After battling the crud last weekend and early this week, I’m happy to say that I’m working at 90% for this edition of Thursday Screencaps. Thank you to those who have reached out during this difficult time. I was facing the possibility of not being able to sit on the patio this weekend to watch football, swim, suck down beers and enjoy summer.
The football gods intervened. They weren’t having it. There’s golf to play with Screencaps Jr. There are garden tours to do with Mrs. Screencaps. Folks, I’M BACK (enough).
Let’s get rolling this morning … remember Wednesday Screencaps where I challenged you guys to tell me about pivot points in your life? I was blown away by some of the responses. Truly. I’m constantly shocked by the intellectual level of people who care about this column, which was created approximately 15 years ago to be a column for sports-loving degenerates. Instead, even though I haven’t changed the format, Screencaps has morphed into a daily dose of reality for intellectuals, degenerates and those of us who are just seeking out an authentic part of the internet where real conversations are being had.
– Steven S., a “career investigator,” emails: I always enjoy reading your stories. I particularly love the parts about how you discuss your $10 URL and how it changed your life. I enjoy collecting stories from how people have changed their lives from a seemingly mundane decision. My question to you is have you ever thought about writing a manuscript or book about your own career for others to follow and read? I would be interested in hearing more about this career transformation.
Kinsey: I look at the Screencaps archive as being the book on my career. At this point, the book has something like 5,000 pages. Maybe more. I’ve always thought books were reserved for really important people. Personally, I’ve never wanted to be published book important. The genesis of this column and my career came out of the troubling economic times of 2008-2010-11. My work was always about helping people forget about divorces they were going through, jobs they were losing and lives that just weren’t going the right way.
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Steven, maybe I just need someone like you to guide me here. What do people want to hear about in a book?
– GDaddy shares a story from his own personal book and it’s a perfectly-timed email: Choosing a new fork in the road. On January 26, 1976, I was living in Cleveland and was in Toledo on business and having dinner and a couple of beers at a Ramada Inn on Reynolds Road. We were talking business for along timeand ultimately a young lady from Waterville, Ohio came to our table and asked us what was so interesting after first apologiing for interrupting us. Short story, we didn’t know it was ‘Monday Night Singles Night” and that a band was going to start playing soon.
I was 33 at the time and divorced, my boss was a couple of ;years older than me and the lady from Waterville was 24 and her Owens Illinois co-worker was a couple of years older and they were single with no kids. We had a couple of beverages with them, and may have danced a dance, I got a phone number before us two guys headed off to our rooms. Could have been end of story. . .
I was going to be in Toledo again on Feb 5, and I called “Miss Waterville” to see if she might like to have dinner on the 5th and she said something like,”I guess so”. . . We had dinner, and there was a big snowstorm, and could have been end of story again. . .
(condensed version now) . We started dating and we decided to get an apartment together in mid-April adjacent to Brandywine. I’d competed in golf for several years and we started playing golf together (and we still play now at 83 and 74). On August 22, 1976 we were having dinner at The Charcoal House which used to be at 4031 Talmadge Rd (I know that from looking at the receipt that we had framed). My wife-to-be said “let’s get married” (thinking that I wasn’t going to be accommodating).
I said “OK” and the next question from her was “when?” I thought it over briefly and then said, “How about next Friday night after golf league?”
She looked a little stunned but said she would call her minister the next morning and she would start making whatever plans needed to really be made. I said that I would talk with the guys running the league and make sure that my partner and I would get the first tee time at 5:00PM so that we could get the “ceremony” done and then have a dinner down on the River. As it turned out, her minister was on vacation the following week and she had to get another minister to unite us. My best man was my golf partner (a young lawyer), our team won our match on Friday night at Riverby Hills, and we got married and had a nice dinner on the Maumee.
That was 50 years ago today, September 3, 1976. We had a fabulous honeymoon attending the World Series of Golf in Akron, and also going to Cedar Point.
Golf is something you can do for a lifetime, and you’re usually playing it with friends and having a good time. Nobody gets in the clubhouse and starts talking about their bad shots—it’s all about the good shots each of us hit. Over the years we’ve attended lots of great golf tournaments, starting with the initial Memorial Tournament in’76.
Been to the Masters, President’s Cup, PGA, US Open, the first 12 Tour Championships (the company I worked for in Atlanta was one of the original sponsors), and we’ve gotten to play some fabulous golf courses.
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I could go on and on and brag about my kids and my 8 grand kids (5 of 8 live in Ohio) but let me finish by saying that the “fork in the road” was there in January 1976, and a young lady from Waterville Ohio came over to interrupt a couple of business-talking guys, and that road that was taken gets better and better every single moment of every year that has gone by. It’s our Love Story. . . . and I definitely out-kicked my coverage!
Kinsey: Happy anniversary, GDaddy. Now I need to figure out a way to play 18 with GDaddy. The guy is 83 and seems like one of the guys and probably pumps bombs right down the middle to the 150 stake.
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– Pat R., MD (a real doctor of medicine) emails: I follow your columns regularly and enjoy them tremendously, but your column about the “zigs” in our lives, those moments that end up defining everything that comes afterward, really resonated with me.
It made me stop for a minute and think about my own life, and I realized I know exactly what my zig was.
In 1996, I was 35 years old (oh so young! hehe), the mother of 4 children. My youngest was only six months old and I decided to go to medical school. Looking back, it sounds somewhat crazy even to me. I had a whole list of sensible reasons not to do it. But it was my dream, so I did it.
