Well HELLO, hello hello to you! And jeez, let me say that I'm so sorry for being away from this personal journal for so long. As some of you know, there have been a lot of profoundly big changes happening in my life over the last three weeks; changes that have been so big, in fact, and so time-consuming, that this is literally the first time in three weeks I've had to actually sit and get an entry up. So, let's see here if I can sum up the entire saga today; although today of course (and starting from now, really) is going to be more difficult than normal too, because I am now talking about a company for which I work, and for which some things simply have to be kept secret. So, please understand that unlike the rest of my journal entries here, you're never getting the full story when I write about my work life; that there is always behind-the-scenes stuff going on beyond what the story is here. I appreciate it.

So, you remember MetroProper, right? That new internet startup that my friend Phil Tadros has been opening, and for which I had been doing a little technical writing and the like for him this spring? Right, that MetroProper, or what I'll just call "Proper" for the rest of today. Proper launched on July 15th, as a matter of fact; a date that Phil picked back in early June or so, back when I was just helping him put together a business plan and having really no other contact with the company at all. And I kept working on my stuff, and Phil seemed to be happy, and things seemed to be going okay.

And then, Phil's grandfather died. And Phil's Jordanian-American, which meant that he suddenly had to go back to the country of Jordan for the funeral, five weeks before the launch of his new company. And because of circumstances with his family, Phil ended up having to be over there an entire month. And so Phil started forwarding me more and more of the email he was getting from his programmers and such about Proper, so that I could help keep him on top of things; this is one of the things I used to do in the corporate world, after all, is project management of tech teams, so I was happy to volunteer. And very quickly, right at the end of June, I found myself suddenly stepping in more and more as the actual project manager of the website itself; where I quickly learned that things weren't at the place where they should've been.

And then, more complications; Phil's old PR director ends up not being part of the company anymore, for reasons that fall under that "crap I can't talk about in public" clause I mentioned earlier. And so then I end up volunteering to take over the launch party as well, right around the 4th of July, or 11 days before the party. And see, this launch party was a huge deal, because some friends of Phil named Caroline and Victor managed to convince the new giant hipster Motorola Q store, right there down on Michigan Avenue, to host the party for free, and to also provide such cool things as 25 Q smartphones for partygoers to play with, three plasma-screen televisions we could plug computers to, store-wide WiFi and EVDO, etc. So I mean, what, if you paid full price for renting a store like that for a night, with all the equipment in place? $75,000? $100,000? If you could even convince a store on Michigan Avenue to do it? Plus catering, beverages, a DJ, a serving staff, smartphone experts, security, media relations, a press release, an entertainment director to hold the whole thing together?

Yeah, a pretty big party we're talking about, and I knew it needed to be pulled together, so once again I stepped in and took charge of that too. And we did it, which almost killed us, frankly, but was probably the greatest professional experience of my life so far. That in two weeks we pulled together an amazing staff of 25, four independent corporate partners, a young manager at Phil's cafe named Bek Allen, who turned out to accidentally be one of the most extraordinary event planners I've ever met, an old business partner of Phil's who I'll just call Gary B., who helped set up most of the tech details, and we actually all pulled it off together. And 275 people ended up attending, and almost 80 percent of them signed up for an account that night (based on a cool way we devised, where they just filled out a little paper form and we actually created the account for them). And this hipster laid-back DJ named Chilly Willy, who was just such a pleasure to work with; and vegan food, and non-alcoholic drinks, and all of Phil's baristas at Dollop volunteering for free to be the serving staff (bless their damn hearts), and just the biggest room of sexy 23-year-old My-Space-using big-afro hipsters you've ever seen, all grooving and dancing and having a great time. Plus we got five media mentions; and not only that, but really diverse ones too, from a front-page article at Midwest Business to a TechCrunch-style sneak peek from an industry columnist named David Dalka, even getting named "Chicago Event of the Week" at local late-night club-kid event guide Unscene. Oh, and we had two venture capitalists show up too, and both say that they'd love to talk with us more.

Perfect. Great. Wonderful. Only one problem.

The actual site looks kinda crappy.

