Anyway, I start on Monday, May 14th, as Community Manager, Developer Relations, at RIM.

I’ll just give a few of you a moment to enjoy that needle getting yanked off a record sound in your heads.

Yep, I am well aware that I’ve said I wouldn’t work there. (Side note: never bother to use “never” statements in life; it just makes the gods laugh.) There are certainly plenty of areas of the company where I still wouldn’t work. I know too much of the history and not enough has changed.

Except then the sneaky bastards went and posted a community management role, and stuck “Developer Relations” onto it. Professional geek wrangling. Which is about as up my alley as jobs get.

Additionally, it’s an area of the company that is being built/re-built, and there’s a very different feel there. And not a single person I’ve talked to was wearing rose-coloured glasses of any kind. People know shit’s broken. And they’re of the “How’re we gonna fix it?” and “What’re we going to build next?” ilk. Those are my kinda folks. It also didn’t hurt that I’d be working in close proximity to some people who’re already friends.

Do I have concerns about going back to work for a big company, and one that clearly has some big issues? Sure. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t. And I don’t tend to drink anybody’s Koolaid. But of the offers I received, this one ended up making the most sense. We’ll see if my brain and gut were right.

In the community management game, you learn very quickly that there are two kinds of people who complain: the ones who’re genuinely trying to do something, and are just frustrated, and the trolls. If I can help out the folks who are genuinely trying to do something, I’ll be happy.

PostRank gave me the opportunity to be a part of building a new industry. It was fascinating and educational stuff (on good days). I suspect what there is to learn about rebuilding part of an industry will be even more so. And so it begins…

The fine people of Twitter provided several recommendations, and we checked out Vincenzo’s, who did, indeed, have a selection of cupcakes from Tiny Cakes, of whom I’d never heard. They’re a bakery out of Galt. I picked up half a dozen, noting the name of one in particular: Knotty Pine Buttered Almond.

Wasn’t that a blast from the past.

Y’see, from birth to age four, my family lived in Preston, pretty much literally around the corner from the Knotty Pine restaurant, which was located where The Pines is now at Fountain and King. And my Mom loved their Buttered Almond cake. (Seriously, I remembered the name of a cake from when I was four. LOVE.)

So I checked out Tiny Cakes’ website, and sure enough: “based on the Knotty Pine recipe”. I mentioned it to Mom, and said I’d have to get her some cupcakes to test its accuracy, which I did this past weekend as the family was getting together for brunch. In the mean time, I’d also gone back to the website and noted that they did actual cakes, too. Eeeexcellent.

The verdict? They got it right. Mom said from the first taste of the icing it all came back to her. She also told me a story I hadn’t known. When my brother and I were really little, on Saturday evenings after we were in bed, she’d call the Knotty Pine and order two burgers and two pieces of cake, then during intermission of the hockey game, Dad would drive over and pick up the food, and they’d have a healthy, low calorie dinner while watching the rest of the game.

She also said she put the rest of the cupcakes in the freezer to ration them. Except that wasn’t working out very well, since she said the other evening she didn’t even wait for the cupcake to thaw before she started to eat it. Heh.

Unsurprisingly, I got curious, so picked one up for myself today. It was, indeed, a damned tasty cupcake. And there was a certain familiarity to the flavour. As luck would have it, Mother’s Day is coming up on May 13th. Then my parents’ 45th anniversary is on May 20th. Then my birthday is June 11th…

Let them eat cake? Don’t mind if we do…

The audience was a heartening cross-section of people, with a generous helping of nerd, not surprisingly. It was cool to see that the male/female split was pretty much even, and there were lots of kids. We also saw a number of folks who couldn’t possibly have been anything but professors. Some epic beards, too. (And, we think, Ed Robertson from Barenaked Ladies.)

Of all the things Adam promised in the pre-show video, the only one we didn’t get was beachballs. I’m ok with that. There was science, gadgets, stories, stunts, and, of course, pranks, largely played on enthusiastic audience members. They distribute a bunch of waivers on chairs before the show, and if you get one and sign it, you can be selected as an on-stage volunteer. Felt bad for the waiver-holders who were back farther than about 10 or 15 rows from the stage, since they were never getting called on.

The show was extremely family friendly, which isn’t terribly surprising, and many of the volunteers from the audience were kids. We had the distinct suspicion that Adam would have preferred something a little more “late nite”, which would have enabled swearing and more ridiculous stunts, but after Obama himself gives you kudos on getting kids jazzed about STEM, you know on which side your bread is buttered.

