.  And I need to see something out there with our name on it that isn’t a showpiece for someone else’s brand.  Let’s be awesome for us.  So – my promise to you – look forward to seeing a bit of what the Chaos Complex can do this February.

Meanwhile, on the app side, I have a meeting tomorrow with a tech/design school to explore the possibilites in their internship and post-grad hiring programs.  This is not something I have done before.  I have only the most cursory knowledge of how internship works anywhere, much less here in New York.  And while we’re not looking to hire a full-fledged team member out of the gate, we are looking to find a good match, so that they can evolve into the position – a position which will shortly carry a title like CTO of a multi-million dollar international corporate entity.  A good fit is absolutely vital.  No pressure.

Hey – are you sure you don’t know anyone who can work in a cross-platform Adobe Air environment?  Seriously, this is a huge opportunity.  Chuck me some names.  They will love you for it.

Time for sleep.  Lots going on.  Lots to think about.  Such as: what if my first novel writing project is the Haunted Fortune story line?  I wonder if it’s strong enough to get an unknown writer published?  Hmm.

Pondery.  Very pondery.

Oh – important for Twitterheads (twerps?) – go follow @BeepGodCalling.  You’ll be glad you did.

Am I right or am I right?  Parents out there?  Yeah?  You know that’s right.

Avery came with us to the Fuel 2013 planning session today.  For the most part she was a perfect doll.  She did take time out from that to be the sort of doll that yells at the world at the top of her lungs every once in a while.  Pretty sure it’s an over-tired thing, but Marjorie’s going to ask around a bit at her next La Leche meetup.  It can’t be fun to have a tiny person yelling at your breasts for days on end.

Once again the Baby Bjorn came through for us.  I strapped her on and in about 15 seconds her head clunked against my chest and she was out.  She stayed mostly out for the next couple hours.  Very nice.  Not that her input wasn’t seriously considered.  She’s very advanced.

Topping my Official List of things I want to accomplish in 2013 is getting [Secret A-List Project] signed with [Major Network].  And while it is a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG, for you new recruits) it also stands a good chance of happening.  A “good chance” is relative, sure, but the script is a terrific first draft, the creator is already A-List, and the network has been described by the creator as “very interested”.  And if we wrangle even half the talent for whom we’ve written this thing… well, we don’t seem to make small bets anymore, so why not take careful aim at the moon.

The rest of my list (top 5 goals for each: Personal & Family; Career & Professional; Self Improvement) covers the gamut from quite likely to hey man, nice balls.  Interestingly I can already tell that the one least likely to happen is also the easiest one to make happen: learn Adobe Illustrator.  Do I want to change the goal just yet?  No.  It belongs there.  It’s just the least likely of the 15.  And the nice thing about the exercise is that you’re supposed to revisit the list once a week, and revise as necessary.  Because life doesn’t happen on rails if you’re doing it right.  Things change.  Priorities, desires, the needs of others.  It’s okay for goals to change.  The important thing is to have them.  And to achieve a healthy proportion of them, obviously.  Checkboxes want to be filled, and they want you to really feel great when you fill them.

That got me thinking more about the session today.  We have this wall-sized chart that’s supposed to help you visualize who you are as a company and what your goals are from as far out as thirty years all the way down to next quarter.  The idea is that if you set a goal, it’s just a matter of mapping out what steps are necessary to get there, and following those steps.  Easy.  That’s how you get a man on the moon.  One step at a time.  Anyway, this chart was a big deal for us when we first tackled it.  We spent a lot of time on it because so much of it was stuff we hadn’t tried to define before.  Our brand promise?  Our elevator pitch?  Strengths, weaknesses?  All great stuff, but intimidating for a rag tag bunch of mercenaries sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit.

Where was I?

Oh, the chart.  We mapped out some pretty grand goals.  I mean, lofty.  And as time progressed we grew discouraged because we weren’t knocking everything out of the park.  One of the goals didn’t even see the light of day.  Clients faded or lost their budget.  We lost a team member, which was all but unthinkable.  We are firm believers in celebrating our wins, but we felt some disappointment, to be sure.

