Adam-Jackson

Earth Hour is a great idea! I think the notion that we can turn off the lights for one hour on a global level is pretty impossible but if 5% of the world does it, the impact will be significant. Strangely enough, I’m against Earth Hour. Yes this green, charitable San Franciscan thinks it’s stupid. A Good idea that should be executed differently. I’d like to offer up a little history about my move to San Francisco.

I made the move to San Francisco for many reasons but one of the reasons was that I thought I could be a little more green by living in a city. It sounds odd but there are some very clear benefits.

1. I ride my bicycle everywhere. I drive a car 30 minutes or less twice a month to get groceries. This makes a huge impact.
2. I ride public transit nearly everywhere that’s too far to bike (10 miles+)
3. I live in a studio apartment that has 3 light bulbs, a small stove and a space heater. Powerbills in Florida were $150 a month for my house. Now I pay $37.
4. I switched to a water conserving toilet and water conserving shower head in my studio apartment.
5. I switched to LED displays in my laptops and desktops at my house. LED uses less electricity.
6. I started buying local and organic foods because foods shipped from all over use more fuel.
7. I started wearing shirts 2 or 3 days in a row to conserve on washing and now I do 1 load of laundry a week.
8. I started drinking tap water and reducing the amount of plastics I use.
9. Laura and I recycle EVERYTHING! We have bins for paper, plastic and aluminum / tin. The same goes for work as well. Everything is recycled.
10. I never leave my computer, lights or electronics powered on when I leave to go somewhere.
11. I’m a member of city car share where you can rent a Prius (hybrid) for errands or grocery store runs. I use this sparingly but it’s a shared car program so my environmental impact is low.
12. When i fly i always organize flight options by “less mileage” than “less time” or “less $$$” By flying less miles, I’m helping Co2 output a little bit but not a lot.
13. I threw away my printer and started doing everything paperless. I haven’t printed anything out unless I absolutely have to in a year. no ink, no paper.
14. I switched to low power light bulbs that last longer but use a lot less energy than normal bulbs.

This is what I’ve done since moving to San Francisco. I have never bragged or written it here before because it’s my choice to live this lifestyle. Clean energy that’s renewable is a must in our world today and conserving the energy we use is important as well. People can live any way they choose and I’m not here to say anyone is wrong. However, something like Earth Hour is a bit insulting to me. After outlining the above things how do you think I feel when those of us who never conserve energy, never take public transit and leave the TV on when they leave the house are now deciding for one hour they’re going to turn everything off and save energy. Some people will say to me, “well it’s a start and hopefully it will inspire others to do the same.” Agreed and I hope it does. Earth Hour shouldn’t last an hour. It should be a part of our lives and how we live and it should be on our minds at all times.

After earth hour is over, turn on the lights that you need, start recycling, switch to water conserving shower heads and find the shortest way to drive or bike to the office. Start Monday morning with a new outlook on life and try to save the world one light bulb at a time. We can do this together and don’t wait until this time next year when it’s “cool” to turn out the lights. Turning out the lights starts tonight and should continue on for the rest of your life because we owe it to our Earth to conserve energy and be responsible.

According to Wikipedia:

April 1st is a notable day celebrated in many countries on April 1.

So why in the hell are we spreading foolish propaganda 7-10 days before the day? I have seen blog posts all week where commenters say, “is this an early April Fools Joke?” and the authors of the blogs admit it’s a joke and everyone has a laugh. NO THAT’S NOT HOW APRIL FOOLS DAY WORKS! April Fools Day is on April 1st and doesn’t fall on any other day. If it’s March 24th, that’s not the day that you post jokes. If you think it’s funny to trick your readers then go fucking trick your readers ON APRIL FOOLS DAY!

Let’s break this down for a moment. Imagine it’s October 15th and a kid in a Dracula costume knocks on your door and asks for candy; are you going to laugh or are you going to go, “oh it all makes sense because it’s October it must be halloween.” NO THE KID IS DUMB AND NEEDS TO GET HIS DATES RIGHT! That’s how you handle that. Or your wife freaks out because you didn’t get her a valentines day card on January 28th. OF COURSE YOU DIDN’T CAUSE VALENTINES DAY IS 2 WEEKS AWAY!