There’s plenty of content on YouTube from the shows — amusingly, the venue strictly prohibited recording or photography, but Jamie and Adam welcomed it, long as you kept the flash off. Plenty of photos and commentary on Twitter, too. Those gents definitely understand the value of smartphone ubiquity.

They did experiments and pranks with depth perception, friction, bikes and water balloons, a bed of nails, carnival feats of strength, and catching an arrow. (Apparently an Australian ninja corrected them after they “busted” that myth on the show.) They showed behind the scenes footage from the set and shows, and a number of their favourite explosions. Man, Adam LOVES him some explosions. And sometimes Jamies even smiles.

Both of them sat out and did Q&A at points during the show while things were readied backstage. The infamous cannonball incident came up, unsurprisingly, but Jamie answered in excellent diversionary fashion. The best question of the night came from a kid who asked about “that time they blew up a car for no reason”. The answer to why was, of course, because they could.

All in all, a very entertaining couple of hours. They’re born showmen (Adam more so), who know very well how to harness the enthusiasm (and social media proliferation capabilities) of an audience, and what better way to develop a love and learning of science than by doing crazy experiments and blowing things up?

Wednesday, February 8th was a day to talk about mental health. Why it was sponsored by Bell, I don’t know. Why it was February 8th, I don’t know. But hey, getting people talking about mental health and raising money isn’t a bad thing.

Unsurprisingly, it brought to mind my own experiences with mental illness. I consider myself fortunate — any depression I’ve dealt with has been situational, and temporary, and I always remained at least somewhat functional. Those who have helped me through it have my eternal gratitude and are immediately welcome to anything I can do for them when they need it.

But depression and I have been close, sometimes very close, off and on for a lot of years. I kinda… live next door. I’ve seen many strong voices online talk about their struggles with depression, which has helped a lot of people. I haven’t seen much, however, from the people around those who struggle. There are some good reasons for that. A lot of what you think and feel seems either utterly futile, or makes you think you must be a complete asshole.

Mostly I’ve been depression’s next door neighbour, but sometimes other neighbours show up: anxiety, mania, substance abuse… And you would think, after all these years, that I’d know how to be a good neighbour by now. I’d have figured out How To Help.

Nope. I suck.

I mean, sure, the people actually dealing with mental illness have been glad I was “there”. And I’ve read the literature and tried to do or not do the recommended stuff. But I am a person who Gets Things Done and who Takes Care of People, and neither of these traits is usually of much use when dealing with someone who’s struggling with mental illness.

Because you can’t do much of anything a lot of the time. You can’t make the person start feeling, or stop hurting, or start sleeping, or stop sleeping, or start eating, or stop eating, or making terrible choices, or refusing to make any choices, or get help, or… Lordy, the frustration.

The neighbourhood is circular. Or perhaps a figure eight. Finding the exits ain’t easy, if they’re even there sometimes.

It involves conversations about the same things over and over. With no new insights, and no attempts at doing anything to change the narrative. Or in some bizarre way romanticizing the state of the person struggling. (More common in the young, and infuriating.) Or it involves trying to have a conversation with a person who Will Not Talk About It. To the point, sometimes, of someone who loves you actively avoiding you when you’re just trying to help.

You can end up feeling so incredibly isolated and alone, especially if the personal struggling with mental illness is your partner, and you’re supposed to tackle the world together, and they just… won’t. Not only the world is shut out, but so are you. Or, if not shut out, it’s just negativenegativeNEGATIVE all the time. Exhausting. And why does “for better or for worse” mean so much less worse for seemingly everyone else? What did you do to deserve this version where the grass on your side of the fence is all dead and brown?

You don’t know what the balance is of asking someone else for help, or venting, or at what point that violates privacy. And yes, there’s shame. We’re working on it, but there’s still stigma to people not being able to hold up their end of… life. And if you have kids, goodness knows you don’t want to drag them into that mire.

Sometimes a conversation will start happening, and you will be relieved, though feeling trepidation, because, just maybe, something will shift. Something will be admitted, or explained, or committed to. Something you can work with. Or not.

Because you may find out from this conversation that things are worse than you thought. That the person is worse than you thought. That the person is making choices (or not) that are actively making their situation worse. And you can’t stop them.

So you end up frustrated and disappointed and very, very angry. Feeling angry at a person with mental illness is not a noble feeling, but it is inevitable. You may even lose your cool and give the person a piece of your mind or a demand or an ultimatum. Yeah, that never helps.

You may even find out that the person has been “protecting” themselves from you by lying or not telling you important things. This will make you feel like you might lose your mind from anger and betrayal. Because it’s so obvious. That person’s “protection” is actually clinging ever tighter to what’s hurting them. That person’s sabotaging those who would help (i.e. you) and pushing you further away. Can’t you see that? That person, who loves you, and who you love, has lied to your face, and will do it again.