We were letting these little speedbumps cloud over what was by all accounts a wonderfully successful year.  Sure, we didn’t even get started with one of our goals, but that’s because we were so busy with everything else.  Sure, some clients didn’t close with us, but it’s not like there’s room on the dance card.  And losing that team member unlocked money that allowed us to move aggressively in a new direction.  In short, we had a great year, and the open checkboxes on that chart only stand out because of all the filled ones.

We have celebrated a boatload of wins this year, but I think we have thus far overlooked how shiny the big picture is.  I’ve said it before – my concern these days is that all of our rockets are going to take off at once.  You can see all these fuses sparkling like mad, and you know The Really Big Show is coming, and you just hope that when it comes you’ll have a chance to sit back and appreciate it.

We’ve gone from a mom & pop operation to a multi-million dollar enterprise with five thriving divisions.  We used to be held back by lack of structure, lack of direction.  Now we’re held back by sheer inertia – it takes time to develop these projects, most of it spent waiting for others.  It often seems that our biggest enemy is our creativity – too many ideas and not enough clones.  We can be distracted.  My pet idle-mind project is to figure out how to bring in a business manager to handle the nuts and bolts of keeping us on track.  The trouble with that is two-fold.  First, the position needs to pretty much pay for itself out of the box.  That will take some planning before we can even phrase the job description.  And second, the last time I personally saw a company bring in someone to manage the business, the business was bankrupt inside of a year.  Worse than that, he never came close to embracing the vision or ethos of the company.  Maybe the later was catalyst to the former.  We’ll never know.  Dick.

Anyway, celebrate your wins.  And we have had many.  I’m proud of this little company.  We are doing Big Things.  With bigger just around the corner.  Lots Bigger.

With all this powder kegness in development, it’s nice to have a little person around to keep it all in perspective.

I need that girl to be proud of her daddy.

There’s a first. She supposedly won’t know who she’s seeing in the mirror for a year or so, but today she’s happy to have a friend. Before now she was either indifferent or suspicious of the competition. She’ll probably go back to suspicious tomorrow. That other baby is awfully cute. Maybe too cute.

Another first – that’s the first pic I’ve posted of Avery taken with the 7D. Almost all the others have been from my iPhone. It’s just so dang convenient, and the moments don’t last. Catch as catch can. If that’s still a thing you can say.

But boy does Avery love baths. She could stay in there all day. Just floating around, being warm and floaty. Chatty and just starting to be splashy. She’s all smiles and contentment until you take her out. Then there’s a subtle shift in the mood you can only detect if you’re within a city block.

Like this afternoon. She’s on a kick for the last few days of not napping. She goes down, inevitably, but she likes being awake. She doesn’t want to miss all this experience. So she’s a little cranky while she’s fighting it. Mostly just making cranky noises (literally sounds like endless cranking, which makes me wonder if that’s the origin of the expression), but sometimes winding up a really good purple faced rage. If she were refusing to eat we’d worry, but she’s as hungry and happy as ever, otherwise.

Hey! I forgot to to take pictures of the Christmas tree! Here you go:

See? The iPhone is just so dang convenient. I just leaned over and snapped a couple. Picked my favorite. Chucked it through PhotoToaster, and emailed it to myself to I could plug it in here. The same frame taken with the 7D would have taken five times longer. Of course, the image would have been five times better after Photoshop. Still, convenience.

Oh. Right. The tree is actually a pillar. I think it looks very Christmassy, and seeing as we don’t really have to put presents under it this year, it does the job just fine. Sigh. I do love the lights. In my dorm I had Christmas lights up long before I found out that’s what you do in dorms. I also had the entire ceiling covered in pop cans. In some ways my taste in decor has improved.

Marjorie likes the pillar just fine as well. And Avery is positively hypnotized. As long as the tv isn’t on, anyway. I know she won’t remember this Christmas, but it sure is a treat to see the light in those eyes.