The Night I Got My Mojo Back.

At this point in my life, I’m still learning how to produce good work. The quality of the work will change over time, but everything I do starts with a commitment to work.

That work ethic started about the 1st of this year, actually. That’s when the schedule I have today — the hours, the projects, the shipping — really began.

But the attitude behind this work ethic goes back a little further than that, actually.

It started with, of all things, a kiss.

I had gone out for dinner with a friend of a friend. This was about 18 months ago. She was working on a cool project, and we wanted to trade ideas about it. Dinner led to drinks. Drinks led to more drinks. Our dinner get-together moved into its fourth hour, than its fifth.

Sometime past midnight, we decided to call it a night. I wanted to ask her out. I needed to ask her out. I had only been in D.C. for a few months. Stry.us was losing momentum. I had just sent in an application for this fellowship I’d heard about at RJI. I was living in my childhood bedroom.

I really needed a win.

And then this amazing little night happened, and I was so giddy. I had to see her again.

I asked her out on the escalator down to the Metro. She said yes. Then she quickly said goodnight. She took another escalator down to her subway track. I walked towards my train.

The electronic signs said the Metro wouldn’t come for nine minutes.

Nine minutes.

Nine minutes to think about what had just happened. Nine minutes to work through the evening.

Nine minutes to beat myself up over the fact that I should’ve kissed her. I had really wanted to kiss her. You should’ve done it, Dan.

And then a part of me realized something that I’ve carried with me to this day: The fear of not taking action far outweighed the fear of taking action. The fear of having to sit on that platform for nine minutes and think about missing that opportunity was much more powerful than the fear of making a move (and maybe looking dumb in the process).

That feeling’s stuck with me. I know that I have amazing opportunities before me, as I try to build a better future for reporting and storytelling and community. I cannot let days just slide by. Motion matters. Action matters.

I got mad that night. I got mad at myself for being unwilling to do what I wanted. I got mad at myself for not chasing my curiosity.

I went down the escalator. I started looking for her. There were a few hundred people on that platform — some drunk, some tired, all unhappy to be waiting. She was down at the end of the platform.

I had something to say, and it kind of came out mumbled. But she smiled. I leaned in. We kissed.

Then I bolted. I was way too giddy to make small talk after that.

The relationship lasted a few months before it fizzled out. But I’ll always remember that first kiss. It reminds me not to idle, not to worry, not to regret.

It reminds me that amazing things happen in unexpected places, and that boldness and action matter.

We always complain about how little time we have. But I like to remind myself: Dan, do you remember how much time you wasted before you started?

There is no longer time to idle. There is only time for action.

06/21/201206/21/2012

Focus, Dan, Focus.

The brilliant Hayes Carll one sang these words, a sentiment that I find holding more and more true by the day:

There ain’t enough of me to go around.

Of course, Mr. Carll was singing about a different thing altogether. Hayes loves women.

I love work.

To each his own, I suppose?

But these days, there really isn’t enough of me to go around. There is so much to be done with Stry.us, and so little time. This project lasts four months. Two are almost over.

Two! Where the hell did all the time go?

I serve so many roles at Stry.us. I lead. I organize. I build. I teach. I report. I listen. I generally keep us from going bankrupt or ending up in a court of law.

This is a lot for a single human. To get everything done, I either need more time or more Dans.

Or the secret third option: I need to focus.

I need to focus when my reporters talk to me. I need to focus when I report a story. I need to focus when I’m filing expenses.

Focus means that I need to look people in the eye. Focus means that I need to stop trying to hold conference calls with a soccer game on in the background.

Focus means occasionally putting down the laptop.

Yes, I have to multi-task. But what that really means for me is that while I have to accomplish many different tasks — all those different Dans need to take on their own tasks within the course of a single day — in a single moment, I need to find the will to take every bit of me and throw it into a single thing.

And then I need to find a way to finish that task, find the next task and throw myself fully into that.

I cannot give all I want to give to this project until I learn to focus.

06/19/201206/27/2012

Give Absolutely Everything You Have To Something You Love.