And you will not know what to do when you find this out. You will want to do things to protect yourself from this person, but that won’t really help. Because your choices are to stay where you are and do what you’ve been doing, or just… stop. Stop seeing, stop asking, stop waiting, stop trying. Discard the person, essentially. When they’re sick. This is not a noble consideration.

Though there may come a worse point where you stop feeling these non-noble feelings. You just stop feeling at all. Perhaps you have developed your own depression, which may bring all kinds of guilt since the way others treat you in your depression will convince you that everyone is a far better human than you to those who’re hurting.

Or your mind has shut down to protect you and you simply can’t make yourself engage anymore. Apathy may be the opposite of love. Or just the victim of it. And then you feel like you’re betraying someone who needs you because you can no longer make yourself… care. Or try.

Where the grass is a little greener, though, you may understand, after some point, that it is not the person you love who’s moping and crying and silent and lying. It’s the mental illness. Mental illness is not logical. It’s not fair. But it’s in the person you love, so you can’t entirely separate what it makes the person do or say from who they are. Sure, we all know this intellectually, but understanding it to the point of it helping you be calmer and cope is not so easily achieved.

And so you end up more frustrated and disappointed and angry. And that doesn’t help. And you are not helping. At least you don’t feel like you are.

But you’ll step back and take a deep breath and get more stable and let go and forgive a bit and just… wait. And hope. Attendre et espérer. All the while remembering that your neighbourhood is circular, so most likely it’ll all come around again. And you don’t know when or for how long. And you don’t know in what form. And OMG what if one time it never goes away ever? Or gets even worse, or… anything.

The person struggling with mental illness doesn’t know, either, and is just as scared, because in addition to not being logical, it restricts your sight. It restricts your ability to see beyond how bad things are now. Or behind you to when you were okay before this. Or what choices you could make or things you could do that would start to make things better (if anything). Or peripherally to see all the people who love you and will catch you.

The neighbour’s house has a really high fence. You never really know what’s going on in there. So you don’t know when to just be there, or do something, or say something, or just offer a hug.

Or when it’s time to move out of the neighbourhood.

Because there are situations when what’s wrong with the neighbours becomes very, very bad for you, and you need to protect yourself. Your heart, your mind, your body.

But sometimes you’ll wake up one morning and the neighbour’s fence seems a bit shorter, the gaps between the boards a bit wider. And it continues. Sometimes the fence will come down slowly and unevenly. Sometimes it’ll vanish overnight. And you will be wrung-out relieved. And wary.

Because you never know when the fence will go back up. Or if this is not health, but rather, different symptoms. When might the neighbourhood become crappy again? When will you need to try to see if there’s anything you can do this time? Like there’s any reason next time will be any different.

Sometimes the hardest thing in the world for a next door neighbour is to just live there.

Last week MaRS kindly invited me to TO to present in their Best Practices series. I talked about social media for small business in an hour-long presentation, followed by a half-hour Q&A. They also did a shorter, five-minute “Hot Tips” video of, ostensibly, my bonnest of bon mots.

The full media pile of videos, slide deck, and notes is here: MaRS: Social Media for Small Businesses.

If you take this gig, I think you should pour your heart into it, but I want you to remember that you’re going to have another five to ten other jobs in your lifetime just like this one. This means that for each moment you spend being pumped about the new gig, you’ll have an equal and opposite moment at the end of the gig where you can’t wait to get the hell out. — Rands

Sometimes you hear or read something and it gets stuck in your head. Perhaps because it totally resonates. Perhaps because it expresses an opinion so diametrically opposed to your own. Perhaps because there’s just… something to it, but you can’t yet put your finger on it.

When I first read that quote, I’d been working at a job I didn’t like for about eight months. I’d never really liked it, and, in fact, my manager quit a few weeks after I’d started. Things didn’t go uphill from there. However, about six weeks after I read that quote, I met the PostRank folks and started on a new adventure, one I liked much better.

But for the past while, since I’ve known that I’d be leaving Google, that quote has come to mind a fair bit. Especially when you come from a startup where there’s always more to be done than bodies to do it, being in a position of not being particularly useful isn’t easy. Or when you’re among people who claim to need/want X, but then make decisions and plans that will never accomplish X. Being informed that their attempts to make me permanent had fallen through wasn’t terribly surprising, nor was it emotionally crushing by that point.