If someone in congress or Wikipedia wants to agree that it should be March-April Fools 2 Week Extravaganza and make it a law then I’ll be totally fine with this dimwitted holiday but until then, you’re all a bunch of idiots who can’t read a freaking calendar.

AND ANOTHER THING! If you are a company that makes real money and employs real people for which you pay then you aren’t allowed to make April Fools Jokes. YOU JUST CAN’T! Google, your stupidity on April 1st should be illegal. I honestly think stockholders should sue you for posting joke products on that day because your fake announcements are misleading and it’s the equivalent of lying about your earnings or lying about layoffs. People should be fired for lying at a publicly traded company.

Since this kind of joking has been going on for years now even by large companies like CNN, Google and Microsoft, I understand and my solution is to just turn of RSS, Twitter and my Cell Phone on April 1st because I know that everything is complete bullshit. However, what’s really pissing me off is this complete childish bullshit is leaking out into March and it’s wrong. I trust things that are posted on blogs with over 1 million monthly page views. I trust announcements from publicly traded companies and I understand that 4/1 isn’t the day to trust anyone but now that the last 2 weeks in March is full of lies, I don’t know who to trust.

One final thing. If you are going to do a “March-April Fools 2 Week Extravaganza” please have the fucking courtesy of putting up a blog post telling your readers what was actually fake and what was real over the past 2 weeks. Be responsible to your readers, advertisers and investors.

Thanks for reading.

Social Networking has been around for a very long time and I’d argue that E-Mail is the original form of it and it’s all improved since then. The latest and greatest social networks allow communication across different mediums and Facebook has opened up their service with Facbook Connect so I can comment to blogs using my Facebook login and the comment is placed on my wall.

Social Networking has become very powerful but there are too many of them. Granted, I only actively participate in 5 networks, it’s still too many and this is what originally turned me on to Yoono. It was May of 2008 and Yoono had just launched. I heard about them via a popular Tech Blog and was hooked! Granted, the product wasn’t as refined as it is today, I still found myself completely in love with the concept and I even switched from Safari to FireFox for the privilege of using the add-on.

When I tell people about aggregation of social networks and even if I don’t say the word, I see a cringe come over their face as their mind shuts out the concept of bring multiple networks into a single sidebar but they’re missing the point. Imagine being able to see everything your friends are up to in a single view and in 2-5 minutes you’ve scanned everything your friends have been up to in the last 2 hours.

I’m not a fan of reading Twitter posts throughout the day because it takes too much time but a sidebar that’s integrated into my web browser that’s unobtrusive, slim and can easily be hidden or expanded is a perfect solution. I login and setup my widgets like Myspace, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter & FriendFeed. Once I do that, I can view single network updates or see all 5 networks in one view and Myspace updates, Flickr photos and tweets all come in to one view and I can reply, comment and share content from one window.

This is social media aggregation and I don’t cringe when I think about it. I’m always preaching about saving time and working more efficiently and this is the tool that helps me do that. Yoono has another widget that I don’t use as much but it shows related videos, photos, web sites and products as I browse the web. When I go to Amazon.com and look up a Canon DSLR Camera, the sidebar in discovery mode shows YouTube videos of that camera, reviews and a page on the web that sells it for a little cheaper. It’s not the killer app that hooks me in but its a welcome feature that makes the web feel a little bit smaller.

I do work for Yoono but that hasn’t caused me to have a hazy vision toward how awesome the sidebar is. I do work there because I love the product and see a bright future for it and the friends widget is going to get better and better. I encourage you to give it a shot. Add your networks, scroll around, reply to some tweets and you’ll see how awesome it can be.

http://yoono.com
http://twiter.com/yoono

Day after day on tech blogs I see comments like this:

OMG Another Twitter story! Slow news day? Seriously, I’m on Twitter but you guys post so much about this service. Seriously? It’s just text updates!!!!

I’m sure anyone reading any of the popular tech blogs can align with me on this. So I looked a few numbers from TechCrunch. They’re a popular site covering emerging Internet technologies, social media, Web 2.0 and other cool tech news. Here are the amount of posts dedicated to Twitter compared to other companies.