Frustrating, yeah. Very frustrating. And with changes appearing very slowly, it turns out, although you should be aware that there are a bunch of really big behind-the-scenes stuff going on, even though that's yet again something I can't talk about. So, once again, we're in the middle of a big huge project; one where a whole bunch of new features are going into place at once, an entirely new design scheme being created, all current problems finally fixed, and even a colorful new logo that we're all just digging so hard over here these days it's about to make our heads split. And hey, we're throwing another party! Why not -- the first one went so well! And we're basically tying the whole thing into a celebration of the new design; so we'll have all-new color buttons to give out, and all-new color t-shirts, a much bigger partnership with Unscene this time than last, probably held at some super-hipster indie nightclub. Plus a pretty big announcement to make too, about our first-ever corporate-partner project; where we and another cool company we like, that is, get together and actually create something special for all of you, that will never cost you anything to use. It's hush-hush right now! Ooh, I feel all industry and cool! Oh, but man, it's going to be great, I promise you that right now; and probably the greatest group of people I've ever worked with in a corporate environment, too (we've already had a couple of meetings, setting this up), which is such a wonderful icing on the cake.

And that's it, I think. Oh, and well, there's this; that Phil has apparently been impressed with my work so far, and has formally asked me to come on as his permanent Chief Operations Officer (or COO). And I've accepted. And so what this means is that in a few months, when we get our initial round of financing organized, I'll suddenly go on salary (and a big one too -- four times the amount of the previous highest-paying job in my life). And what is a COO, I hear you non-corporate types asking? Well, I'm basically the number-two person at Proper; I'm the one in charge of all operations, all day-to-day activities, of actually making the company run smoothly and get everything done that it's attempting to do. I'm in charge of hiring and firing; I'm in charge of overseeing all programmers; I'm in charge of realizing when we need to bring in a specialty consultant, to teach Phil and me something that we don't know but need to; and I'm in charge of actually finding the consultant, making sure he's worth his fee, actually getting him here and actually getting him paid. I'm the one in charge of formulating a marketing strategy, and then a marketing plan; of getting some money guys on contract to write us some financials for our business plan; of scheduling meetings, schmoozing, convincing journalists to do articles about us, convincing VCs to take meetings with us. I listen to all the pitches, try all the demos, shake everyone's hands, and never ever get to have fun at our parties. But that's fine; I'm here to run a business, not have fun at parties. I could've stayed a professional artist if that was my main focus.

Here's what the new design scheme looks like, by the way; all the pages at all our 300 sites will look like this by the last week of August. Yeah, pretty cool, don't you think? Our visual designer is this fine-artist here in Chicago named Angel D'Amico; she works miracles, miracles, and as far as I'm concerned is one of the most valuable assets Proper has at its disposal right now. When the new scheme is finally up and running, I think we're going to have something that easily outshines most of the semi-crappy MySpace clones out there that we're competing with in what we do (which is 'classified-ads meets social networking,' if you didn't know); and then after that, we figure out how to take on MySpace itself. Hmm, hmm, hmm.

Okay, so enough about the 'official' side of things; I'm feeling all uncomfortable with that anyway, because you just have to tread such a fine line between what you can and can't talk about. So how about this -- my emotional state during this entire thing? That's what I usually talk about at this journal, after all, and did so for a long time before becoming part of this fabulous jet-setting internet startup industry I'm now apparently a part of. (Or at least I keep getting told by people. But they all want jobs. And equity. Everyone wants equity. Sigh.) Okay, so I'll talk about that for a bit, because then I don't have to worry about spilling trade secrets at all, simply making an ass out of myself. And I'm never afraid of doing that.

I've been stressed out. Yeah, I have. I'm putting in 100-hour work weeks right now. I've never done that, not once in my life before. I've never been in charge of this much money before. I've never been in charge of this many people, this many big decisions. It'd be better if there weren't constant little new emergencies always popping up these days, things that must be dealt with quickly before they get completely out of control. I have to keep a cool head with everyone, talk to them in the exact terms they want to hear (whether programmer, marketer or club kid). I have to keep Phil calm through all this as well, at the same time as keeping him focused, to yell at him sometimes and pray that he doesn't fire me. I have to make decisions that he sometimes doesn't like, and I have to debate why I think they should be made anyway. I have to get all tough and mean with people who don't do their jobs, and I have to go way out of my way to acknowledge and reward those who do.

