Today. I don’t even know where to start. This is probably going to be short and moderately incoherent, but I have some crazy that I need to get out. This is, after all, my blog.

I’ve been doing some social media work at an ad agency recently. My sense of self worth has bounced back to a level equal to or higher than it was before I got fired just by being there. I love what I’m doing. Every minute of it. Today, the owner called me in to discuss a permanent job opportunity. I love the work. I love the office. I love the people there. It’s a better fit than I could have ever imagined. My feet didn’t touch the ground for hours.

There was only one person that I wanted to share the news with: Katy. She’s been really busy at work lately and never has time to talk on the phone, so I’ve been trying to limit my daytime communication with her to GMail Chat. Of course, today was the one day that she wasn’t signed on all day. Finally, at about 4:00, she logged in and sent me a message, asking me what happened. I gushed the details to her as quickly as I could in case she got called away to do something else. She seemed… unaffected by the news. Very short responses and no sense of excitement. But I didn’t want to let it get me down. I thought she might be distracted with work. It’s hard to determine one’s sentiment via text alone.

When I got home, there was no mention of my news. No congratulations. No “tell me all about it.” I sensed something bad was coming. And I was right. What I viewed as an awesome opportunity to start working in the industry I so badly want to be a part of, she viewed as the financial opportunity for me to move back out. She’s not happy and doesn’t think she ever will be with me again. Nothing specific. Just… that. Our marriage is apparently over. Again. I wasn’t aware of that.

So tonight is one of the most confusing nights of my life. Every time I get excited about the new opportunity in front of me, the thought of my best friend walking out of my life is like a dagger to my heart. And whenever I start to dwell on losing Katy, a smile creeps across my lips when I remember the new job. If I don’t have some type of illness from this absolute assault on my immune system in the next few days, it’s gonna be a friggin’ miracle.

I couldn’t be happier about my new job. I actually look forward to going to work every day for the first time in my life. I just wish my best friend was going to be there to share it with me. I don’t know what else to say here.

I had a lot of footage from my Flip UltraHD lying around and it seemed a shame not to use it. The audio track is “Clocks & Timepieces” by the Detroit band Search The City. Some of the video is from Jolie O’Dell’s visit to Toledo, the Mashable #Hyatt4Good Tweetup Tour stop in Chicago, #Tattooleetup, and the July #Toleetup. And yes, the title and logo are a play on My So-Called Life. Who’s old enough to remember that show? Read the rest of this entry »

As many of you already know, my employer terminated my employment last Thursday. Since I was apparently officially employed until the end of the business week, I’m considering today “Day One” of my bout with unemployment. But make no mistake, I am not a statistic. I am not a victim. I’m a husband, a father, and a social media evangelist. A piece of paper from a former employer can’t change any of those things.

I’m getting ready to drop my son off at preschool, then head down to Bowling Green to Job & Family Services. With any luck, I’ll be able to secure unemployment benefits sometime in the next month or so. I’m not broke yet, but the money will run out in the next couple months. If unemployment kicks in, I can stretch that time out a bit and attempt to parlay this time off into a career in social media.

On the advice of my good friend and mentor Damian Rintelmann, I’m taking the next few weeks to continue networking. It’s my sincere hope that if people get to know me, they’ll see that I can bring something fresh to the table. Tomorrow, I’m leaving for Chicago for two days. In the evening, I’ll be attending Sarah Evans‘ launch party for Sevans Strategy. At that party, I’ll finally get to meet Brett Petersel. Brett has shared advice and connected me with  people on a number of occasions. It’ll be nice to finally have the chance to thank him in person. On Wednesday morning, I have the privilege of meeting with Leah Jones of Natiiv Arts & Media.

I have a busy week ahead of me. You’re welcome to come along for the ride. I’m going to try to document this metamorphosis as best as I can. I’ll be posting videos to Qik, tweeting updates to Twitter, and blogging here fairly often. This is about to get interesting…

Update: How… in the hell… did I forget to thank Ezra Butler?!? The man has been my most vocal supporter and a great friend throughout this whole thing. Sorry, Ez. It will not happen again.

I wish my name started with a hard consonant. You know the ones I’m talking about: B, D, G, T, V, and Z. They’re a built-in nickname.

The other day, I saw a friend that I’ve known for fifteen years. His name is Damian. I said, “What’s up, D?” That’s never been an officially-sanctioned nickname for him. But he knew I was talking to him.