It’s not that Twitter is written about more but it looks like Twitter will soon surpass Myspace which has been around since 2003. Of course Myspace just isn’t as hot anymore in the eyes of TechCrunch whereas Facebook has a 230 post gain on Twitter and no one has complained about too many posts about Facebook. Oh and look at Google! Sure they’ve been around longer but TechCrunch hasn’t been around since 1997 so I assumed Google would be around the 500 posts range as well. The iPhone has only been out for 20+ months (a year less than Twitter) and it is only 100 posts short of what Twitter has.

What I’m trying to say is that it might seem that Twitter is getting tons of press by TechCrunch and other blogs but in actuality, it just seems that way and Twitter creates news for blogs like TechCrunch. Here’s an example.

Ashton Kutcher posts that he’s starting a new venture and he tweets it on Twitter. TechCrunch is a friend of Kutcher and they post a copy of that tweet on TechCrunch and talk about how Ashton used Twitter to break the news as a side note. Well that’s another post “about Twitter” despite not actually being a Twitter focused entry. Twitter is a medium for news, current events, social media and it is the darling of silicon valley just like Google was in 2001 after the first dot com bubble burst.

Just chill out guys. It’s inevitable that you’ll eventually join Twitter and when you do, it’ll be clear what you’ve been missing all of this time. I still think TechCrunch and other blogs should make RSS feeds that don’t include Twitter but until then I’ll just have to deal with comments full of complaints that they’re talking about Twitter way too much.

Photo Credit: gillat

Diane Birch is a young woman who has caught my eye. Sure, she’s beautiful, talented and extremely photogenic but I spent 30 solid minutes learning more about her, her life and what drives her and I’m dying for an interview. There’s something captivating about following a young person as they aim high and land on target. This is a driving force for my efforts with young people. I love spending time with young people who have high hopes and aspirations and I do all that I can to help them achieve those dreams no matter how hard it might seem at times to make it in this world. Here’s an excerpt from her About Page on Myspace:

With a childhood spent on the move, as the daughter of a preacher, living between Zimbabwe, South Africa and Australia, before her parents finally settled in Portland, Oregon when she was in her early teens, Diane Birch absorbed a unique and very cosmopolitan perspective on life that shines through her music and makes a simple categorization of it impossible.

Trained as a classical pianist using Suzuki methodology (playing by ear at a young age following Suzuki’s theory of language acquisition, where a child learns to speak before learning to read), Diane rapidly moved away from any confines of tradition, cultivating a very individual style and composing her own material. With an obvious abundance of talent and a passion for performing, it wasn’t long before she realized that if she wanted to pursue a career in music she would probably be better served in Los Angeles, where both the film and record industries could be explored.

Working by day, making ends meet playing piano in up-scale hotels and bars, and then by night performing her own material in muso joints across the city, Diane rapidly attracted the attention of Hollywood’s ‘great and good’, and before long the invitations had started to pour in to ‘jam with Prince and his band at his house’, ‘write a piece of music for a movie’ or ‘perform for various top studio executives’. And as this started to unfold and her desire to communicate with her audiences grew even stronger, Diane discovered that not only did she have a strong feel for melody and musical composition, but also that she had a natural ability to capture her stories in words, and a voice to carry them.

As the buzz grew, even more opportunities began to present themselves to Diane, one of which was an invitation to come to England to focus in earnest on her career as a singer-songwriter, where very quickly she acquired a global publishing deal with EMI and started to garner rave reviews for her performances. Of one of the first of these, the UK’s industry bible, Music Week, said “Diane has a voice and songwriting ability that will connect with truly global audiences.”

Before long, Diane had been signed by Steve Greenberg’s S-Curve Records and had returned Stateside, to New York, where she is currently completing work on her debut album, ‘BIble Belt’, which is slated for release this spring.

WOW! Her story is beautiful, inspiring and wonderful. How did I discover Diane? Well, I was at Guy Kawasaki’s Alltop Party last week at SXSW Interactive and she was one of the performers. A seemingly shy girl sits down and says into the microphone, “This is my first performance in Austin and I hope you like my music.” Spoken like a true artist. Modesty, humility and honesty were expressed in her words and then she sang.

