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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.

Bit of a strange day there.  It somehow got away from me.  We had the village handyman (read: on-site electrician) fix the GFI outlet on the patio this morning so we could string some Christmas lights out there.  It went smoothly enough but it messed with the schedule.  Power interruptions meant patchy intertubes, which has a shocking effect on your day.  Also, Marjorie went to the gym (!!) and while Avery was a perfect gem, she can’t help but be a distraction.  Still loves elevators.  Still heart-floodingly adorable.  And in the end, we kept the lights inside.  Whatayagonnado.

So I didn’t accomplish everything on my list.  Still have some things to do with CBcom and for the app.  But with some help from Robyn and Marjorie I have the gifties for the nephews sorted.  Woo!  Now the bigger challenges of, on the Taverner side, the Cutthroat Christmas gift, and on the Phillips side, the Gift For Somebody and the Stocking For Somebody.  All very fun, but I like giving them all the energy and imagination they deserve.  It can be tricky finding the time for that.  Last year, in revenge by proxy for a lifetime of mandarin oranges in the toe of my stocking, I stuffed David’s with an entire box of individually wrapped mandarins.  See?  Fun like that.  Of course he also got a for-real stocking.  I’m shocked you would even ask.

[Aside: how the hell can that dog bark for four hours without pause?  I said pause.  Lack of paws would be a perfectly good excuse for a barkathon.]

Here is a random thing:

There is an actual company making fridges and calling itself Smeg.  This begs the question: Have they not heard of Red Dwarf?  And if they have, does that not make them the coolest fridge (SWIDT?) company ever?

So.  My knee is pretty much buggered.  I have to decide what to do about that.  I kinda need to be able to chase after my little girl, both of us screaming and giggling and running rings around Mum as she rolls her eyes at us, in the not too distant future.  Also, I really enjoy working on set, and those are very long days on your feet.  Not to mention some gear lugging.  Never mind strapping on the steadicam rig.  I could go on.  I need my knee.  So.  I guess there isn’t much deciding to be done.  Just some sort of professional looking at.

But more importantly in the right now sense, I completely forgot to take a picture of our Christmas Tree!  Excite!  Maybe tomorrow.  After sleep.

Happy Tuesday, Christmas lovers!