Thirty minutes later, someone spotted them.  It was a pod consisting of a large male, a mom, a baby and a few other smaller males.  I rushed to get my iPhone to snap some pictures, but they were so fast!  It was hard to catch them!  I got some decent shots but nothing turned out that great.  If you didn’t know what they were, you mighta thought they were something on one of those lake monster specials on the history channel*. I was a little disappointed.  After sharing the killer whales on Facebook and Twitter, my pocked buzzed a few times as friends liked, commented, tweeted, and retweeted.

Cruising back, I should have been really happy.  I’d gotten lucky enough to see something amazing that most people don’t get to see, but instead I felt a little disappointed my pictures didn’t come out well.  I realized that I spent the entire time trying to snap a picture of the killer whales so I could show my friends what I’d seen.  I ended up watching the whales through a little electronic screen, focusing on getting a picture, rather than simply enjoying their majestic beauty of what could be a once and a life time experience.  I really didn’t like those implications.

About the same time, I realized I’d been slowly increasing how many times per day I looked at and updated Facebook and Twitter compared to three months ago.  When I was in a car, a taxi, the subway, waiting for a meeting, riding the bus, or just sitting around, I was checking Twitter and Facebook.  Sometimes I found myself looking at my phone at meals or with friends, something I HATED when others did to me.  I was taking more pictures and sharing the daily minutiae of my life.  I found myself going through the day hoping to find interesting things not just because they are interesting, but because I wanted to share them.  As a reluctant convert to smartphones, I feared something like this would happen at some point.

On the plus side, I found out about important news really quickly.  I kept closer track of what my friends were up to.  I found funny stories and was up to date on sports, memes, technology and politics.  But, I spent way too much time with my head down, looking at my iPhone and getting carried away in the minutiae that is social media, seeing what people ate for breakfast, what celeb was in rehab and what random thought crossed their minds.  And some of my friends felt slighted when I didn’t like their status, retweet their tweets or tweet at them.

Facebook and Twitter have a value, but I didn’t like that I was almost obsesively checking Twitter and Facebook whenever I had downtime.  I was consuming unimportant content and over sharing meaningless parts of my life. I realized something had to change.  Social media wasn’t adding to my enjoyment of life, it was taking away from it.  So about three weeks ago I decided to experiment.  I deleted Facebook and Twitter from my iPhone and replaced them with the Kindle app.

I replaced my iPhone Twittering/Facebooking with reading books or keeping my phone in my pocket.  In the last three weeks, I’ve read two books and stopped checking social media as much and my life is so much happier.  I still get emails when people interact with me on Twitter and Facebook, but it’s much more passive.  And if I really NEED to use Facebook or Twitter, I can use the browser to get what I need done, but its slow and cumbersome so I don’t check as much.

Since I’ve deleted the apps, I can count the number of times I’ve been to the mobile sites on one hand.  It’s been a big change.  Freeing me up from oversharing and overconsuming has pushed me to read interesting books during my downtime.  Or just observe the world and interact with everyone around me.  And now that I’m mostly off Twitter and Facebook during most of the day, my friends can’t complain I’m not paying attention to their updates.  Because I’m not paying attention to anyone’s.  For me, life is so much better without the constant pull of social media!

Yes, I’ll miss out on knowing things really quickly, but a quick perusal of Twitter and Facebook after work so far has done the trick.  For example, I found out Prince Fielder signed for a $200m contract 10 hours after it happened.  But so what? I’m only sharing the most important things and cutting out the rest.  My Klout score is going down and I’m adding followers at a slower rate, but my life is more calm, free and easy.  I’ve been living more in the real world instead of living through a little 4.5 x 2.25 inch screen.

So think about it.  Are you walking through life with your head down, getting validation from social media instead of whats happening in front of you?  Are you tweeting and facebooking to show off and make your friends think “wow, what a cool life?”  Are you oversharing? Are you missing the killer whales live, so you can show your friends a picture of them later?  If you are, and I think lots of people are, think about taking a step back, deleting Facebook and Twitter and see if your life improves.  I know mine did.

In reality, nobody cares about the minutiae, its all about your impact on the world.  So stop oversharing, overconsuming and go out and live life!

*Thanks Polsky!