I was lost in song and my love for music was renewed just as if I had taken the first bite of an exotic fruit and I knew that I wanted more. On the way out, I asked, “who is singing?” and they replied, “Diane Birch.” Please check out Diane and follow her music. She’s going to be a star some day so get her autograph now. Now excuse me while I play her music, pour some wine and fall in love with the sound of love.

• MySpace
• RcrdLbl
• Last.FM
• Twitter
• Vimeo
• Flickr
• YouTube

[UPDATED] Looks like it’s over. PHOTO

I joined Twitter on March 21st, 2007. I technically joined in December of 2006 but gave up Twitter because I thought it was stupid. Once I realized the error of my ways, I created a new account and was dead set on learning the ways of Twitter. I had no idea that I would be as involved with the service as I am today. In honor of a little bet and for a little fun I’m opening up my Twitter account to YOU! One year ago on March 21st, 2008 I reached 20 THOUSAND tweets. I did this by tweeting out my password and watched as you guys tweeted 800 times that day.

I intend to do it again this year but with more safety. The likelihood of my account being hacked and deleted is high so I’m keeping things secretive and have a nice little script that will allow you to tweet as me from this site. The link is below. Stay safe,  have fun! BTW. Twitter’s 3rd Birthday Bash is tomorrow! If you’re in SF, come by and have some drinks! Twitter Turns 3. RSVP Here.

CLICK HERE TO TWEET AS ME!
CLICK HERE TO TWEET THE LINK TO MY POST!

I’ve been working on this book. Maybe you heard of it. It’s about Twitter. My partner, Dom Sagolla has been an excellent team mate on this project. Through his help, he and I have signed with a literary and speaking agent. We’ve also had some great offers from publishers and I’m happy to be working on this project. Something that’s been itching me for a long time is a 2nd book. It was actually in my mind before 140 Characters was conceived in August of 2008. The book? Well, let me briefly go over my idea.

I first came to San Francisco at the age of 16 for a conference. I came back every year since then and one day, my connections in San Francisco helped me land a pretty remarkable project. I moved to San Francisco with my girlfriend on June 1st, 2008, 18 days after deciding to sell everything and make the move.

The past 9 months has been incredible but any of you that follow my travel blog or my Twitter know that I have had some amazing experiences that need to be written. Many couples make the trek out of their hometown across country and with complete uncertainty, they do it with a 50% chance that it won’t work out. We did this and I want to write the story.

The book will be called Adam and Laura Go West and I’ve already began writing drafts and outlines. I won’t dive into it until after the current book project is done. The book will cover highlights from the age of 16 to 21 and cover my decision to move and will cover my first year in San Francisco with notes.

Highlights will include:

• The puzzle pieces that made the move a reality
• Selling our entire life in a garage sale and flying to SF with 4 suitcases
• Finding an apartment
• Being attacked / attempted robbery 3 times.
• Laura being purse snatched
• Exploring the west coast (napa, tahoe, yosemite)
• Coping with city life
• Exploring the tech scene and “making it”
• Laura goes freelance
• Charity and civic duties / involvement
• AdamsBlock
• Vegas for BlogWorld
• Austin for SXSW
• Launching my career

There is so much more to this book and I’ll have some captivating chapter names within the next 6 months. I think this book will be perfect for anyone looking for some inspiration and a change. It’s also for couples looking to make the move and will certainly be placed in the “inspiration” category at bookstores. I’m stoked to work on this project. Any feedback you have, please place it below. Thanks for your support guys. You all helped make this dream a reality.

I’ve been very honored to have a great group of followers on Twitter and all of you make my day go by a lot faster. Your unique content, hilarious replies and interesting links keep things fun. The latest trend in Twitter is #FollowFriday. The idea is simple. Pick a few people that you love following on Twitter, tag the tweet with #followfriday and mention which people you think your followers should also follow.

The idea is perfect for Twitter which is an ecosystem built of recommendations, suggestions, sharing and influence. The users grasp to this concept because they have a chance to recommend their favorite Twitter users and at the same time, users get a bit of an ego boost in the form of being recommended to be followed. Aside from that, there is zero value in FollowFriday. If the value of Twitter is to get some ego boost with a mix of interesting information and social interaction time wasting then FollowFriday fits right into that model.

