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These days, I have been steadily preparing for a new era. The second decade of the 21st century awaits, with maybe two more years left before the end of civilization as we know it. With a few attempts at dating, and then keeping work projects from going SNAFU, I’ve found little time to do my own laundry (but I hear you can out-source that). I forget appointments and often end up late picking my mother up to go to her eye doctor’s appointment. My mother is very punctual, but unfortunately, I am not.

We have a good system. I take her to the doctor’s, she prepares containers full of food for me to take home. Usually, its two hours spent at the doctor’s with her, and I am kept in the waiting room while she has her eye exams done. The office is an IKEA showcase room with the standard placements of generic black and white photos in dark-stained frames. In the massive waiting area, rows of chairs line up against each other back-to-back. Mounted on the ceiling are large flat-screen televisions playing Pink Panther starring Steve Martin on a continuous loop. In the past year that I’ve been taking my mother here, I’ve seen this movie nearly 50 times. Once, I filled out a feedback/comment survey and wrote in large black letters, “FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, CHANGE YOUR MOVIE. That is all.” Since then, they have alternated with Jim Carey’s 2005 box-office hit, Fun with Dick and Jane, a movie determined to destroy your will to live.

I’ve been thinking lately that I need something to help me keep track of my appointments. Something in the way of a voice recorder that translates to Outlook appointments, or barring that, maybe a midget. Maybe a midget that follows me around with a pad of paper and pen. Maybe he’s wearing a tuxedo. Who knows. The point is, I need something to keep my life in order.

Maybe he would keep an eye on my steak so that anxious waitresses would not take my meal away from me, before even finishing half of it. It was probably my fault for looking away, momentarily being distracted with conversation.

It amazes me that at some point in the past, I was able to remember so much more. Before cell phones, we use to memorize phone numbers. Before GPS, I use to have to plan ahead. Now, most of things I need can be made available on demand. Now all that space that use to be reserved for information is a vacuous hole of grey matter. There is nothing left up there.

For the past three years, I’ve meticulously replaced all that space with movie trivia and various theories about Lost. Has my life gotten better? Has the utility in my daily life been increased? And how much would a midget assistant (MA) actually cost?

There is no certainty what will happen in 2010. Nick and I have an office now up at Yonge and Eglinton and maybe GoEyeball will start to take off. The goal of this all is to be liberated from full time work. The 9-5 life is foreign to me now. I can’t seem to be convinced that that is the best way to spend your life. There has to be a better way.

I should be writing more. I recently read an article on how to become a better writer, and it involves writing. Who would’ve thought. There is this concept of the ‘morning pages’ that writers do. They write every morning, first thing. Before coffee, before a sunny-side up egg on a piece of rye toast with lamb sausage on the side, they write a few words. 

This weekend, I spent most of it working on GoEyeball, preening and polishing. We just launched the redesign, and its now starting to gain momentum. There is some excitement there, especially when people find out that they can see a list of the most discounted items (i.e. have the biggest price drop) for free. People think we’re competing with Red Flag Deals, but in fact, I think we’d make great partners. Too bad they don’t see it that way.

Now, I’m neck-deep in Internet marketing and its a feeling somewhat foreign to me. I vaguely remember my life as a software programmer, too proud to resort to begging or too shy to reach out and network. Life in the world of business development requires a particular skill that most developers would shy away from. It requires the skill to communicate an idea without losing the audience; to reveal the hidden potential of a concept and to bring in customers without being needy. In these situations, all you can do is ask, ‘What would Obama do?’