                          

2011 was an amazing yet tumultuous year.  I rung in 2011 in Pasadena, CA at the Rose Bowl with my family and friends.  Although the Badgers lost, I got to see a friend I hadn’t seen in three years and had a great time.  The next week, I did an hour long interview for NPR for the first time while San Francisco for Entrustet.  I returned to Chile with Jesse to continue working on Entrustet in the Startup Chile program.  As 2011 rolled on, I got closer to my new friends from Startup Chile and now consider them some of my closest friends in the world.

Salar de Uyuni

I continued to travel, going all over Chile and into Bolivia.  The Salar de Uyuni still is the most beautiful place I’ve seen on earth, closely followed by Torres del Paine in Patagonia, which I visited with my brother and one of my best friends.  My parents made the trip to visit me in Chile and we explored Pucon and the lakes region.  Two of my best friends from Wisconsin came to visit and we went to La Serena and Valle del Elqui.  I got to Mendoza, Pichilemu, San Pedro de Atacama, Buenos Aires, Hawaii, Austin, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

2011 was a banner year for Wisconsin sports.  Although the Badgers lost in the Rose Bowl to start the year, they were in the National Title hunt for most of 2011 and I find myself going back to Cali (Cali), for another new year.  The Packers went on an improbable run to win the Super Bowl from the sixth seed.  I watched with an international group of friends in Santiago as the mostly pro steelers crowd changed “roth-leeees-bour-geeer” over and over.  The Brewers had their best regular season ever, winning 96 games and getting within two games of the World Series.  The Packers are 14-1 and are favorites to repeat for the Super Bowl.  2011 might well be the golden year for Wisconsin sports.

Entrustet continued to grow, but slowly.  We continued to get press and were mentioned in over 125 publications in 2011.  We continued to sign up lawyers and work with insurance companies to try to help people protect their digital assets.  Jesse presented at South by Southwest and I moderated at panel on the Chilean Startup Scene.  We even had our first user pass away, proving that our system really works.

Friendsgiving 2011

On a personal level, I learned Spanish, made some amazing new friends and really grew a ton living outside my comfort zone abroad.  I have a new appreciation for the simple things in life like being able to coast through mundane life situations and watching as things come easily for me.  I  traveled back for Friendsgiving, the annual gathering of my best friends from college.  It was amazing to see all my friends I hadn’t seen in a long time.  I saw some great music in 2011, going to Lollapalooza Chile, South by Southwest in Austin and many others and I ended my time with Startup Chile by giving a speech to the President of Chile, completely in Spanish.

Looking back, 2011 has been the year of big changes.  I left Madison, traveled all over, continued to be an entrepreneur, found myself growing and changing, loving, making new friends.  If 2012 can match how much I enjoyed 2011, I know I’m doing something right.  I have no doubt it will.

Favorite Posts

A Tribute  – My favorite post of the year

How to Live Before you Die: What I Learned From Running Entrustet

How to Talk to the Media and Get Quoted in Press

Disconnecting

The Customer is not Always Right: Sometimes He’s an Asshole

Apologizing

Overcoming Self Deception

A Reflection on Living Abroad

                          

I arrived in November 2010 and stayed for six months.  I decided to return to Chile in September and now have been living here for 9 of the last 12 months.  I’m back in the US for a combination holiday/business trip and as I’ve met with my friends, family and new people, most want to know what’s different about living abroad compared to the US.  These nine months in Chile have been some of the most fun, amazing, rewarding months of my life. They’ve also been the most challenging and certainly the most frustrating.

For most of my life, things have come very easily for me.  Being immursed into another culture forced me out of my comfort zone and made me learn, grow and examine things from new perspectives.  It’s certainly made me a better person.  I’ve developed a deep respect for the culture and empathy for people who immigrate to other countries.  None of these differences make the US or Chile better than each other, just different.  I’ve already covered nearly all of the things I love about living in Chile in previous posts and wanted to share some of the things I struggled with while living abroad.

The biggest difference between living in the US and abroad is that in Chile, my brain always has to be turned on.  I learned to speak decent Spanish and understand nearly everything thats going on, but I can’t coast through mundane situations.  My brain always has to be focused, engaged.   I have to really pay attention to do things I take for granted in the US:  interact with waiters, my friends, business meetings and random conversations going on around me.  I find myself focusing for a much higher percentage of the day since I can’t just do things on autopilot.  It’s mentally draining.