Some would argue that’s what Twitter is for and this post isn’t meant to argue that fact but the reality is that #FollowFriday continues to grow each week and the value of #FollowFriday continues to drop. Earlier today I sent a tweet that said”

ANNOUNCEMENT: If you recommend me for #followfriday, I will probably follow you back

45 people recommended me for #FollowFriday after that but my name was buried in a tweet with 5 other Twitter names. If #FollowFriday is being done by everyone you follow, well you’d be following thousands of new people every Friday. It’s ineffective and therefore this act of goodwill turns into noise. It blips on my Twitter reader as a reply and I’m on the edge of filtering out all of the tweets containing the hashtag because the noise is just too much.

At the end of the day, #FollowFriday is only valuable to those recommending and those being recommended. Forgive my choice of an example but let’s think of it like a toilet. The person doing the dumping has a sign of relief while the toilet is proud to be used for its intended purpose. Everyone else in the bathroom just gets a whiff of stink and is pretty turned off by the experience. This is how I feel about #FollowFriday. Since I’ve been the toilet nearly 50 times today, I say thanks because it’s cool being recommended but at the end of the day I’ve only gained 15 followers. That’s 15 new followers after 45 times of being recommended. Most of my followers have over 500 followers. That means after possibly being seen as a recommendation by 22 thousand people, I only walk away with 15 new followers.

I’m not saying #FollowFriday is a waste of time but I am saying that it’s intended purpose isn’t the end result and there are better ways to recommend people and “dumping in a toilet” isn’t the best approach.

Spending five days in Austin for SXSW Interactive was a mental and physical beating. It wasn’t Iron Man but the networking and party hopping does take its toll on you to the point where I was becoming anti-social on the last day. I made an observation that hasn’t crossed my mind before which is how people introduce or recognize their relationships with others. It’s important to know people, have strong business connections and be “in the know” but how we classify those relationships is very intriguing and maybe we can rethink the word choice on these relationships.

In conversation, when John is talking to Jim and in the middle of John’s story about this new company, he says, “I’m thinking of bringing on x because of their work in x. You know right?” Jim responds back with one of the following lines:

I’ve heard of him/her.
I know of him/her.
Yeah, we’ve met.
Yeah, we’re friends.
Yeah, we’re good friends.
Yeah we worked together at x and it was great.
No I don’t know who that is.

If you attend a few professional networking events, this is exactly how the conversation goes. John didn’t truly care who Jim knew but naturally if John was working with this person, everyone had to know who it is. Now Jim is in the situation of responding on one of the above ways because he has to say something and sometimes lying is the best way to help this conversation come to a end so they can both move on with the rest of John’s story.

I’d like to challenge a couple of things in this method in hopes that a few people can resolve this awkwardness. First of all, very rarely are you “friends” with someone. I hear “Good Friends” used the most out of all of these and I think that’s usually inaccurate. I know a ton of people in my field and I might have 5 people that I would consider friends. I’m very picky about who I consider a friend. For example, there’s a guy in tech who I have great respect for, we travel in the same circles and I can imagine watching football at his place on a Sunday afternoon. However, I don’t think a 3AM phone call when I’m drunk and need a ride is a reality with this guy so therefore we’re not friends.

So that’s the first point. Let’s be more careful with how we label acquaintances. Right now, that’s all it is and reserve friendship status for people that you feel are actual friends.

The second thing I wanted to mention is how I make this situation never happen by never asking the kind of questions that I ask. For example, I’ll tell a story and say, “Yeah I’m working with “John Smith of company XYZ on this new project” and then continue my story. If it’s someone well known, they generally throw in a, “yeah I know that guy” and that’s it. I never forced them into an awkward situation of saying that they know that person or that they’re “good friends” because the person feels challenged. I just proved that I’m better than them or at least equals and they’re now saying, “best friends forever” to make sure they look equal in my eyes. It’s freaking stupid and it is purely mind games between two people.

