I just said goodbye to my wife Claire as she steped out for her work day. Behind her she leaves our apartment in San Francisco which is filled with a collection of books, photo albums, trinkets we’ve collected on our travels, and Buster, our dog that we’ve had for almost a year. Right now she’s going off to support this life that we’ve built together over the last 10 years.

December 1st is our “dating” anniversary – And while we have a new anniversary that we celebrate for the day we wed, 10 years is worth taking pause. After all, at 30 years old, we’ve now been together for a third of our lives.

It turns out a lot can be done in ten years – from seeing each other through college, moving to San Francisco, traveling the world together, and getting married. Hell, if you search Claire in my flickr stream more then 1,800 photos come up since 2005. Instead of writing out all the amazing adventures we’ve been on together, which would take up way to much of your time, I’ve chosen to post a single photo of us for each year we’ve been together. The theme of the photos will be “smothering each other with love”.

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006 on our 5 year anniversary in Melbourne Australia

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

Here is to a decade with my love.

My birthday was on the 1st of January. I celebrated with some friends. That took all day. On January 2nd my wife and I got dog. On the 3rd I washed all the floors in our apartment and washed the dog. Today I am attempting to start what will be my “New Self”, or “Continued Self”, or “Whit 2.0”. Call it what you will – this is what I’ll be focusing on before I turn 30.

Work, Body, Self

My Work
The long short; I’ll be attempting to create a film.
This is a process that I began over five years ago, but was put on the back burner as I started a full time job. I won’t be telling you all about the film in this blog post, that will come in the not so distant future. Part of this process will also include:

- Filming interviews of people who help me throughout the process
- Blogging about the process

Lets be clear that there is a lot of work to do on this project, including a lot of writing to be done, but I’m starting to get my ducks in a row. You will be able to find everything about my film on my blog.

My Body
Setting specific goals for my body. I’m a pretty skinny guy with not so big muscles. This may not be a big deal to you, but adding 20 pounds of muscle to my body would be huge. Last year I joined a gym and have noticed what a difference it has made in how I feel from day to day. Not only do I have more energy, but I have more drive. If you work out, you probably know what I mean. For those of you who don’t know, I play ultimate Frisbee. So it’s not that I don’t run around all the time. In fact, I’m a very active person. It’s just time to set actual goals for my body to track any physical change.

There are three entrepreneurs who I look up to that are very conscious about their physical being; Loic Le Meur, Tim Ferriss and Dan Martell. All three of them openly talk about how important exercise is for them. I’ll be writing about this more soon, but to give you an idea of what I’ll be doing you can check out Tim Ferriss’ new book “The 4-Hour Body”. Getting in to the specifics – I’ll start with a slight diet change and a slight workout change. More to come on that. Tim, I’ll be trying to track you down for advice sometime soon.

P.S. I met Tim Ferriss once when he came into our offices for an interview. Seems like a very nice guy.

Self
I’ve done a lot of thinking over the past few years, wondering exactly what it is I want for myself. I’d like to explore this some more, and now I feel as though I’ll have the ‘space’ in which to do this. You’ll probably see my reflections on this in random blog posts moving forward.

There are several people who I have contacted to help me through this process. This isn’t a journey I plan on doing alone.

I could use help from anyone who is interested. Please contact me via my contact form if you are. If you would just like to follow along please to follow me using RSS, or e-mail where, yes, I will e-mail you when I update my blog. *old school*

Working from home is definitely new to me. I’m still struggling with it a bit. I’ve been in an office nearly every working day for the past 3 years so I’m finding that I’m having to learn how to adapt to my “new” environment. You would think that it would be an easy transition, but it’s not. For example, I’m having trouble figure out where to work. I don’t work from bed because that just doesn’t seem right – bed is for sleeping, not working. The living room has lots of places to sit but really nothing very desk like. I spend a lot of time on the phone, and when I’m on the phone I wander; so I end up doing laps around my house. I almost feel like I should pick up knitting again since it would give me something to do while talking. Who wants a scarf? (I’m not going to make you a scarf)

At least I have a nice view.

Coffee shops have been nice – I keep my focus in coffee shops. The people around me seem like they’re working hard – and like an office you feel like you can’t get away with goofing off. The problem is I feel as though I always have to be refilling my coffee, or eating a sandwich or something. This means two things. One, I’m spending more money then I’d like. After all I could be making my own coffee. (Which I do – and i’m sipping on right now. *sip*… Yum) and I’m consuming more then I’d like. The next problem is I feel like I overstay my welcome after an hour or so. If I get something to eat I feel like I can stay longer but after that it just doesn’t feel right to me. So I either have to move to another shop, or come home. Also, I don’t like taking calls at coffee shops, and I don’t like when other people take calls at coffee shops.

