Late 2005, at a blogger meetup over at Mackey's, I chatted up a very attractive brunette who told me she was working for a big health-care startup that was gonna go great guns in 2006. The company turned out to be Revolution Health, who I interviewed with last summer to handle updating their privacy policy.*

I ended up not getting the job for reasons I never found out about, but given how badly the company's site debut is getting clowned on TechCrunch, maybe that was for the best. It was way out of my expertise level anyway, but the people were nice. C'est la vie--I bear them no ill will. ;)

In any event, I would've sworn on a stack of Korans** that said attractive brunette was Kelly Collins of "Ask KAC" fame, but my memory is like a sieve, so I couldn't be sure...

But it seems I was right!

It's fascinating to me that even as my public profile increases, the number of people I know who are also (and/or already) publicly known increases as well. Blogging really is the fame democratizer. ;)

* = The day was also memorable as the last time I saw RoarSavage, since we had lunch together. She's a bodacious beauty and a brilliant blogger, and I hope all's well with her.

** = Keith Ellison-style, yo. Represent.

( WorkCollapse )

( GeekCollapse )

This weekend is mellow, which is a nice counterpoint to next weekend, which contains the glory of SNAKES ON A MOTHERFUCKIN' PLANE, Requiem for Vitae, and Scott's birthday party. ;)

I just ragged on Gabe for using the bloodless corporatespeak phrase "moving forward" in terms of discussing a game plot. ;)

This got to reminding me of how prevalent this trend has become in modern speech. I know a certain ex-blogger who actually said he dropped blogging for another opportunity because it offered him greater ROI (as in Return On Investment). And I've lost track of the number of times I've seen phrases like "going forward," "lessons learned," "pushback," etc. become typical, everyday forms of expression--and without irony, I might add.

I'd sooner spend a day translating Li'l Jon at the Source Awards than I would sitting in a meeting listening to this sort of ridiculous marketing corporatist blather.

What kinds of business-speak terms do you hear--or use--in your daily life? :)

One of the things that's been bothering me lately is this inexplicable, recurring desire to be somewhere else. To start anew in a new place.

Specifically, Los Angeles. I'm not sure why, really. I love the city and have visited it many times, but I never really saw myself living there. Yet I can't shake this feeling that there's something drawing me west. Some opportunity or career move, or some new adventure of some kind.

To make things odder, I had dinner with my friend Tara last night, who's an editor at a bigtime D.C. news organization. She's been helping me make hookups there, but when we got to talking about other places to live and work, she was very effusive about my trying out job or freelance opportunities out there. One thing that she said that really struck me was that she couldn't see me as a "government guy." "You're too laid-back and funny for that. You should be working at some cool tech company or something."

There's a lot of truth to that. I have faced the brutal truth that the government life is not where I want to be in the long-term. I hate the stodginess of it, the politics, the self-importance, and the sheer tedium.

By the same token, I love my life here. I love my apartment, I love my friends, I love the new directions my career is taking me in here, and I really do like D.C. I'd be giving up a hell of a lot to pursue a dream I'm not even sure is anything more than wanderlust.

And I honestly don't know if I have the courage to do something like that.

So I'm gonna nose around companies on the Left Coast and see if I can find any interesting freelance gigs I can do from here. Maybe that'll parlay into something bigger. Maybe it won't. But at least I will have tried. ;)