The first thing I notice when I get off the plane returning to the US is that I immediately understand all of the conversations going on around me.  I process them all without any effort.  I’m immediately more relaxed because I don’t have to pay close attention or think about simple things.

The next thing I notice is banter.  Even with my decent spanish, I still struggle to tell descriptive stories or be funny.  While in Chile, I realized that most of my humor is based on quick word play, being sarcastic and witty turns of phrase.  It really hit me when I was at dinner last night.  To order I said something like “I’ll have the braised pork and that comes with sweet potatoes, right?” The waitress gave me a big smile and said “ohhh great choice! That’s my favorite!”  I answered back with a joke which led to a short conversation and fun banter during the meal.  I lose that in Spanish.  In Chile I’d say “I want the braised pork” and if the waitress replied the same way, I probably would say something like  ”cool” and smile back.  End of interaction.  In Spanish, I’m focused on just getting things done and I’m still not quick enough yet.

The same thing happens when I’m with friends or in a business meeting.  In the US, I’m used to being a leader, the one who’s making plans for my group of friends and being in the middle of everything we do.  In Chile I found myself taking a backseat to my Chilean friends.  In the US, things come easily for me.  Living in Chile, most of the time I was the “weakest” one and it was nearly impossible to take on the same role that I do with my friends in the US.  I didn’t know the cool places, the upcoming parties.  My friends had lived in Santiago their entire lives, I didn’t know much in comparison.

I can keep a conversation going with 1-2 people in spanish, but once theres more than that, its gets much harder.  I still understand what’s going on, but its hard to break into the conversation.  Add in loud music, drinking, people getting excited and talking about people and things I don’t know but they all do?  Now add in tons of slang that could mean multiple things?  So frustrating.  The absolute worst part is when I want to add something to a conversation, or I’d have a great story to tell, but by the time I figured out what I wanted to say and try to break in, the conversaion had already moved on.  I found myself being quieter than normal.

An example: I was at a bbq with one of my friends and people started talking about a new business idea.  The beer was flowing and people were getting excited.  I’d researched a similar idea while in the states, but couldn’t break into the conversation very often because people were talking so quickly.  I got a few words in, but nothing like I would have in English.  So frustrating.

The third big adjustment is cultural differences.  Living abroad made me rethink things that I’d always taken for granted and see very different perspectives. I pride myself on being observant and many times I’d notice that people would react to my actions very differently than people would in the US, but I couldn’t figure out why.  I’d realize that something was different, but wouldn’t get the significance.  I wouldn’t even know the right question to ask so a friend could explain the differences.  I’d try, but friends either wouldn’t understand what I was asking or they’d just say “oh thats how it is.”  Some examples:

There are many cultural differences: being on time, splitting checks at meals, making plans, dating, class interactions, gender roles, business deals and so many more.  For example, multiple times, I’d ask friends if they wanted to meet up on a Friday.  They’d say, “im busy, im going to my friends party.”  I’d make other plans with other friends.  My friends wouldn’t end up going to their friend’s party and be curious why I didn’t invite them to whatever I did.

Another interesting one was a friend would invite me to a party on Saturday.  On Saturday, I’d call and say, ok what time are we going.  They’d say, “oh no, we’re not doing it anymore.”  At first I thought some of my new friends just didn’t like me that much, but most of my foreign friends saw the same things over and over.  In the US if someone says they have plans, they have plans.  If you make plans with someone, it’s rude to cancel.  In Chile, plans are much more fluid.

I’m not sure what to call this, so I’ll just go into an example.  One day, I set a meeting with a potential partner.  He told me to show up at his office between 2pm and 4pm and call him when I arrived.  I got there at 3, called.  No answer.  I waited around, calling and texting every so often. No answer.  Finally at about 430, I found his assistant walking out and asked if he was in.  The assistant showed me right in.  The guy I was supposed to meet was sitting in his chair, cell phone on his desk.  He didn’t act as if anything was out of the ordinary.  I just thought he was being rude, but this type of behavior happend fairly often.

A friend of mine got an xray taken by a doctor who was a friend of a friend.  The doctor told him to come to his office between 10-12  the next week and he’d come down to the lobby to show him his results so that he wouldn’t have to pay for the visit.  My friend arrived, called and texted the doctor, no answer.  He got frustrated after waiting awhile, called the doctors office, scheduled an appointment for 2pm, went to lunch.  He walked in and the doctor greeted him warmly.  He didn’t even mention ignoring the calls and texts and acted like they were best friends.  After awhile, we all got used to this and took it in stride.