To partially steal a line from the band Dawes: If you can gives yourself to something, then you should.

Stry.us is the closest I have come to realizing myself in another thing. It is everything I care about — stories, the web, people, building, design, sharing. It is impossible to separate myself from this project. There is already so much of me in it.

And I am all in on this. There is no backing down from it now. There is no going back to normal jobs in journalism. Not after this. Not after I’ve put in the work. Not after I’ve learned how hard I can work.

You know how many athletes will refuse to retire even after their playing career is clearly finished? Oftentimes, it’s because these athletes can’t imagine a future beyond sports. This is all they know.

And on a much smaller scale, I’m starting to understand that mentality. I don’t know just yet what the next thing is for me, but I do know that this part of the Stry.us journey ends Sept. 1. And I know that to go from Stry.us to anything less than an equally absurd challenge would be a letdown. I’d be bored at a desk job, and life is too short to be bored.

I’ve gone all in, and I cannot imagine life on a lower plane than this.

There is something so incredibly rewarding about giving myself fully to this business. On a daily basis, I’m asking myself to do things that I couldn’t do the day before. I’m asking myself to take on challenges that I didn’t know existed a month earlier.

I feel the pressure. This is my baby, and if it gets screwed up, it’s going to be my fault. This thing goes as far as I can take it, and that means making the right decisions and hiring the right team to keep it going. I think I’ve made several excellent decisions so far. I really like my team. I think we’re kicking ass.

But we’ve got less than 70 days to go on this Springfield project. There is more reporting to be done. There are more stories to be told. I love the journey, but I’m also so excited to see where we’ll all be when Sept. 1 arrives. I have no idea where this thing will take us, but I believe that it will be somewhere great. I believe that if I keep pushing all of myself into Stry.us, if I keep reaching deep for all the talent and enthusiasm that I can muster from my team, we’ll have something awesome when the Springfield project ends.

There is more to give — so much more. I will give myself to this project, I keep telling myself. I will give it everything I can give. All the time, all the energy, all the joy.

I must.

Fortune cookie at top via @c_richa20.

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06/16/201206/16/2012

Finding The Energy To Do The Work On Days When It Just Isn’t There.

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.

Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 — Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

¶ ¶ ¶

I’m seeing that Navin R. Johnson kind of excitement from my team at Stry.us lately, and it’s a wonderful thing. I can’t remember where I read it first, but it’s true: You can teach skills, but you cannot teach attitude. Right now, we’re at the start of this project, and everyone is excited about everything.

The challenge is in keeping that excitement going. I have to know how my reporters are running — right now, I can see that two of them are slightly overworked, and one of them is a little bored, and the fourth is right about at her maximum output — and when I need to step in and intervene. Because it’s really easy to lose a good employee to burnout, and it’s equally easy to lose a reporter to boredom.

Like Navin, I know how excited my reporters are to see their names appear on the site. But that excitement is fleeting.

So much of building your own thing is about bringing that energy. Many days, you just wake up with it.

Other days, you have to fake it. You have to smile big and try to find energy in those moments when it just doesn’t want to come.

You cannot just show up on the days when you feel like showing up. The work has to be done every single day.

On those slow days, I like to think about the moments when the energy’s there, when the excitement is high, when I’m absolutely giddy about the work I’m doing. On a day when I’m down, I can always remember: Tomorrow could bring that excitement again. Today’s just a bad day.

Until then, I have to find a way to do the work I need to do with the passion I need to have. And I need to teach my team how to do the same.

Otherwise, we’ll wake up one day as that gas station owner, trying to figure when the days of getting excited about the phone book passed us by.

There are so many wonderful things about being young and stupid and excited. I will not let that go to waste.

06/13/2012

To Be Or Not To Be? You’re Overthinking It. Just DO.

Two of my reporters came to me last week with an idea for Stry.us: We should use our Twitter feed to curate a bucket list of Springfield-related things, and then cross those things off as the summer goes on. It’d be a way to engage our audience and to learn more about our new city.

Great! I said. Let’s do it.