Thank God for Wendell, then. You remember Wendell, right? One of the co-founders of Meetro, a Chicago-based instant messengering service, whose hook is that the software actually determines the physical locations of your friends (via IP address), and tells you how far away they are? Yeah, right, Meetro -- who I, uh, publicly trashed at my website here about a year and a half ago, because I was mad at them. I was mad because I had all these questions about them as a customer, and I felt that they were ignoring me; I was frustrated that they weren't responding to what I thought were legitimate questions, and I said that I thought this spelled doom for their company. Yeah, right, Meetro.

Wendell and I ended up accidentally meeting face-to-face for the first time a couple of weeks ago, in fact, at this new series of social events for the Chicago tech industry, called Tech Cocktail. And we were both sorta like, "Hey, oh, yeah, you're the guy who...uh...hmm..." And then we got all drunk in the corner of the bar, and hashed out what we needed to say to each other, and had what I ended up thinking was a rather great conversation. And it turns out that Wendell was never personally mad at me for what I had said; in fact, he thought I had every right as a customer to say what I did, although he and I still fundamentally disagree about some of the tech issues in question I had been asking about. But that's cool, I never mind a difference of opinion, as long as there's intelligence behind it to back it up; and he and I ended up actually getting along rather great. And it turns out he even knows Phil, too; duh, he lives in the same neighborhood as me and everything, and used to be a regular customer at Dollop himself, before he started having to spend half his time in Silicon Valley instead because he's now a big muckety-muck in the tech industry. And he said that he thought it cool that I had come onboard, and that maybe he'd be able to slip a little help my way about it all.

And then the intros started coming. And coming. And coming. 125 now? And counting? Email addresses and personal introductions to perhaps every top executive in the entire tech industry, both Chicago and Silicon Valley? And a couple dozen investors too? So many that I haven't even had time to write to most of them yet, grr grr? Yowza. And then he heard more about our situation, our behind-the-scenes stuff, and he started doing even more; he started coming down to Dollop with us, in fact, which has become sort of our war room over the last couple of weeks, toting his laptop and setting up office and personally helping us get through the craziest of the crazy days. Not wanting anything for his time; just helping out because he knows we need the help.

But even more importantly, behind the scenes Wendell has been one of the main people keeping me emotionally sane these days too. He's a veteran of five internet startups, after all, all of which have done really well for themselves so far. He's so used to these crises that it doesn't even faze him; he just sits there on the couch, continuing to give out that mysterious little half-smile of his, as Phil and I run around the room and jump and down and scream what do we do, what do we do. He's been the guy I've been able to write my frustrated emails to; the ones where I feel like I'm going insane, and wonder if things are going to get better, and with Wendell always assuring me that they will, they will.

Wendell's reminded me, in fact: I'm ready for this. I've been screaming for years, after all, to anyone who would listen, of how I was ready to take on a job like this; and here I am now, actually doing it, and everything's going just fine so far. In fact, in the first month on the job we've actually pulled off two major miracles, and have had both situations come out much better as a result than they were ever originally designed to be. I like that; I like turning bad situations around and making something better out of them than they were even meant to be. That's a great thing to be able to pull off, and something I feel really proud about. When all is said and done, these last couple of weeks have also been the most invigorating ones of my life, the most exhilarating, the most rewarding. I feel like a superhero sometimes. People treat me like a superhero sometimes. It's nice to finally have some people around me flattering and working with me, instead of just attacking me every day like when I was a professional artist. I'm ready for this. I just need some more sleep each night. Seriously. I seriously need to start getting some more sleep each night.

Regular readers know, of course, that I do not hand out public apologies here easily; the one coming in a moment will be the first I've issued here in two years, in fact. That said, I'd like to formally apologize at this point to Wendell and the rest of the crew at Meetro; you guys, and especially Wendell, have really come through at a time of crucial importance for us, for a guy who publicly trashed you, without wanting any pay for it, without wanting any compensation or even acknowledgment at all. I now see how wrong I originally was about you, and I'm sorry for being so. And, uh, there.

Off to work. Talk with you again soon.