There are huge cultural difference between dating in Chile compared to the US.  I could fill an entire post with all of them.  I’ll share the one my good friends found the most ironic: if you’re at all serious about dating a Chilean girl, you have to formally ask her to be your girlfriend and do it fairly soon into the relationship.  I didn’t realize this until I’d been in Chile a long time.

In the US if I’m seeing a girl for a few months and I ask her “will you go out with me? or I want you to be my girlfriend”, she’ll either laugh and think I’m incredibly cheesy or it would lead to a fight along the lines of “are you serious, what do you think we’ve been doing for the past month or two?”  In fact, that’s exactly how I reacted when the girl I was dating brought it up.  It wasn’t until I talked with more Chilean friends that I understood what was going on.  I look back on all of the differences and try to laugh about them now, but going through it was so frustrating.

My biggest frustrations living abroad were when the language barrier interacted with cultural differences. If I misheard something in spanish, people would assume I didn’t really understand much and talk much slower and more simply around me.  They’d think because I wasn’t talking much, I was bored or uninteresting.  The absolute most frustrating is when people form an opinion of you based on cultural misunderstandings and language barriers.  There were so many times when people thought I was being rude/weak/unfunny when I was doing the “right” thing in the US cultural context.  I did the exact same!  There were so many times when I thought people were rude/weak/unfunny when they were doing the “right” thing in Chilean culture.

I’m thankful that I’ve gotten the chance to experience living abroad.  It’s been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life and I’ve learned a ton about myself muddling through learning a language and the cultural differences that come with living abroad.  I’ve made close friends that I know I’ll keep for life and seen places that I’d only dreamed of.  I wouldn’t change anything, besides starting to learn Spanish before I arrived and asking more questions of my Chilean friends from the very beginning so I could understand more quickly.

Have you lived abroad?  What did you learn while living in a foreign culture?  Did you have similar experiences to me?

                          

I forget who said it, but one of my aunts or uncles said something about how whenever there was anyone in need, grandma tried to help them. As I was listening to everyone’s memories, I knew I wanted use the bit of money that she bequested me to carry on her legacy. I wanted to spend it in a way that she would be proud: helping people and making others’ dreams come true. I’ve tried to follow your example and it took me over two years to find things that I think you would have liked. Grandma, here’s a few of things I’ve used your bit of money to make the world a better place.

In August 2009, two of my best friends, were getting married. They were the first of my close friends from college to married and all of my friends were really excited. One of our best friends who lived on our dorm floor freshman year was living in London. She had decided to travel the world after college, instead of getting a boring office job (awesome!). When she got the wedding invite in London, she realized that she wouldn’t be able to come home for the wedding. All of her savings were tied up in money for rent, food and were going to be used to continue traveling.

I asked our friend from London if I could make her my wedding gift to my friends. She refused, she wouldn’t let me. After weeks of convincing, she finally relented and I made it happen. We didn’t tell anyone. At the rehearsal dinner, I asked my friends if I could give them their gift early. They looked at me strangely, but agreed. I made the signal and our friend walked down the stairs. It was incredible and I know you would have loved to see it.

A month later, I was messing around on Facebook and a post from a college friend caught my eye. She was a teacher for Teach for America in New York City and posted that her class really wanted Time for Kids subscriptions, but couldn’t afford them. I loved reading these types of magazines when I was in school and think that they helped me stay interested in current events, politics and history to this day. Grandma, you gave me subscriptions to National Geographic for Kids, Smithsonian, Science and Discover for Christmas growing up and I loved getting them each week. I knew passing this gift on to more kids was a perfect use of your money. Since then, I’ve used Donors Choose to pick out a bunch of education projects that I know you’d support too.

In December, I found another cause that I knew you’d like. Since my sophomore year in college, I followed an online wisconsin-themed sports message board. It’s where I go to keep up to date on Wisconsin sports. A few years ago, one of the regular posters started a Holiday Fund, a message board wide drive to raise money to buy gifts for families who need help. Each family is screened by a charity and then submits a list. The message board community donates money, then some of the active posters buy the gifts. We used your money to help bring Christmas cheer to families that wouldn’t have otherwise been able to buy any presents.

