Free Falling

It's 3:36 AM West Coast time. This isn't a bad time if you are on the east coast or in Europe. Problem is, I am not. The reality is, I am an insomniac. I don't remember how or why, it's just one of those things that creaped into my head sometime in my 20s. Some nights I just get up. When I was younger I would rummage through the fridge for a beer or a glass of wine or something to put me to sleep. That never really helped much. I'd find that the next day I would be groggy and spent most of the night fretting about being awake and thinking about how tired I would be the next day. Now, I just get up and work. Stressing doesn't help. The reality is, tomorrow night I will sleep in a deep coma. I can cope with that.

I wasn't sure what it was that was keeping me awake at 1:35 AM or so. It could have been my oldest son Tate who was sleeping in my bed last night, kicking me in the head and ribs. Prolly not. I find a way to get through that many nights. Rather I think it is flying. Around 2:30 or so I realized that I haven't flown since early January and a common theme in my insomnia is traveling. I am not sure if it is the excitement of being on the road (yuk) or my innate fear of flying. I don't recall how that started but as I have spent more and more time traveling back and forth across the continent, an irrational fear of flying has been one of the things I pack in my backpack for each trip. Laptop? Check. Business cards? Check. Presentation? Check. White knuckle fear of turbulence? Check.

I stopped traveling pretty much in the last several months of the year. Not because I wanted to or because it was an option. It was mostly because we hit one of those early milestones you hit in a startup. We had ramped up. The time between June of last year when we launched on Verizon to August when we raised money, to October when we were trying to go from a handful of people to an actual team had finally set in. It was time to put the pieces together.

The good news is we have. I think about the team we have in place and I am blown away. We are set to do much damage. The combination of internet and wireless talent we have assembled is impressive. Already in the last several weeks the output has been awesome. And so now it is time to get on the road again. Not the same platinum level of flying from last year, but certainly a good dose of the right meetings to make sure we move the needle faster than everyone else. The dirty secret in all of this is execution is key. All things being equal, getting things done quickly tends to give you an advantage. I think that this is something at the core of what we are and what we have become. Something about only the paranoid survive. I like that.

Ok. So this has run it's course. I think I can steal away a cat nap before I hit the airport. Yawn. More later. I am brining he camera. I like how San Francisco looks through the lens of a camera.