Nobody has ever walked up to me and said, “What’s up, M?” It sounds ridic. My last name starts with P. There is one guy at work who calls me “Master P.” But this is the same guy that I’ve had a running argument with for two years about who would win in a fight between a badger and a wolverine. Read the rest of this entry »

As I was getting ready to go to sleep tonight, I saw the following tweet from @zaneology:

When I followed the link, I was taken to the YouTube video below. Throughout the day, news reports of Michael Jackson’s death flooded my senses. At the risk of sounding callous, I didn’t really care. It was presented as a news story, not the loss of a human life. But as I sat alone in the dark in front of the cool glow of my monitor, this video hit me in a really strange way. Read the rest of this entry »

Did you know that a group of kangaroos is called a mob? On a completely unrelated note, I spent the majority of Friday in the hospital. I received a prank phone call on Saturday from two social media rock stars that I respect and admire. I thought I was dying again on Monday. And I had my store’s best inventory ever on Saturday, immediately followed by an email confirming that a local network television station would definitely be covering Tattooleetup. How’s that for a wild ride on the WTF rollercoaster?

Let’s start at the beginning. On Thursday night, Katy, Noah and I ordered a Chicken Bacon Ranch from Vito’s Pizza. Nom nom nom! Those things are so good, it’s ridic. Anyhow, after my little man and beautiful wife called it a night at around 10:00, I stayed up and played around on the internets for a couple hours. I climbed in bed at around midnight and fell asleep pretty quickly. At about 2:30, I woke up to the most excruciating pain that I’ve ever felt in my life. My stomach felt like I was digesting broken glass. It was awful! I made the mistake of stumbling out to the couch to curl up in a fetal position. I realized the error in my ways when I called out to Katy, but was too far away for her to hear me. The pain was so intense at that point that I could no longer move long enough to get back to the bedroom. This lasted for close to an hour. Read the rest of this entry »

After last Friday’s Social Media Breakfast Toledo, I decided to document my five year life plan. Rather than spend all afternoon blogging about it, I opted to shoot a quick video while running out to McDonald’s to grab Noah a Happy Meal. You can watch that video below.

But my Five Year Plan had to take the backseat to my Five Minute Plan, thanks to being absent-minded from a complete lack of sleep. You can also watch that video below.

This is classic. I almost completely forgot about this. Sometimes I’m glad I’m such an email pack rat. With over half a million followers, Justine Ezarik (iJustine) has a following to followers ratio of 1:209. That means that she follows less than one half of 1% of the people who follow her. How did I get so lucky? No idea.

Interesting side-note: I stopped following her when every other tweet was about cupcakes. I figured that’s when she jumped the shark. But after sampling the many yummy varieties of Cake in a Cup with Ken, Becki, and Katy, I’m starting to understand what she was talking about. Now I feel as though I may have judged her prematurely. Cupcakes are F’in amazing! I might have to start following her again. Sorry, Justine. We’ll always have cupcakes.

This morning, I finally got to attend a Social Media Breakfast Toledo (#SMBTOL). I got so see some familiar faces and finally had the opportunity to move beyond the Twitter avatars with others. This isn’t intended to be a comprehensive  list of attendees. Rather, these are the TOLeeps that I’ve connected with on a personal level, all of whom share valuable content on Twitter. Read the rest of this entry »

Hola. Welcome to the new home for my personal blog posts. If you haven’t read my Why Another Blog? page, do so now. You haven’t read it. Why are you still here? Seriously. Go read it! Cool. That saves me from saying some of the same things twice. From this point forward, this blog will be all about my life outside of social media. If you arrived here via some form of trickery and could care less about my personal life, go back to SocialSev where you came from.

Now that we’ve weeded out the stragglers, I hope you’ll continue to follow all of my adventures with Noah, Katy, and the rest of the people near and dear to my heart. I probably won’t be updating here with the frequency of the past as I will be focusing most of my energy on honing my “professional” blogging skills and getting TOLeeps up and running. But I’ll try to update here every now and then. Whether it be escapades with my little man, date nights with my beautiful wife, or random adventures with Matt, Whitney, or my “Twitter friends,” I’ll make a genuine effort to spend some time here. And speaking of Twitter, follow me at @7son75 if you don’t already. Updates to both blogs will be tweeted from that account thanks to the good folks over at twitterfeed. Until then, thanks for reading.