A few months later, I read Three Cups of Tea, an amazing book about Greg Mortenson’s quest help educate rural Pakistan and Afghanistan’s girls. He was climbing one of the worlds tallest mountains and ended up in a small village called Korphe. He promised to build them a school and did. Fast forward fifteen years, Mortenson has built over 131 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan, educating over 55,000 students. We used to look at National Geographic and watch The Learning Channel growing up and I know how important education was to you. I know you’d like to know that some of your money is helping educate girls in Afghanistan.

In January 2010, a huge earthquake decimated Haiti. UW alum and ex marine Jake Wood took matters into his own hands and led a team into Haiti to help people. His team beat the traditional aid organizations and was helping people within 36 hours of the earthquake. Team Rubicon was funded by people who read his blog and I knew I had to donate. Grandma, your money went to support the Hatian relief effort. After Jake got back to the states, he formalized Team Rubicon as a non profit with two missions. First, to help bridge the gap in disaster relief and second, to help war veterans transition back into society. Your money is helping Jake change the world and make it a better place.

In March, my friend Becky told me about Going For Ten Thousand, her goal to raise $10,000 to donate to Multiple Sclerosis research in honor of her mom and a family friend. I helped Becky set up her website and donated some of your money to help get her started. I’d like to think that our early donation helped motivate Becky to keep going. Two years later, she’s raised over $40,000 and become a force for good on the UW campus. Your money not only is helping scientists research MS, but helped inspire hundreds of students.

In January, a friend started a nonprofit to help women in India start small businesses. She needed a bit of money to help get her business off the ground. I used a bit of your money to help her meet her goals. Since then, thousands of other donations have flowed in and her non profit has helped hundreds of women start micro businesses that have changed their lives. I’ve also used your money to make loans on Kiva to microbusinesses in Tanzania that allowed a family to purchase more inventory for her store, which in turn let her make more money so she could send her children to school.

Grandma, I’ve used your money to support a friend walking to raise money for breast cancer research, to take a trip with an awesome girl that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to, to support our local library and support some promising small time entrepreneurs I met while in Chile and South Africa. I’ve used it to see my family and friends and make it home in time for my brother’s graduation. I’m very thankful that I have the luxury to use your money this way, Merry Christmas Grandma!

                          

We hail a cab and the cheerful driver told us he’d take us to the closest hospital.  He regails us with tales about how dislocated shoulders are somewhat common in Argentina because polo is a popular sport.  He doesn’t seem to concerned about my friend’s pain as we zoom around Buenos Aires’ curvy and somewhat bumpy streets.

We arrive to a run down, but very functional public hospital to find about 20 people sleeping outside the front door.  Unlike US hospitals, there is no long queue.  As we enter, I immediately speak to the person at the door who takes my friend’s information and tells us to wait in the first patient room.  The room is spacious, dimly lit, and filled with old style medical equiptment.  There were used medical supplies that hadn’t been thrown out, open razor blades on the counter and there didn’t seem to be much organization.

Hospital staff workers kept entering and exiting and we quickly realized that our room doubles as a supply closet.  A cheerful physicians assistant arrives and asks us what happened.  He does a few tests, then prescribes an xray.   My friends and I carry/drag our friend to the xray room, which uses machines that look like they were from the 80s.  My friend is unable to pose correctly because he is in too much pain and the ornery orderly gives up petulantely after two tries.  I try to convince her to try once more, but she refuses.

We’re sent back to our room and the cheerful assistant comes back and is not pleased that the xrays hadn’t worked.  He tells us he’s going to try to pop the shoulder back in.  He tells us to leave the room, then tries for 15 painful minutes.  The waiting room is dingy, has hardly any chairs and is filled with the typical people you’d see in any emergency room around the world.  There are the drunk/drugged out kids, elderly chronic care patients, car accident victims and their friends and family.  Everyone gets a number fairly quickly, but then has to wait for their care.

After awhile, the PA invites me back into the room, and asks me to help.  He rolls up a bedsheet, puts it under my friend’s arm, then tells me to pull as hard as I can while he pulls on my friends arm in the other direction.  We’re pulling REALLY hard, to the point where if I let go, the physicians assistant would go flying into the medical supplies closet.  I never thought I’d get to be a part of the medical treatment, but here I am, in Buenos Aires, attempting to help reinsert a shoulder into a socket.