So what to do? I’m quickly learning that I like being around people a lot. The phone calls help in that i’m talking to someone during the day, but it’s not the same as having someone working near you. I’m not sure if I need to arrange more lunch meetings, or take people up on working in their offices? All I know is that I’m going to need to figure something out.

So I open this up to you. There are so many of you that aren’t working in the traditional office, @carlosdavis, @brookr, @starmike, @thomasknoll (for a while), @dotben, @danmartell, @tapps, @faboomama, @banannie, Mom. To name a few. If you have any tricks or tips that you could share with a novice, it would be a huge help; and please pass this along to anyone else you think might have some incite.

On the eve of my wife’s first day of work, I have decided to write about some of the changes that have occurred in the past six months of our lives. This is more a story of my changes than hers, but they’re so intertwined that it would be silly to not include some of hers. In April of this year Claire decided it was time to leave her job. That is the incredibly short, simplified version of her story. Moving on….

Somehow between then and now we’ve managed to go to Argentina, an awards ceremony for my aunt, 3 weddings, a hot air-balloon ride, Seattle and Bainbridge Island twice and four ultimate frisbee tournaments. This brings me to my work situation.

Luckily for us, we were able to save before Claire left work, and I am fortunate enough to work for a company that allows me to work remotely from time to time. This summer has easily been the most work intensive time of my life. About two months ago, I shot a video series with my boss on how to build your own brand online. The series then took me the next two months to produce, and is now being published daily online. Because these videos were my focus for two months straight I was able to take them with me on the road. I worked in coffee shops, I worked at friend’s houses, and I worked at all times of the day and sometimes late into the night. This was a time-intensive project, and has felt incredibly rewarding to know it’s all done.

When I finished this project a few weeks ago, I asked to go part time at Seesmic. Not because the project burned me out, or because I need time away from Seesmic – but because I decided, like my wife, that I needed to add something new to my life. I can’t leave Seesmic right now, I’m dedicated to seeing the company succeed. I’ve been there since day one, and I want to be there for the next chapter. But at the same time – I need something knew.

A few weeks ago I was hired by a television show based out of New York called “Late Night Republic” with Jake Sasseville. I’ve been put on the digital team to do a number of jobs – ranging from cutting and editing clips to post online, to helping create the new web page, running the Facebook and Twitter accounts, finding online personalities to feature on the show both online and on TV, and helping with ad campaigns created for our sponsors. Suffice to say, I have my work cut out for me, but I’m lucky enough to have a great support team at both companies.

So Claire goes back to work tomorrow, and I am partially relieved of my bringing-home-the-bacon duties. My work load has grown over the last few months, but so have I. This chapter of our life began with Claire deciding she was going to leave her job in April, and it’s clear that it’s not quite over.

I recently finished a book I probably should have read when I was 13. Who would I be now if I had read the character of Cyrus Smith the Engineer as a teenager instead of an adult? The Mysterious Island was written by Jules Verne and published in 1874. The novel takes place during the United States Civil War, with our main characters being held prisoners in the South. The five prisoners work together to escape, but soon find themselves deserted on a deserted island. (Man I could use an ice cream sundae.)

I don’t pick up island books very often. Are there a lot of them out there? I can’t seem to think of many. There’s that one where the kids are on an island, they get all crazy, then eat each other – I think. What was that one called? Never read it. Anyway, I never would have thought that an island would be a good spot for a book to take place, but it turns out if the island is mysterious, it’s an awesome place! You go Jules!

Back to Cyrus Smith, who shouldn’t be mistaken for Sirius Black from the Harry Potter novels, though he too is valiant, determined, courageous, resourceful, steadfast and has a name that starts with a ‘Sa’ sound and ends with a ‘us’ sound – they are not the same character no matter how much you wish them to be (having a wizard on the island really would have changed the cast-aways’ situation). Cyrus Smith is now my ideal man. I mean, should be considered the ideal man. He seems to know everything. The guy builds houses, casts iron, makes gun powder and other explosive devices. He plants gardens, makes an elevator using a waterfall, and helps create the coolest living space I’ve ever read about. I don’t think I gave anything away other than Cyrus Smith being a bad-ass.

