I'm with the band

We’re less than a month out from the movie tour.

I was given the option early on to either join the tour or sit it out. Impulsively and without really thinking about it, I volunteered on the spot. Then I spent the next week wondering why I’d do something so dumb. Six weeks on the road, eleven or twelve of us on a tour bus, new city every day, living out of hotel rooms. Stop for a moment and think this through, when was the last time you wanted to take a six-week road trip with your boss and coworkers?

It would be different if I was one of the stars, but if Tucker and Nils are the band, then I’m a roadie. A step below the tour manager. Believe me, I’m not going to see my name on any riders and there aren’t going to be any groupies sneaking back stage to hang out with me.

At first I rationalized the decision. I told myself that it was a good idea without really believing it. I told myself that I should be doing this. That it would be good to get myself out of my comfort zone and have an adventure. Then, because I didn’t really believe any of that, I asked myself “eh, what’s the worst that could happen?” Turns out, I’ve got a pretty good imagination when it comes to the disaster scenarios.

I give a lot of advice as a result of this blog. And most of that advice is that if you’re going to grow as a person, you have to put yourself in situations that allow you to get outside of yourself. To shake up those unconscious (or maybe conscious) perceptions we hold about ourselves that, under the wrong circumstances, can be incredibly limiting. For all the times I’ve told people to go out and live and interesting life, I’m actually terrible at doing it. I get stuck in my routines all the time. I pass on opportunities because they sound like too much trouble and pretty soon I’m stuck in this feedback loop where I’m just here in front of the computer all day afraid of the outside world, afraid to go to the kitchen and make a sandwich.

So this should be a good thing. Presented with an opportunity to do something big and scary (and more importantly, outside in the sunlight), I was all “where do I sign up?” I should get a merit badge or something.

It took me most of that week to realize why I did it. And if you already think I’m an asshole this is where you should probably stop reading. I did it because after September 25th everything changes. We’re no longer the scrappy little company that could. We’ll either be on the map or buried in the ground underneath it.

I don’t want to overstate my importance to Rudius. I can only hope that when everything is said and done, I contributed to its success in some small way. There were things that I could have done better and there are some places where I think I shined. But what this company has given me is tremendous. I spent a large part of my life doing things because I thought I had to do them. I worked in an office and hated it for far too long because that’s what everyone around me was doing. And while I eventually left that life behind, I did so by packing what I could into my car, throwing everything else out, and moving across the country with no clear idea of what was supposed to happen next. It was not a graceful exit.

You’d think that would have taught me a lesson. Most people would have taken that as a sign that they weren’t cut out for the business casual lifestyle. But once I was back in school and looking around for what the next step would be, I set my sights firmly on the one career that would put me right back in the middle of the very environment I’d just burned out on. Law.

And the whole time I was in school working towards a poly sci degree and eventually law school I was spending every spare moment writing these little stories. Sitting up at night with a couple of beers or maybe a few fingers of whiskey in a mug and just writing. The words were just pouring out of me. And it still didn’t occur to me that I might be walking down the wrong path.

It wasn’t until Rudius that I really started to consider that I might have a goddamn choice. I might be able to do something that didn’t make me feel numb inside. I’m not where I want to be yet but these last three years have at least shown me how to get there. And for that I’m infinitely grateful, and a little scared. If I fail now, there are no excuses. It’s not about not knowing what to do anymore. It’s now just about putting in the work.

And that’s why, initially, I wanted to be on the movie tour. If there’s one event that’s going to be the psychological line in the sand between the company we were and the company we become, it’s going to be these six weeks. Gone are the days when this thing was run out of a living room in South Central. Gone are the days when it was six or eight people not knowing exactly where or when the break would come, just hoping that if they could hold on long enough it would eventually come.

I feel like an asshole writing a thousands words about this. This is really one of those good problems to have. Like having too much money. We’re finally going to be on solid ground and all I can do is reminisce about the past.

But in trying to figure out why I wanted to do this tour, I’ve been thinking a lot about the three years and everything that came before that. I started in IT right at the end of the dot-com bubble. I spent a lot of time at my desk in those days reading about the bay area and what was happening out there. Kids … kids my age were making and losing fortunes. They were on the covers of magazines. The whole country was just losing its collective mind over the new economy and the new-new economy. I didn’t know what any of it meant, I didn’t have the experience or perspective to make any sense of it. Because of that I believed all of the hype. Really bought into it and sitting there, night after night following the latest news I was losing my mind along with everyone else.

This wasn’t like watching Lebron get drafted out of high school and knowing that no matter how many hours of basketball I played, I was never going to play in the NBA. These kids, these architects of the new economy, were building the future with skills I fucking had. I’m not sure how many times I wished I’d been born five years earlier and on a different coast. Of course, if I’d had any balls at all, I would have gone and chased that dream instead of sitting at my desk bitter about everything I was missing out on.

It wasn’t even the money that I was so enamored with, although I wouldn’t have said no to it. It was the sense that these kids were part of something. They were having an adventure. And the rest of the country could do nothing but sit and watch, and try to live vicariously through profiles in the New York Times and cover stories in Wired.

I didn’t give a shit that they were working eighty hours, 120 hours a week. I was running a third shift help desk, watching kung-fu movies and reading reference books on networking topologies to pass the time. What scared me was this suggestion that my early twenties would just end up being a series of uneventful nights and non-events. And so when I got the chance to sign on to the company that would become Rudius, I jumped at it. In a way, I’d been priming myself for it all along.

I probably don’t need to tell you that working here hasn’t been like the dot-com bubble at all. If you’d told me what the last three years would entail that first night, I’d have laughed in your face. This has been its own through-the-looking-glass adventure. I’m sure I’ll write about it one day, when I’ve had some time to gain a little perspective on it all. It makes me laugh now to think about what I was chasing three years ago. And despite the ups and downs, I’m pretty happy with where I’ve landed.

I’ve stopped trying to predict the future. I don’t have a clue what happens September 26th. I can see myself working for Rudius for the next five years and I can see myself getting on a plane to finally do the around the world trip I’ve been thinking about for the last ten years. Ever since I first touched down in Hawaii with a little money in my pocket, a backpack full of camping gear and no clear idea what came next. At this point I’m just happy to have had the experience and hopefully, one day, it’s going to make a good story.