When you’re explaining your project, don’t force someone to answer that they know a certain person and don’t fall victim to saying how close you are with someone just because you feel entitled to be one of the cool kids. I’ll say it right now. I don’t know nearly enough people and I usually work with people you’ve never heard of before because they’re cheaper, nicer and dedicated partners. I then save you the stress of figuring out if you know someone I’m working with. Everyone is happy and on a nice clean slate. This is how conversations should be.

On my trip to Austin last week, I publicly said that I was trying to see if I still had it. “It” being the mojo or whatever you call it to get a girl interested enough to leave with me but I had no intention of following through. I have an amazing girlfriend and she is a girl who truly loves me and will do anything for me. I realize that and will never be disloyal to her. I was riding home from an amazing BBQ dinner on a charter bus and I put on my headphones. For 30 minutes, I was alone with no laptop, no cell service and music and I dreamt of this blog entry.

Dating is awesome. It’s fun, exciting and sometimes, breathtaking. I have only been on a handful of dates. My first relationship (before I even started dating) was when I was 14. She and I dated for 3 years and there were some good and bad times but we always went back to each other. It wasn’t dependency because I’ve never been dependent on anything. I’ve stopped blogging and twittering cold turkey. I’ve stopped caffeine cold turkey and I’ve sold all of my possessions to move to San Francisco. I’m confident that she and I just enjoyed each other’s company and her Mom forced us apart because she was too young to have a serious boyfriend that she wasn’t engaged to. Of course this was “the south” and we were only 17 but that’s just how it was in the country.

After breaking up with my first girlfriend I was single for 2 years. I had a couple of girls I liked but I swore off women for those 2 years so I could get my life straight. I was blogging, traveling and progressing in my career. I was solely focused on work and family and going on 7 day vision quests out in the woods. I did a lot of things on my own and partook in a lot of road trips. It was my time and I grew a lot in those two years.

I met Laura when I was 19. I had just quit my year stint at Apple Computer working as an assistant manager in one of their retail stores and started my job as an IT Consultant for GWANDA. Laura was one month away from turning 23 and was celebrating her graduation from college. I was blogging at my favorite cafe and I stopped her as she was leaving and asked, “are you leaving?” We talked for an hour and later went for dinner. That night, I had no idea that we’d still be together 3 years later and I’d be asking friends for advice on engagement rings.

Now that you’re all brushed up on a little history I’d like to explain what excites me about dating. I feel like I’m going through the mid-life crisis at 22. It may be that I’m already at a stage in my life that others are in at a later age. It might also be there I’m just engineered that way and can’t control my own thoughts. I believe what I’m going through isn’t considered a mid-life crisis but here’s the spiel. I feel that I haven’t done anything yet. Crazy, right? You’ve seen my blog posts explaining what I’ve accomplished since moving to San Francisco and you’d say, “um hello look at all of the awesome things you’ve done!” but I am here to argue with that. There are hundreds of things I wish I could do and I’ve made mistakes just as others have. This is not the blog entry to post all of those but I did want to talk about Dating.

Guys, I’m going to break down why you go on dates. It’s pretty complicated. You go out with girls because you want to get laid. OMG that was so difficult to nail! SXSW in Austin was full of sex, sex and more sex. It wasn’t me having the sex. Everyone was doing it and I wasn’t in the least bit jealous. Want a little honesty? I’m not a fan of sex. I never have been. The reason I took the 2 year break from dating is because everything in a teenage relationship is about sex. I couldn’t go out on more than 4 dates with a girl without it being brought up. I lost 2 great girls because I wouldn’t do the deed. I was, by no means, a virgin. My first girlfriend and I explored the act after two years of dating.

Luckily, Laura was a “good girl” and she and I took things extremely slow and fell in love way before doing the deed and it was “making love” and not “getting laid” and that’s how romances should be. I’m not old fashion and I’m not self conscious and I’m not afraid of the unknown. What I am is a person who loves people and learning everything about them. It makes me vulnerable but it also means my friendships are so grand and they are friendships that last a lifetime.

I always got along better with women. I love their company, their love of art and music and their need to break someone down intellectually and find out what that person is made of. Guys have too many barriers and they tend to have a very thick shell of bullshit and they are never honest. I hang out with guys for the escapades and that’s it. I’ve never once gotten to the heart of things with any guy except my Father who is my best friend.

