avery

However it happened, I got to spend a lot of today with an adorable baby in my arms.  Sure, she was squawking for some of it, but it was all quality time.  She’s very communicative.  In the sense that she talks a lot.  What she’s saying is a bit of a mystery, but I’m sure we’ll work it out.  Video shuts her up.  Doubly so for video of her being talkative.  Interesting.  I wonder if she knows what she’s saying in them.  And yes, we played some Christmas music, and we liked it.  So screw you, Scrooges.  It’s all good in moderation.

She almost rolled over today.  From her back.  She hasn’t quite negotiated the shoulder yet, but the days of safely stepping away from the changing table are fading fast.

When I wasn’t holding a baby, I worked on CBcom a bit.  I set up the next newsletter for premium subscribers, but I’ll hold off sending it til Monday to give Chris a chance to include a personal message.  The site is doing really well now that it’s been rebuilt from scratch.  Can’t even tell you what a boondoggle the last site was.  Enough said on that subject.  The new site is great.

The meeting I was supposed to have with the tech/design school didn’t happen – I gave her the wrong number.  Proofread, people.  For the love of all that is holy.  Proofread.  So we rescheduled for Monday, no worries.  Dang it.

That did free up a few minutes to tinker with a new Twitter account – Voicemail From God.  Check it out.  I suggest starting at the beginning.  There’s a bit of a narrative there.  Wait til you see where it’s going.  Such nonsense.  Irreverent, unapologetic, all in good fun comedy nonsense.  You have been warned.

Marjorie said earlier that she wishes she could get paid to cruise Facebook and write tweets.  Not even a week ago she was talking about starting a mommyblog, and you can make a comfortable living doing that, so, to her I say, en garde.  On the other hand, we haven’t actually made any money as Chaos yet.  Not with our own creative work, anyway.  We’ve contributed to all sorts of wonderful work by other people.  Nevertheless, one feels a certain pressure to validate.

It’s coming.  And it’s frickin awesomecore.

Speaking of amazing creations, I should resist the urge to put my daughter’s adorable face to work, right?  She’s a gorgeous girl, and I (like every parent, I suppose) am sure she could do well as… I don’t know… the next face of Gerber, or Baby Gap, or whatever.  I just don’t think I want to put her on that ride.  Or us.  Celebribaby parents can be horrible people, subjecting their kids to all sorts of unhappy conditions, not least of which is the schedule.  Or the utter abandonment of routine.  Kids need a certain amount of routine.  Structure.  It makes them feel safe and gives them room to grow.  So… I don’t think I’ll submit too many pictures of her to too many contests.  Not too many.

What a doll, though.  If she keeps these eyes I am going to have to lock her up in the attic until her 21st birthday.  If they do change to brown I will settle for sending her to school with a bag over her head.

I wonder if that’s how it all started out there in the Middle East?  Being facetious, of course.

Well, here’s hoping your Friday was super great, and that your weekend will multiply your happiness.  Merry Christmas.  Happy Holidays.  May the spirit of the season infuse your loins with the passion of thirteen storms.  And stuff.

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.