What truly amazed me in reading the Mysterious Island was the way in which Jules Verne was able to describe Cyrus Smith’s discoveries on the island. His descriptions of how he transformed these materials into items that would make the castaways’ lives easier or more productive. By reading the Mysterious Island I have learned a few important things about myself. First, I want to own a smart dog that cares about nothing but me, and what I want it to do. Second, If I had to live off of natural resources on my own or with a few others, we’d have well put together clothes, and could probably grow tomatoes, but I’d really have to work my memory to make strong bricks – and unless we had a match and wanted to keep a fire burning year-round, I better learn to make fire. Oh and I need to learn some hunting skills.

Luckily I live on a peninsula and not an island. I don’t have to make all of these things, I can buy them. I am warm in my house while I read my book, this too is nice. Now I either need to pick up a book that teaches me all of these skills before our world is flipped inside out from global warming and we all have to fend for ourselves (deep breath)… Or, I need to come up with a plan to save the planet so I don’t have to learn all of these things.

Now it’s time for that sundae.

It’s been a while since I had a good road trip. Now in the last week and a half I’ve gone to Seattle and back. I’m not a short guy so you’d assume that sitting in a car for 12 hours with 3 other humans and one dog wouldn’t be my idea of a great time. Well you would think wrong. Seriously, get with it. The ladies are beautiful and dear to my heart, and Skip (who’s even taller then me) makes sure everyone is always having fun.

What do you do for 10 – 12 hours in a car? You catch up. You make sure you know everything that’s going on in everyone’s life. You brainstorm amazing business ideas – and most of all you laugh until your cheeks hurt. You can also snuggle with the dog – she likes that.

There are some great books out there about road tripping and traveling out on the open road. It’s no secret that it’s one of Americas favorite pastimes – and we were basically the family version of “Travels with Charlie” (honestly I don’t remember a damned thing about Travels with Charlie; I assure you I read the book though). For me the appeal is getting out of the city and urban sprawl, and eventually hitting the golden rolling hills of California, the climb into Mount Shasta (somehow I always miss the meat bonanza in Shasta City) then the green valleys and lush trees of Oregon. Eventually entering a city that is nothing like the one I live in. I love when it’s a little warm and you can drive with the windows down, the music up, and you sing at the top of your lungs. That’s a road trip.

It seems to be in my blood. I remember traveling time and time again with my dad from LA to the bay area. My dad was so good at keeping me occupied on the trip up. We sang, I would draw, he once even let me plug my piano keyboard into the car stereo to pound out some tunes. As I get older I definitely take note of becoming sore after staying in the car for to long. I also feel bloated. When we came back from Seattle I instantly wanted to go to the gym (so I did). I’m also very conscientious about my environmental impact. I remember reading once how much prehistoric energy from the growth of forests, the perfect circumstances of decomposition with added pressure and heat in the earth that it takes to create oil. Then the massive amount of work and energy it takes to pull the fossil fuel from our earth (at least this is how I remember it : “The Weather Makers” by Tim Flannery). Then we burn it without a thought. This is hard for me to swallow.

So as I grow older I find myself considering new things about the road trip. How long am I able to stay in a car before I want to jump out. Could I even jump out once my legs have cramped up? How much gas am I using and what effect will it have on our planet? Should I stop at the black bear diner for a milkshake or will that just add to the bloated feeling? These seem to be things that I’ll have to keep considering as time continues to push forward. In the meantime I’ll reminisce on the trip to Seattle and Back. The first one with 1 (and only) wife, 2 friends and a dog. The second with 1 (same one) wife, and one great friend. It really felt good to be on the road again.

I won’t be making it out to SXSW this week – It just didn’t work out this year. But I have a simple request to my friends who will be there. I’d like you to help me be a SXSW meme amongst each other. The idea of a meme simply put by wikipedia is a “unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures”. This can be done a few ways.

Writing: When you’re out this week, and I would have been out with you hashtag #sxsw #ws – The #ws for Whit Scott. The search looks like this.
Speach: When you’re heading out to parties you should remember as a group to invite me. Please invite invisible me verbally. Here is a picture of Thomas, Rachael and invisible me at SXSW last year.
Gestures: You’re all creative, I assume you’ll be able to come up with some Whit style gestures. If I was there it’d probably look like this.

At this point I can’t really get much out of South By South West unless I become a meme. Maybe I’ll even meet people this way… Imagine Thomas Knoll tweeting my hashtag and Ethan noticing it. Ethan asks Thomas what he’s doing, thinks about me, then tags me up for the rest of the conference. This meme can be endless. By the end of the conference, people who don’t know me will think I was there.