After 20 minutes, we’re both exhausted.  The PA says he is going to find help and returns with reinforcements: two burly orderlies.   I’m sent out of the room and the three of them manhandle his arm.  Nothing’s working and my friend’s in pain.  The hospital staff is getting more frustrated by the minute.  Without saying anything, the orderly gives my friend a shot in his back to knock him out.

After he was out, the three orderlies spend the next hour twisting, pushing, pulling, cursing and smashing.  A friend and I are sitting outside of the room the entire time and keep hearing loud screams from the room, sometimes from our friend, other times from the frustrated orderlies.  It goes on forever.  Finally, the shoulder is back in its socket

Finally, his arm is back, but he’s completly knocked out.  The orderlies tell us to hang out in the room and 10 minutes later, our friend will wake up and will need an xray.  An hour later, he is still completely out.   Nobody comes to check on us, nobody gives us any info when we ask.  After an hour and a half, we decide to take matters into our own hands and attempt wake him up.  He is in a deep sleep.

We put both of our cell phone alarms next to his ear and splash water on his face.  Nothing.  We try again.  This time some rumblings, but mostly incoherant ramblings from the sedative and pain killer.  We decide to wait another 20 minutes.  We use our same tactics again and this time are able to rouse our friend.  We carry him to the xray room where the sullen tech takes xrays while I hold my unsteady friend up to make sure he doesn’t pass out and dislocated something new.  We search for an hour, but can’t find anyone to look at the xrays. It’s shift change and everyone is busy.

Finally, the xray tech says everything looks ok, but she doesn’t really know and that if our friend feels ok, we can leave.  There’s no organized discharge process.  We just walk out the front door with our still heavily sedated friend, xrays in hand, then find a taxi and head home.  We take the intake form with us for our records.  The hospital does not issue discharge papers or have any sort of record that we’d been there, other than my friends name at the front door.

We’d spent close to six hours in the hospital and our friend’s arm was popped back in.  We didn’t have to pay a dime.  The process was unorgainzed, the facilities dirty and a bit rundown, but in the end, they got the job done.  It was quite the contrast to the expensive, process and paperwork laden US based health care system that is terrified of being sued.  They got the job done in the end, but in a different way than I would have expected.

In the end, I wouldn’t go to that hospital for anything life threatening if I could avoid it, but I think its amazing that they can do basic medical care for free and at a decent level.  Figuring out how to merge the positives from my Buenos Aires experience with the positives from the US system could create a very compelling health care system.

                          

Self deception is the fountain of failure, unhappiness and missed opportunities.  Identifying when you’ve been deceiving yourself and then why you’ve been doing it are the keys to improving the situation.  It’s true in all facets of life, from work to friendship to family to learning a new skill.

Let’s start with business.  One of the biggest reasons that startups do not succeed is that founders deceive themselves.  They buy into the hype, they ignore the big problems, the hardest work and don’t learn the right lessons when things go poorly.

For example, when I was running ExchangeHut, we had a very profitable tickets trading marketplace.  We wanted to expand to other universities.  We hired “campus reps,” students at other universities, to help us expand.  We gave them big incentives to push them to establish ExchangeHut on their campus.  After a semester, our most successful new campus had 100 users.  It was a complete failure.

We lied to ourselves and internally blamed our reps for being unmotiveded, not smart or entrepreneurial enough.  In reality, the reason they didn’t succeed is that we didn’t provide them with enough guidance, support and planning.  We continued with new reps the next semester and had the same results.  We wasted time and money because we let ourselves believe that it was someone else’s fault, not our own.

In the early days of Entrustet, back in March 2010, we knew we had a good product, but didn’t understand why people weren’t signing up as quickly as we thought they should.  We thought we were doing the right things: talking to the press, writing blogs and continuing to develop new features.  We kept telling ourselves that if we kept at it, we’d find success.  It took us another 6 months to realize that we were lying to ourselves.  We were not doing the hard work, we were doing the easy, fun work.  Once we made the switch and stopped deceiving ourselves, things started to turn around.

People deceive themselves all the time about all sorts of things: they say “it’s someone else fault, im doing fine,” “I shoulda gotten that promotion, not Larry” “I don’t have time to get in shape,” “I’d take that trip if only I had the time,” “Everythings going well.” Your mind will try to convince you that you’re right.