Connecting with women is so much fun. In high school, everyone – and I mean everyone assumed I was gay. I didn’t hang out with the guys, play sports or do guy things. I had the most wonderful friendships with girls and they came to me for guy advice. Girls, in the 4 years of high school, would find out I was dating a girl and say, “I thought you were gay.” It’s common and I’ve accepted it. In modern times it’s less of an assumption to think I’m gay and my interaction with women hasn’t changed.

This has caused problems with me personally because Laura is in love with me and she understands this is my behavior but it becomes an issue sometimes when I get back from a trip and explain how awesome this person was that I met and she gets a little jealous. I understand and my love of the female mind has gotten me into trouble. This happens on every extended work trip and because I’m honest, I always tell Laura my stories and it never ends well. Of course, I’m happy to announce that Laura and I in our 3 year relationship have never had an argument. We’ve had disagreements but she’s excellent at reasoning and I’m a great salesman and we go together like PB&J.

So back to dating. Why do I like to go on dates? I like to go on dates to learn more about someone and it’s my only chance to get a girl alone without distractions from her friends and I can work through the barriers to learn more about her. I can also talk about my interests and get their feedback on my latest projects. It gives me a chance to sit with someone, give advice and become their new friend. I can elaborate on what makes me tick and form a connection.

Dating is ideal because there is no other time to form this kind of relationship. It can’t be done at a bar or when she’s surrounded by her friends. It also can’t be done when she’s at work or at the doctor’s office and I’ve tried online dating. You fall in love with someone over email and when you meet, there’s absolutely no connection at all. I’m not talking sexual connection, I’m just talking life connection. Of course I can hang out with the guys over pool or at the bar but as I mentioned earlier, guys don’t let you in and you can’t build lasting relationships with guys—but that’s just my opinion.

I’ve looked for a solution to hanging out with girls that wasn’t dating and I haven’t found one. If any past girlfriends are looking at this post and wondering why I never tried to kiss you, this is why. If you’ve ever sat in a hot tub with me at 6AM and I’ve asked you about your relationships, your aspirations and what you want to do in life and left you confused because I didn’t make a move, well this is why. I didn’t want to date you, start a relationship or hook up with you. What I did want is a lasting friendship with you and to attend your wedding in 5 years when you finally meet that man of your dreams and I hope you’ll attend my wedding.

Dating has been my only chance to forge strong relationships with women and it’s never worked. If you know of another way, let me know. Social media is about bringing Internet relationships and turning them into real life friendships and that’s what it has always been to me. It’s certainly worked but it’s always a hit and miss. I admit that I do have crushes on women and I’ve always wondered what could have been but we all have that feeling and it subsides after a few weeks. What is more important to me is what we can learn from each other in person, online or via simple snail mail. How can we all work together to build a better world and the person that you meet at a tech party that you don’t talk to because they’re too pretty or you may have nothing in common, might be the person that helps you change the world. Don’t miss out on those moments.

Guys: Maybe it’s in your DNA but you don’t have to fuck everything. All of you this weekend who were chasing women, you lost a lot of respect from me. Yes I’ll still talk to you guys and yes we’ll still work together but I have a mental list of all of you and it was sickening. If you can’t help it, get counseling. You all could have benefited a little bit more from actually getting to know these women and maybe both of you will grow as people. God invented jerking off for a reason. The reason isn’t that you can do it later after the girl at the bar turned you down. The reason is that you can do it because you spent all night talking to a girl about what makes her tick, you gave her a kiss and she went home and you do it before going to sleep. Better yet, you let go and remove the curse of “getting off” and read a fucking book instead. Now you’re a better human being and now you’re becoming enlightened.

This is not a holier than thou post. This is a post full of honesty. If you made it this far, I applaud you. Leave a comment and share it with a friend. We’re humans being humans and working together will change the world. Sex is for making babies and you all are doing it way too much and I’m not being religious here. Using it as a crutch and to fill emotional holes. If you know me, don’t talk about it anymore because I’m not out to fuck. I’m out to meet people and help change the world.