With it came sacrifices for me and the family but also many rewards. This decision led to a career as a medical oncologist that has been extraordinarily satisfying. I have had the privilege of caring for people during some of the most difficult moments of their lives, participating in research, building programs, and doing work that, after all these years, I still love.
Your column made me realize something: becoming a physician was not really the defining moment. Graduating from medical school wasn’t either.
The defining moment was being a 35 year old mother of 4, and deciding to take the zig of a lifetime. Everything else followed from that.
Thank you for writing something that made me look back at my own life from a different angle.
Kinsey: I did my due diligence on Pat R. and realized just how important her pivot was and what it meant for the world of medicine. I’m truly honored that Pat R. even cares what’s written in Screencaps. I don’t mean that as a slight to the degenerate businessmen who read this column while slamming drinks in airport lounges. I respect you guys, too, but Pat R. has done some cancer work that is personal for me.
Pat, I have no idea what made you want to read, but I’m happy to have you.
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– James Mc shares his life pivot point where everything changed: So, so easy for me. 1983, Sitting in the living room of an economy apartment (that also doubled as the bedroom) with a group of friends, staring at the apartment’s resident. He was a 24- or 25-year-old Ice Cream Shop manager (a future Al Bundy if ever there was one) passing out beer as he mesmerized several of the naive 17- and 18-year-old girls in attendance with tales of his fabulous job.
It was at that very moment that I realized, “Oh my God, that is going to be me in just a few short years!” Hopefully, moving up the ranks at our local grocery store from sacker, to cashier, to stocker, or perhaps even an assistant manager one day.
By the end of the evening, I’d made up my mind. I hopped in my 1976 Datsun B-210 and headed across town to the military enlistment center where I slept for the remainder of the night. Military recruiters’ days begin early, and I was waiting for them. I boldly marched into the Air Force recruiting office and announced I was ready to join-up (hang-over and all). Several hours of paperwork later, I was on my way. It took an additional six weeks to finalize everything, but I was finally off to boot camp and an adventure that would span the next 21 years.
During that time, I would meet my future wife (also Air Force) at Rhein Main Air Force Base, Germany and be married less than 6 months later in Denmark. We would be stationed at an additional 8 Air Force Bases both overseas and in-country throughout my career, survive two terrorist bombings, two major hurricanes, and adopt our 2 beautiful daughters.
It was one heck of a ride, and all thanks to a 24- or -25-year old Ice Cream Shop manager!
– Scott W.’s pivot point started with getting sober: Your column on $10 URLs and life pivots hit right where it needed to for me this morning.
My pivot didn’t start in a pristine office, it started in a stretch in rehab for the sauce. I was sitting there, coding away on a computer with zero internet connection, just trying to keep my head clear and build something real. During one of the only two family visits I was allowed the entire time, I managed to sneak away just long enough to jump online and register a domain name, the one I have emailed you from.
I already had 20 years of software engineering behind me, solving problems for plenty of big companies. But this time, I was fighting for my own life, and building something I actually believed in and was mine.
When I got out, I aligned with a co-founder who went through the thick of it with me. We raised money, set off to build the business, and well… I stayed sober.
For ten long years, almost everyone in my circle treated the whole thing like a punchline, even as I made massive gains in my day job, my dream to them was a joke. Friends, family, and critics, people who thought it was all just a prank or a pipedream, even after raising a small but respectable $650k, laughed it off. But I kept betting on the methodology and the sheer will behind that original URL.
Then came last month.
Out of nowhere, I landed a massive contract as a major vendor for a top type of company I won’t name. Overnight, a ten-year itch turned into a dead-serious reality, with fortunately all of the infrastructure to maintain it already built over ten years. Now, I get to stay home (well technically I have been coding from home for last 4 years for a large aerospace company), write code in my pajamas, and make more money than I could’ve even pictured four months ago.
That quick, snuck-in domain purchase in the middle of rehab didn’t just spawn a company, it anchored my recovery and completely reshaped the rest of my life over the last 10 years of trying to prove my thoughts were valid. No fanfare, no bragging, no “I told you so” back to my critics, just the epic rush of reaching the beachhead of my vision and what’s to come….and making mad bank doesn’t hurt 🙂 The biggest defining moment, aside from my kids and grandchild, yet.
Kinsey: There are plenty more life pivot point stories to come. Keep emailing.
– Kevin shares the final bill to furnish his daughter’s dorm room: My daughter‘s final total was $1785!!!! And that was just for her part. Her roommate also spent money. A lot of that was for her personal stuff like blankets and sheets and pillows (she didn’t listen to Dad and get the purple pillow because what does Dad know anyway) And then a dresser and stuff for her walls, etc. But I just can’t believe how much it cost. Good thing Mom went with her instead of dad because I’d be like do you really need that?
It feels like a setup, but I’m going to chalk up this preseason as a major marketing pivot for the league, especially with this being the final year Taylor Swift will be regularly visiting stadiums.
The NFL already told us that the blonde NFL QB girlfriends will be important to marketing moving forward. Now we get this show from Alix Earle on Netflix. We’re entering a new era, but I still have my guard up because the NFL always has ulterior motives. Don’t get fully sucked in.
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We’re at 2,500 words this morning. That’s plenty. Let’s get rolling. Go give 110% at life today, even if you’re playing at 90%.