I turn 21 in the next few days. Friday was the day I was supposed to graduate from college. Writers live interesting lives, I remember Tucker saying a couple years ago. That’s what I’ve been trying to do since.

It’s funny how stuff comes together. Nature’s inadvertence. How it all lines up. You get lucky. You get fucked. Get so worked up about something and it just fades away. In two or three days, it goes a direction you couldn’t even have even considered. When you space that over a year, the distance you can travel is almost incomprehensible. If you can just have a little faith in yourself and the ability to get lost a little in the present.

I’ve been fired. Twice. Promoted. An Executive. I wouldn’t even want to check public records for my name, who knows what will turn up now. Thought about going back to school. Met some celebrities, cashed a big check. Been humbled, a little. Tried to listen more than I talk – failed. Started to know what I need to be happy.

But if I were a start up, my valuation would just be starting to accelerate. I haven’t turned Pro yet, but I’m starting to know what that means.

Which, by the way, is exactly how I’m starting to look at developing yourself. Like a start up. You are start up. Don’t worry about monetization. Or a safety net or health insurance or an office. Aim for critical mass and pick up support wherever you can. Woo every customer. Find something that no one else does and do it better than they ever can. Invest in yourself. Sweat equity. What are you doing? Do you love it? Start ups run on love. Read the books. Look for the angel investors. Have an exit strategy.

Most of my friends are moving home for the summer. Or they’re graduating and moving home again anyway. Apparently, that’s something to be admired. Fuck That. This is your life. All the tools and opportunities and chances that you’re supposedly waiting for, you can leverage now. And not only will you be rewarded for doing so, but people are desperately hoping that you will.

I’m in so unbelievably above my level that I can’t articulate it, but you know what – it’s working. It’s working so well that I’m having to seriously thinking about learning how to say “no.” Whatever skills I have, there are a lot of people who not only have them too, but in addition to a cadre of others that I will never be able to call mine.

Like I said, this is your life. I can only speak about mine. That’s all I really try to do here. I’ve been extremely lucky to meet people who’ve giving me the freedom to develop myself on their tab. But they’re a different breed of people and they’re only going to invest in you when you make the conscious decision to be different yourself.

So I did it. You should do.

When I first took my internship at the management company in Hollywood, they were investing in a social networking site that had all kinds of cool potential. A year, close to a hundred thousand dollars and a total redesign later, the site is actually less popular that where it was before. There were a bunch of reasons for this, but going over the site recently, I came across the most telling one. Not once in the last six months has the founder uploaded anything to his own site. Nothing. And he can’t figure out why no one is joining.

Clay Shirky tells this story about Flickr. Caterina Fake, one of the founders, insisted from the beginning that employees not only have their own Flickr accounts but that they actively comment on the photos of other users. The community didn’t come from nowhere.

Since I took over Fail Dogs, traffic is up for two reasons. One, I update all the time. Two, I’ve systematically gone through and touched almost everybody that matters in that space. In less than 30 days it’s gone from 565,000 pageviews a month to just over 750,000, all because I sat down and got involved. And if you count all the impression off the site itself, we’re just inches away from cracking the million mark.

There is only one way to build a New Media presence.

Your blog will fail unless you post on it. Your delicious account is worthless if you’re not using it. You’ll get nothing from Wikipedia without editing. You’ll never be the source of conversation if you don’t personally start it. Your connections will dry up unless you make consistent contact. And all of the equalizing power of new media is lost on you if you can’t step up and extend yourself.

One day you’ll probably want something from the internet – you’ll have a book to promote, a business that needs customers, someone you need to meet, a ebay auction you’re trying to sell, a job you’re after. It’ll be too late then. You have to start before. And there’s only one way to do that.

“nobody in their right mind would hold back making revenue if it were available.” – comment on TechCrunch

There are two reactions to that comment. It either makes complete sense or you can’t even comprehend someone believing it. If a company’s goal is to make money, why would they ever turn it down? Well that’s like saying that no general would ever withdraw when they could advance. Why would they ever not take territory? A quick look at history shows us that they do that all the time:

Pericles in the Black Sea. Stonewall Jackson at Shenandoah. Themistocles at Salamis.[1] In some cases it’s even got it’s own name, Tactical Retreat

Smart companies, like smart generals, know that money is just money unless it has strategic value. You can get revenue anywhere, especially an innovative place like Google. So that’s not the question. It’s “what does this revenue bring me and am I better off for it?” If it doesn’t have strategic value, then it’s not worth going after.

It’s really easy to latch on to aphorisms or take for granted commonly traded assumptions. Getting yourself to the point where you can think strategically – deeply and counter intuitively – is difficult. It takes a lot of work. It would be easier if things fit in nice little logical boxes but they don’t. There’s this messy middle ground between ignorance and critical thinking that’s discouraging to navigate.

Ultimately, though that’s YOUR JOB. And if you don’t do it, if you don’t want to, then don’t expect the benefits.

[1] Pericles and Stonewall examples from 48 Laws of Power Law 47 (pg 416) and Law 17 (pg 127) respectively.