That’s why it’s hard to notice when you’re deceiving yourself.  Some clues are when things are not going well for you, but you’re not sure why.  Or success and fun aren’t coming easily.  Or when you’re acting with struggle, not with ease. When that happens to me, I try to take a step back and reevaluate.  Pull away from the situation.  Spend a bit of time alone.  Do some exercise.  Reflect on what I was deceiving myself about, and then try to push through and figure out why you were doing it.  I’ve found that the only way to make things better is to remove myself from the situation, then come back with a clear head and start to attack the problem head on again.

What do you do when you realize you’ve been deceiving yourself?  When have you realized in the past?  How do you try to make sure that it doesn’t continue to happen or so that you realize it more quickly?

                          

I’ve been following the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky story really closely for the past two weeks. I’m completely shocked by how the entire story has played out.  Each day, it gets worse.  The entire episode is a complete disgrace.  If you haven’t been following, check out the NY Times coverage.

According to the grand jury indictements, Sandusky was a popular Penn State Defensive Coordinator who raped boys as young as 10.  Another Penn State assistant saw him in the act, stopped the act somehow, then reported it to his father, the university president, the athletic director, the head coach and a few others.  Sandusky “retired” to work on his charity for young boys, called The Second Mile, which he used as a platform to meet and victimize young boys.

News reports claim that multiple people knew or heard about Sandusky’s proclivities, but didn’t do anything to stop him.  The entire episode is a complete disgrace and make me physically sick to my stomach.  After having some time to reflect, I’m very interested in how each person, who could have potentially stepped in and stopped this monster, rationalized their inaction.  Or even worse, in some cases rationalized their actions to coverup these rapes.

Humans have an amazing ability to rationalize away bad behavior.  Sometimes its their own bad behavior, sometimes its the bad behavior of others.  They think “everyone’s doing it, it wasn’t THAT bad, maybe we misunderstood, oh he wont do it again, if i just keep my head down, it will blow over” or in other cases “how will the affect me, what will others think?”  It’s the same phenomenon that allows massive corporate fraud, domestic abuse and the Sandusky case.  It’s the same phenomenon that caused the Catholic Church to cover up rampant sex abuse by priests.  Taken to the extreme, its the same phenomonen that allows genocide and the Holocaust to happen.

Let’s look at the timeline.  A Penn State assistant coach, McQueary, walks into the shower and sees a 55 year old man raping a 10 year old boy.  He claims he made sure it stopped, then called his father.  His father told him to report the incident to his boss, Penn State Coach Joe Paterno.  The assistant claims he told Paterno in no uncertain terms what he saw.  Here’s how the story got watered down as it moved through the chain of command:

• Assistant Coach McQueary: Eye witness report of anal rape of a 10 year old in a University shower
• Head Coach Joe Paterno: something of a sexual nature.
• Penn State Senior VP of Finance Schultz: inappropriately grabbing of the young boy’s genitals.
• Athletic Director Curley: inappropriate conduct or horsing around.
• University President Spanier: conduct that made someone uncomfortable.
• Second Mile President Raykovitz: a ban on bringing kids to the locker room.

Everyone in this case did the wrong thing.  They rationalized the behavior away, or just flat out covered it up.  McQuery did his legal duty by reporting the rape to his superiors, but not his moral duty, which would be the call the police immediately and keep contacting the authorities until something was done.  Two years earlier, multiple Janitors saw Sandusky “performing oral sex on a young boy” but did nothing to stop it, nor reported it to police.

Paterno and the university officials rationalized the conduct, either because they didn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it or wanted to protect their institution.  All the while, more kids continued to be raped.  The university, other coaches, Penn State players and people in the community heard rumors, but never did anything to follow up.  It was always someone else’s problem or it was rationalized away.

I truly believe that when the full story comes out, it’s going to be worse than anything we could imagine.  I think that people who knew about Sandusky’s “proclivities” will number in the 100s.  Yet nothing happened until ten years later, when Sandusky assaulted another young boy, who told his mother, who immediately called the police, sparking the current investigation.

So many people could have put an end to Sandusky’s pedophelia, but “didn’t want to rock the boat” or thought “it wasn’t that bad” or wanted to “protect themselves or their school.”  I truly hope that this horrible situation pushes more people to act when they witness criminal behavior.  These excuses should go out the window.  Do the right thing.  Anything less is morally reprehensible.  Remember, all it takes is one person doing the right thing and a horrible situation like this comes to an end much earlier.