I don’t want to give the impression that I found my time at Google horrible. Anything but. It’s totally not the real world there, and that’s a lot of fun. Googlers are insanely well taken care of, and that level of geek-centric culture can be a great time. The people I worked with, both on the Analytics Marketing team and the operations folks I got to know just by being there, are all great, highly capable people. I just didn’t happen to fit the prevailing structure. When you get far enough away from high school, eventually you realize it’s okay not to fit in everywhere.

Hindsight gives you a considerably broader point of view, and so one can indulge from time to time in the What Ifs. I’ve never for a minute regretted saying no to moving to Mountain View, but what if I had gone there? It would have been pretty much the only chance I had to find somewhere to “fit” at Google, simply because what I do is done there, but not here. At the same time, though, the way they handle community management, for example, is very different from how I am used to working, and how my personality prefers to work… so would I have been happy there? Would I have loved living in the Valley or San Francisco, or would I have always felt painfully un-hip? (Kidding.)

Ultimately, Google is a big company. A very big company, no matter how much they try to believe and market themselves (especially internally) as something scrappier, more nimble, or “startup-y”. I’ve told numbers of people that working at Google felt more like working at the insurance companies I’ve worked for than any of the tech companies I’ve worked for. Nothing wrong with that — the company has around 32,000 employees. But as you grow you have to accept and adapt to how your growth affects your employees, culture, communications, etc. as well as your products, customers, and the market.

So, what if I hadn’t tagged along on the Google adventure? They never really needed or wanted all of us, so what if they’d said thanks, deposited a few bucks into our accounts, and we went our separate ways back in June? I recall seeing a couple of really cool jobs back then, and waffling over whether to apply and push my brain into the direction of moving on, or to settle myself in the saddle for whatever ride Google would bring. Needless to say, I chose Google. I think a lot of people would. I am at least grateful that KW is a tech-strong area and desperately thirsty for talent. I’d be a lot more freaked out if we’d had a crash between June and now. (Especially given how many cool gigs I keep seeing for Toronto, Calgary, and the Valley…)

Unsurprisingly, I have been constantly asked the last while what’s next. Perhaps if I’d had a quarter for every ask I wouldn’t have to look for a new job at all… Short answer is: I can’t say. I have some great opportunities that right now mostly just require patience, I know my skills are valued, and I am superstitious enough not to talk about it all in much detail in the open without Is dotted and Ts crossed and where the capricious gods of fate may hear me… Most importantly, I feel fine about where things are and are going.

I am also very grateful to everyone who’s been supportive and helpful. I’ve received leads, introductions, and whatnot from many people who didn’t surprise me, and a number who did. Sounds a bit self-serving, but you hope that by being active in your community and making yourself useful that they’ll be there for you when you need it, too, and that has very much proven true. Fellowship: it ain’t just for Mennonites! So thank you all.

I’ve also enjoyed getting a closer look back into the startup scene recently. It’s certainly grown and changed since PostRank was one of those scrappy, nimble companies with six employees and computers on folding tables. For every story like this I see that makes me weep for the future, I have also seen, heard, and talked to brilliant folks who are passionate, fearless, and who just happen to have recently graduated… or not. It’s also heartening to know their mentors and know that those are folks who’ll kick their asses if they get uppity.

At the same time, I see the mistakes they make and am becoming ever more aware of the value of experience (especially my own), and for access to business mentoring that reflects that. It seems to be easy enough to get insight and information from great people about the tech, the financing, and all the “hard” skills, but the worst errors I see being made are about people. And it’s not that these folks are sociopaths or lack social skills, it’s just that being the CEO of a company is very different from doing hacking projects with your buddies, or being low enough down the totem pole not to be responsible for a lot of things. I look forward to seeing how these folks grow and change over the years the same way I look forward to seeing how the tech scene here does.

The end of the PostRank era has been hard at times, but it would have been harder had it ended back in June. Having had months to get used to the team being flung to the four winds has provided separation time, and having suspected a permanent position wasn’t going to work out has provided the motivation to send my brain forward, rather than miring it in the present or pining for the past.

I’ve been in much worse places — still working at a company that was crumbling around me, laid off a week after my birthday — so I’m in a very okay place. As I told a couple friends, my main challenge currently is working on my patience, which has never been my strongest of virtues. (Given that it’s my sister-in-law’s name, perhaps she could impart some wisdom?)

Hopefully, I’ll have awesome news to share in one of my all-too-infrequent posts soon. Watch this space. In the mean time, a few snippets from Dr. Seuss’ Oh, The Places You’ll Go, which has been on my mind a lot lately, too (and the title of this post comes from it). I thought it important enough to make a parting gift for the Googles.

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

~

You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

~

Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.

And when things start to happen
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.