And wonderfully, my reporters didn’t freak out at this. They didn’t say, Hey, shouldn’t we talk about this some more? Shouldn’t we have another couple of meetings or something?

I hate meetings. And I hate overthinking, which is pretty much the in-your-head equivalent of a meeting. I hate any unproductive time spent thinking and debating instead of building or creating or doing.

There is certainly a time for contemplation, and there is a time for thought.

But I’d argue that the best time to think about action is after you’ve already started doing. Discussion about action that’s already happened/happening is so much more productive, because once the action begins, you start to learn what truly works.

Action leads to practical solutions. Discussion often merely leads to theory.

I’d take the former every single time.

I’ve wasted so much time talking about what I could do or should do or might do. But the only thing that matters is what I actually do.

So start. Start before you’re ready.

To be or not to be? Nah, that’s too much thinking. Just do.

06/11/201206/11/2012

Anything I’ve Ever Done Well, I Have Done Wrong First — Many, Many Times.

How about I just put this in the simplest way I can?

Everything I have ever done right in my life is something I’ve done wrong a half-dozen times first.

Every good idea, every well-executed plan, every romance — it’s all the result of complete, total, abject failure. I have never done anything right the first time.

The first time I tried to speak Spanish ended up with me locked in my closet, crying hysterically at the fact that I just didn’t understand the language.

The first time I interviewed a source using a tape recorder, I forgot to press record.

The first time I tried to play guitar, I sounded like an amateur.

The first time I wrote a blog post, the words came out all wrong.

The first time I tried to barbecue ribs, I nearly poisoned my friends.

Everything I have ever done right in my life — anything I have ever learned to do well, and to love — I have done wrong first, and I have done it wrong many, many times.

But what I have learned is that if it really matters to you — if it’s a thing, or a person, or a love, or a project, or a dream — then the first failure is no deterrent. And neither is the second, or the twenty-second.

Most of the people in our world see failure as an excuse to stop trying.

The builders in our world see failure as a chance to learn, and to try again.

I believe that the best things in this life cannot be had without failure — crushing, crippling, head-in-your-hands failure — and without the incredible bit of courage it takes to stand back up and fail again.

If you love something, then you must learn to love failure. It is the only road on which great dreams are made.

06/04/201206/04/2012

There Is No Set Path From A->B. There Are Only Steps. Take The First One.

When I first started Stry.us, I had this notion that I was going to create a company that was going to disrupt the Associated Press. It was going to do a lot of things — most especially, it would tell great stories — but it would be funded by news organizations who would rip up their contracts with AP and give me their money instead. All I needed was 100 news organizations who’d give me $10,000 each.

This was the very definition of cluelessness.

I got excited, and I got ahead of myself. Way, WAY ahead of myself. It was going to take way more than three months of reporting from Biloxi for me to raise money for Stry.us.[1. And a million dollars! I thought I could get a million dollars! Lordy lordy was I dreaming big.]

The road from here to there — and for the record, the road has since changed, and I’m on a totally different path with Stry.us [2. And that’s totally okay!] — takes time. It takes a thousand tiny steps. There are no big leaps.

Think of it this way: Forrest Gump didn’t wake up and say, I’m going to run across the country four times.

No! He said: Maybe I’ll run down to the end of the block. And then to the end of town. And then to the end of the county.

And then you know what happens next:

My goal of getting people on board with Stry.us was one that was going to take time. It was going to take a certain amount of crazy before I got to that first follower, that first client.

It was going to take many tiny steps.

People quit too soon. If there’s one thing that I’ve done right, it’s that I haven’t quit on Stry.us. I’ve kept it going, and just by inching it forward, I’ve gotten it to Springfield.

It takes a thousand small steps to get to where you want to go. The first steps are slow. They are painful.

But if you really want to get somewhere good, you have to take the first one.

05/30/2012

We May Look Silly For Trying To Predict The Future. But We’ll Look Like Morons If We Don’t Try To Build It Anyway.

I just finished Michael Eisner’s autobiography, “Work in Progress.” It’s an excellent read, but I couldn’t help but laugh at the final chapter. It’s 1997, and Eisner — CEO of Disney — starts predicting the future of his corporation.