In the mean time i’ll be participating in #SXSWSF (south by south west san francisco) – SXSWSF happening now all around us.
I’ve heard you can go to: Temper Trap Expression College 12:30pm, Violent Soho Amoeba records 6pm today (Friday) if you’re actually looking to be around people who are participating in #sxswsf. You can follow the SXSWSF hashtag here.

The people who can help me out that I’ll be missing this year include but are not limited to:
Thomas Knoll
Ethan
Sean
Dan Martell
Ben
Yama
Violet
Alicia
Adam Duffy
Jonathan Nafarrete
Natasha Wescoat
Willo
Sarah Vela
Derek Overbey who did this interview of me last year.
Tracy Apps
Rachael Joy
Sarah C
Phill Campbell
Paul Stamatiou

I hope you all have a great time, and I look forward to following you all vicariously.

I lost my iPhone and I’m pretty sure it’s not going to come back. The picture below is not a picture of my phone, nor is it a picture of my hand. If you see that hand, or that iPhone – no need to ask if it’s mine, because it’s not. Mine had more icons on the home screen.

The reason I am writing to you today is in hopes that I can find an iPhone 3G to purchase from you, your friend, or your mom (moms usually have extra iPhones – I asked my mom, but she had already given it to my sister, so will you please ask your mom for me? Thank you.), or your neighbor. It seems to me with the iPhone 3GS available now there must be drawers full iPhone 3G’s out there. We both know that they are just declining in value, and you’re just waiting for the next iPhone to come out.

The truth is I’d rather give you, your friend, or your mom money than Apple and AT&T. I went through the rebate brewhaha at Apple yesterday and laughed my way straight out of the store.

I don’t want to pay $299 for the 3G and have to sign another two year contract, when in six months I could get the 3GS upgrade for like $199. If that didn’t make sense to you, don’t worry, all that needs to make sense is that I would like to buy your phone from you.

Thank you in advance, please send this post to your friends (ReTweet). They may have friends that have an iPhone that they have been trying to sell for the last four months.

Thomas and I won a Ford Fiesta for 6 months! We’re not exactly sure what that means at this point – What we do know is that we’ll be heading down to LA on the 19th in order to pick up the car. Now the question that is in your head is likely to be, what color car are you two getting? Well I’m glad I thought you might ask that. The color options for the “Ford Agents”, as they call us, were Black, Silver, Lime Green and Magenta. Because Thomas and I couldn’t have won the car without the help of so many people, we decided to leave that decision in the hands of said people.

Obviously they choose lime green…
So yes, we’ll be driving a lime green Ford Fiesta for 6 months, being agents, doing missions – Again, that is all I know.

The agent web page is up on the Fiesta Movement web site, and if you’d like to see our bio that was written by the beautiful and talented Giselle Kennedy, you should go here.

If you have no idea what i’m talking about because you’ve been hiding under a rock or have a dial-up connection, watch this (unless you have dial-up, you should just turn off your computer and read a book).

As the missions begin we’ll be posting a lot of content, probably here, on my flickr account, on facebook or friendster (j/k), youtube, and of course tweeting the bajesus out of it all on Twitter using the new Seesmic Desktop Client! <- That post to come soon.

See you on the road!

About 2 weeks ago my coworker Thomas Knoll and I were sent a forward from our boss who had received an e-mail from Julia Roy about the Fiesta Movement. (I love when my blog posts start with sentences like, “my fiance’s sisters boyfriends sister works for the Golden State Warriors” – sounds super legit.)

What is the Fiesta Movement you may be asking yourself… or asking me?
Well it looks as though it’s Fords ad campaign for the release of the Ford Fiesta schedualed to release in the US in 2011.
What it really is is a very smart ad campaign by Ford to get people to post videos on YouTube and send it to all their friends, Tweet about it and write blog posts like the one you’re reading.

What we have to do: Send in a video saying why we would be good “Ford Agents”.

What we did: We just posted a video of us driving around San Francisco and talked about how cool we are. Which is not very (cool that is)…

Also worth noting:
Ford posted our video on their site 2 days after we posted it.
We made teasers for our video, 9 in all, they’re short, but decent.

More importantly then winning the Ford Fiesta, Thomas and I think we should try to enter all the video competitions we can find online and make a show out of it. If you have any leads be sure to let one of us know.