                          

Schumacher Furs 1923, Click to enlarge

My Mom has been looking into our family history over the past year or two and sent me this advertisement from a newspaper in Cedarburg, WI from 1923.  The ad on the right hand side is for my great-grandmother’s fur store, advertising the best furs in the Milwaukee area.  Her brother, my great-uncle, set up trading posts in Alaska to cut out the middle man in the fur trade.  He then shipped his furs back to St. Louis, where he chose some of the best ones for his sister’s, my great grandmother’s, shop.

She shared the other half of the building with her husband, my great grandfather, who ran a painting and decorating business.  As my Mom put it “double entrepreneurs in the same shop!”  Maybe some of my entrepreneurial talents got passed down the generations?  Either way, I think it’s cool to learn about some family history.

                          

She loved to play fetch with her duck stuffed animal and then sit right next to you after she got tired.  She loved people and was always there to be the perfect companion.  Whenever I would change rooms when were were home together, she’d follow.  She was always there to greet me at the door whenever I came home, especially after I came home from Chile after being away for six months.  She went absolutely crazy and couldn’t stop jumping around for what seemed like forever.

She stole food with reckless abandon. No amount of disciplin could stop her.  We always had to make sure bread, meat, fruit, anything edible or potentially edible, was high enough up so that she couldn’t find a way to reach it when we went out.  One time, we were defrosting a huge tbone steak in the sink and we left the house.  When we got back, no steak, no paper, nothing.  Jenny got it.  When we took her to the vet for an xray, she’d eaten the entire frozen steak, bone, paper and all.

Her favorites were honey baked ham, chex and chicken.  She literally couldn’t concentrate on anything else if there was ham around until she got some.  She’d catch 100% of the food I’d toss in the air, sometimes jumping with all four paws off the ground.

She loved long walks, going swimming and being in the water.  Sometimes she’d swim out toward us to make sure we were ok.  She’d chase ducks until the ducks decided to fly away and hunt for frogs by the shoreline, but never got one.  She was a happy, fun loving dog who was in her element outside.

Last week, she was playing with my parents in Northern Wisconsin, having the time of her life.  On friday, she was breathing heavily, and our vet Marcy (our next door neighbor for all of my life, and the biggest reason our family ever had a dog in the first place) said everything seemed fine.  On Monday she stopped eating.  On Tuesday, xrays showed she had late stage lung cancer and today she went downstairs and died.  It happened so fast, nobody could believe it.  Even Marcy couldn’t believe how quickly things went.  Everyone commented how healthy she looked and less than a week ago, everything was completely normal, but in reality nothing could be done.  She didn’t suffer much at the end and had an amazing life right up until the very end.

Jenny was everything you could ask for in a dog.  I’m glad I got to know her so well.

                          

My week of helping people was a blast.  I met people I otherwise wouldn’t have and reconnected with people I’d lost touch with.  I learned about industries and ideas that made me think and got closer with people who had previously been only business associates.  Over the course of seven days, I helped 20 people with tasks ranging from helping startups, moving desks out of a basement, cleaning a garage, chopping down trees, going grocery shopping and critiquing websites.

Most people asked for help evaluating a startup idea, followed by asking for advice on how to run an intern program.  Of the 20 people I helped, I’d never met five of them and hadn’t talked to three within the last year.  Multiple people told me they’d been interested in asking for my help before, but either never got around to doing it or did not want to impose.

I thought it was interesting that only two close friends asked me for help and my Mom was my only family member who accepted my offer.  The rest were people I knew, but was not close with or did not know at all.  Two months ago, my friend Andy posted the exact same offer to his close friends ad family and only one friend and one family member took him up on his offer.  I think it’s interesting that we seem to be willing to ask people we don’t know as well for help, but not our closest friends.  I enjoyed myself so much that I’m going to start doing a monthly “day of help” where I’ll do whatever anyone needs during my normal work day.

I truly believe people want to help each other, but most people are too timid to ask.  Think about this: If you received an email from someone asking you to help them with a problem you had experience with, would you help them?  I think for most people, the answer is yes, of course they would.  But people don’t take the next step and actually ask for help very often because they fear people won’t be willing to help.  I think more people should.  What do you think?