My Blog and My Laundry: Victims of Special Initiatives

I have reached new lows of blogging output. It has been months since I have posted with any regularity. This soon becomes self-fulfilling as the pressure mounts to ultimately cease this publishing embargo with something of profundity.

In parallel, during this same time, my home has become increasingly cluttered with  clothes begging for pressing, and a slew of suitcases in various states of unpacking.

Coincidence? I think not.

Earlier this year, I took on a new role here at Google. As Head of Special Initiatives, my already adventuresome gig at the company has risen to new levels of non sequitur pursuits. I will still be building new stuff like Google WiFi and doing what I can to keep the enemies of innovation on their toes. Now though, in addition to that stuff, I have been walking the earth and shouting Google stories from the mountain tops.

Since January, I have been an unrelenting road warrior. Though I have customarily enjoyed business travel, 2006 has been something of a bumper crop. In fact, I got an email from USAir on March 1st letting me know I was approximately one flight to NY away from earning Gold Status for the year in their frequent flier program.

So where have I been? Well, Kottke popularized a list called the year in cities detailing each place in which he spent at least one night.  So far, in 2006, mine shapes up like this:

Mancora, Peru
Lima, Peru
San Francisco, CA*
Las Vegas, NV
New Orleans, LA
Park City, UT
Squaw Valley, CA
Manhattan Beach, CA*
New York City, NY*
Manila, Philippines
Tokyo, Japan
Dublin, Ireland
Belfast, Ireland
Torino, Italy
Nassau, Bahamas
Beverly Hills, CA
South Lake Tahoe, CA
Aspen, CO
(*cities stayed in multiple times on nonconsecutive days)

It has been such a wild year. From getting a chance to pass through the Sundance Film Festival, to checking out the Grammys and even spending some time at the Winter Olympics, it has been one adventure after another. Along the way, I have participated in some great discussions, explored some disruptive deals, and given talks to some frightfully intriguing people.

Nevertheless, this really shouldn't be any excuse for not blogging. My sincere apologies. In the weeks ahead, I hope to kick back into gear and dump more of my thoughts onto these pages. In the meantime, I have a few tales and observations from these travels that might be worth sharing. Stay tuned . . .  until then, I need to get started on this laundry . . .

Comments

[BWJones]

Finally...... I was just getting ready to dump you from my bookmarks. :-)

Seriously though, It's obviously difficult to post when one gets so busy, but welcome back.

[peter caputa]

Aaah... the profundity trap. Blogging is just a matter or routine. Like taking a dump in the morning or a jog in the evening. Just do it. Once you're over the 6 day hump, it just flows. It's just something you do.

Also, I've discovered that reading blogs regularly, causes people in the "profundity trap" to start writing. If you read other people's stupid and profound thoughts, you'll start having some tangential ones of your own. And blogging is about having stupid thoughts as much is it is about profound ones. I think it was David Weinberger in the Cluetrain that said, you should try to have as many stupid ideas as possible. 10% are bound to be genius. But, the thinker will have no clue which ones. So, let em fly. You have enough readers. They'll tell you which ones are which.

If you need some more inspiration, shoot me an email. I'll gladly get your keyboard punching juices flowing.

[Chester]

Get outta here. You never posted with much regularity. Unless you count your paragraph-long media reviews as actual posts. And I'm pretty sure you paid someone else to write those anyway.

Anyway, the infrequency of posting bugs me not nearly as much as infrequency of riding. We might finally be pulling out of our bullshit spate of Seattle-esque weather, spring will be rolling in, it's Daylight Savings time, and Coady finally got his bike. If you're on the road, then you have an excuse to not be on the road with us, but we're still going to harp on you, Mr. Road Warrior.

[Fergus Burns]

Hi Chris

Quality vs quantity suits me just fine on the blogging front

When are you travelling to Dublin - we would be delighted if you could meet up with some of the local "startup" community

Best regards
Fergus

[Joe Agliozzo]

Next time you are in Manhattan Beach, let us know. We do ad copy optimization for Google AdWords using a proprietary algorithmic test process and manage over $2M a month in spending on the AdWords platform. And if that isn't interesting enough, let us know and we will take you surfing.

Joe

[abercrombie and fitch uk]

Well said, such a person should be a good sentence, or the future will be more rampant.

[abercrombie & fitch london]

I read this sentence out loud to a group of engineers from my team at lunch the other day and they cracked up like I did. It touched off such a wave of nostalgia for the first machines we all used and when we first discovered the Internet. We all felt so old and yet so lucky.

[abercrombie fitch]

It is hard to say such a thing is clear.

[new balance]

We cannot always build the future for our youth , but we can build our youth for the future .

[gucci.uk]

The year they met he was a small Gucci Sabo company staff, the salary is not high, but a frenetic pace, everyday he had a plenty of materials to write, rarely has time for him. But this does not interfere with their love, their units in the south and the north, the ends of the city. Everyday after work, he must ride the bicycle 40 minutes to pick her up her unit, and she sat behind his bicycle, he quickly in front, and her feet behind sway gently with slender legs, singing loudly, in this city. Like "sweet" dawn and Chemung, they have a poor and happy moment.