Hindsight makes a book that’s only 15 years old seem like an absolute relic. Eisner offers his predictions for the future, but the stuff that matters most in today’s media — the Internet, Google, streaming video, HDTV — is barely touched upon. He mentions that Disney is expanding on the web, but only by mentioning Go.com.

And if you go to Go.com right now, you’ll see… a web portal that hasn’t been updated in five years.

The point is: We cannot see very far into the future. We are going forward, semi-cluelessly. We have ideas. We have dreams. We have leaders.

We have no idea what happens next. And we have no idea how the things that come next will affect the things we believe in now.

To quote a Florence & the Machine song that’s been in my head for a few weeks now:

A revelation in the light of day
You can’t choose what stays and what fades away

We do not know what is next. We are all out here making it up as we go along.

But future is ours, and we’re the ones who’ll be shaping it, in our own haphazard way. We may look silly for trying to predict the future, but we’ll look like morons if we don’t try to build it anyway — each of us — today.

Thanks to Instagram user @jpcherry for the excellent photo of Tomorrowland.

05/28/201205/28/2012

There Is No Such Thing As Bad Work. George Carlin Taught Me That.

When I was in 9th grade, my family roadtripped down to Florida over winter break. My parents had always found interesting things to play in the car on long drives. My parents were big fans of D.C. parody group The Capital Steps,[1. I still can’t hear Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time” without singing, “Boris Yeltsin is the hardest rhyme.”] and we listened to their cassettes in the car. We listened to the hysterical stories of Bill Harley, and the random baseball rantings of Danny Kaye.[2. “Oh, I say D! I say D-O! D-O-D! D-O-D-G! D-O-D-G-E-R-S! Team, team, team, team ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”]

But on that trip to Florida, my mother decided — and I do not know why — to bring along some George Carlin for the drive.

That was the first time I’d ever heard Carlin’s famed “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” routine.[3. No need to Google it — the seven are shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker and tits.] I’d never heard anything quite like it before. I’d never heard anyone use words — simple, clear, decisive words — to prove such a powerful point.

Things would never be the same after that.

One line in the routine hit me especially hard. There was this idea that certain words were inherently “bad.” Carlin said that was total crap.

“There are no bad words,” he said. “Bad thoughts. Bad intentions. And words.”

I’d like to say the same is true with your work. Again, it doesn’t matter what your work is — playing basketball, writing the Great American Novel, building a better mousetrap. All that matters is that there is no such thing as bad work.

The results aren’t what you want sometimes. But the work itself is always good. Always.

There are bad results, sure. But work? Passionate, driven, goal-oriented work never fails. It’s never bad. Through it, regardless of results, you’ll learn how to do better work.

There will always be people who tell you that your work isn’t any good, just like there will always people who tell you that you can’t say certain words, or that you can’t try certain things.

But I know what Carlin would say about those people:

Fuck ’em.

Go do the work instead.

05/24/201207/25/2012

Why ‘Just Be Yourself’ Is Lousy Advice When You’re Young.

Here’s a piece of advice I don’t much care for, especially when it’s directed towards young people: Just be yourself.

You’re giving a talk? Just be yourself.
You’re writing a paper? Just be yourself.
You’re going on a date with Cindy Crawford? Just be yourself.

But the problem is, What if you’re not really sure who you are yet?

To the confused souls among us — and yeah, I’d put myself in that category some days — “Just be yourself” is lousy advice. Before you can be yourself, you have to find yourself.

That takes time. We find ourselves through trying new things, through experimenting, through stepping out beyond our boundaries and seeing what we like and what we don’t.

And we never really stop searching for who we are. There will come a time when you find a version of yourself that you really like. That’s fantastic.

But it’s only the 1.0 version. You cant stop there. You can’t stop growing. You can’t stop trying new things.

I’d like to do away with “just be yourself.” I’d rather tell someone, “Do something that scares you.” Action leads to discovery.

Don’t settle for being someone you’re not totally sure of. Do the work, and through that, you’ll find yourself.