I am not living in Atlanta anymore. This sentence seems so stupid because very few people even knew I was living in Atlanta, because from the moment I went to Atlanta I had a feeling Atlanta wasn’t going to work out, and I didn’t want to pretend I was excited then three months later tell everyone about my latest decision failure.
So I am not living in Atlanta anymore. I’m living in West Haven, Connecticut now, in a perfect little second floor apartment with a tiny kitchen and a washer and dryer and a small glass table with a single chair where I can write a novel and look out the sliding glass doors at the same time, and exactly enough space for my clothes and books and husband. We have two rooms, and one of them is the kitchen, where we cook, eat, do laundry, and watch TV all at once.
We considered sleeping in that room too, because it has the air conditioner, but I talked Eric out of it because then we would have to rearrange the furniture every night and every morning. It’s that small of a room.
You might be surprised to hear that West Haven is actually the fourth city I’ve lived in this year. The others are Chicago, Atlanta, and Jacksonville, Florida, the last of which was way too humid for my liking.
I didn’t tell anyone this either, because it’s just insane. What stable, sensible person would live in four cities in seven months? No one. But I am not particularly into either sense or stability.
It should be no surprise, though, that I am not living in Atlanta anymore. After six months of working full-time at Fizz, I’ve transitioned to simply consulting for them on digital projects for our clients.
I would love to say more. But I am still working up the courage to do so.
There are other things I’d love to do, like change the title of this stupid blog. Social Pollination is a good title for a book, but ever since I renamed the blog for “branding purposes,” I’ve lost interest in writing in it. I can’t churn out post after post with copy-optimized titles like “Five tips to tame your online addiction” or “10 reasons you need to be on Foursquare.” And I can’t think of creative ways to disguise blog posts about things I care about as blog posts that people who want to learn digital marketing should care about.
I’ve always said, though, that you don’t need a blog topic, that you should write about what you’re learning. This is so relevant to me now, more than ever. So that’s the new direction of this blog. Which is not actually new, because that was the original direction of this blog. It is me who is new, who is returning to the basics.
To celebrate, here are some things I’m learning:
About Business
If someone is expendable from your business, they are an employee, not a partner. Partnerships only work when both parts are equal. If you can’t find someone who is not expendable then you are best off just hiring someone to do the work you need done.
The biggest difference between corporations and start-ups is the number of people who have personality disorders. You are either the type of person who can deal with personality disorders, or you are not. If you are not, you should work for a corporation or for yourself.
About Life
Some people get ahead by breaking the rules, and some people get ahead by following them. I wonder if the real way to get ahead is to decide which type of person you are and stay true to that in everything you do.
It feels good to know who you are. If more people focused on figuring out who they are at a young age, like 16, there would be fewer quarter-life crises.
About Relationships
You can hate what people do while still being in love with them. Sometimes the only way to move forward is to just let go.
About Writing
I used to be writing a scene, and I would ask myself, “How can I make this funnier? How can I paint this picture better?” If it was a blog post, “How can I optimize this for the most clicks, retweets, comments?”
Now I ask myself, for both fiction and non-fiction pieces, “How can I make this more honest?” That was the point when I felt myself evolving as a writer.
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A final word, if you came here looking for a post about the newest digital technologies: no, I am not brilliant enough to rattle off six life lessons off the top of my head, wrapped up in a neat 300 words or so. I used a new software called OhLife to keep track of my thoughts for the last month, to force myself into honesty. Try it. You post by email, and what you write never gets posted publicly.
Most of what you write will not be brilliant, but there may be a couple gems worth looking back on later. I write without inhibition, once a day at 8pm, a couple sentences at a time. A week later, I have enough good material for a blog post.
I would recommend this product for any person or business that struggles with finding time to compose blog posts.
Honestly, I hate this topic. It annoys me and it bores me and I wish everyone would just stop worrying about inequality in the workplace, and especially in tech start-ups. But since the topic is making it’s rounds again, maybe instead of being annoyed and bored I should take the opportunity to educate people on why this is not a problem.
Monica O'Brien is the Director of Digital at Fizz and author of the book Social Pollination, which helps businesses leverage social media for crazy growth!
