Hey, Joi, Here I Am

I've been getting to know Joi Ito -- finally -- and reading his blog about IRC and Salaryman Suicide (yikes) and all sorts of things. When reading about his new IRC community of friends, it touches something deep in me. It occurs to me that people have a gigantic interest in knowing one another, as well as knowing about one another. Admit it. Everyone does. You want to know all the stupid little details about how other people live and what they do and what they eat and what they think, don't you?

So here I am. I am sitting at 5:11am in my red plaid cotton Old Navy pj's at my dining room table, typing on my new Vaio that they gave me at my new job at Yaga.com which btw is really a great place to work -- it happens to be a great place to work for a lot of reasons -- but it's literally a "great place" to work because it's in my house -- right here -- I work out of my own home -- with HQ in San Francisco. I just started and it's so exciting because the people I work with are terrific and amazingly smart and interesting to work with, learn from, think through things with. It's a blessing to get connected to them.

What really turns me on about my job -- and it occurred to me in a meeting in NYC last week -- is after years of working on white papers and books and other great projects ABOUT ecommerce -- I was finally back in sales, as Director of Client -- wait, I forgot who I was there for a minute -- had to go into my office, take my new business cards down from a high shelf and read them. Oh, yeah, they say, "Halley Suitt, Director, Client Development" which is what I am now.

Anyway, I was sitting in a meeting in NYC at a very big publishing company and I realized and it was like finding CANDY IN YOUR PURSE YOU FORGOT YOU HAD -- I was so excited, I thought, "Oh my god, I'm not writing something theoretical about ecommerce here -- I'm here really trying to help these guys sell stuff on the web." May not turn you on, but it sure turned me on. And our Sales Support Engineer Josh was doing a terrific WebEx demo for us from SF and my boss Nell was doing a kick-ass presentation and it was really terrifically exciting. (Apologies to all there, I had gotten up SO EARLY to take the Acela train to NYC from Boston that I was both excited but also semi-falling asleep in the meeting.)

So here I am -- back in my dining room. There is the most exquisite vase -- a glass cylinder my sister gave me -- sitting on the table next to me -- filled with lavendar, purple, violet, grey, lilac colored silk pansies -- just lovely. Also big square pale bone white candles -- that look a bit like big office buildings in some far away city -- with black wicks from last night's dinner when they glowed yellow, my little office suite. I have five candles and I could write "Building One" through "Building Five" on them and then tell people on email or IM when I'm working here next to my purple pansies and candles that , "Yes, come on over, I'm working in Building Four today." It would sound very believeable.

But back to Here I Am-ville. I guess I was trying to tell Joi Ito who I am ... I guess I am Halley Suitt, Director, Client Development in my plaid pjs with a mop of blond-hair, looking a bit like Einstein did my coiffeur, only thing about his head and mine that we have in common, a crazy pile of hair. (Bugs Bunny: "Welcome to my shop, let me cut your mop. Yes, you're next, you're SO NEXT.) And if I had any more boxes of business cards they might read, "Halley Suitt, Mom" as my son's asleep down the hall, all cozied in -- I just checked on his blankets being tucked up around his neck instead of kicked down to the bottom of the bed. And then there's my business card "Halley Suitt, Tea Drinker" as I flip the switch on my Russell Banks Electric Tea Kettle, no wait, Russell Baker, no Russell Hobbs Electric Tea Kettle. I take the box of Twinings English Breakfast out of the cupboard, thinking with a smile that Gary Turner's breakfast, as well as Euan Semple's are probably long over as it's five hours later there. Niek and Adam in Holland are an hour ahead of them. Sunny day, maybe off to the beach? Holland has some lovely beaches. And Joi is close to dinner in Japan I figure. I hope Gnome-Girl is snoozing in SF. Vince Nunsequitor too. Even most of Boston is asleep. I love the folks in my uber-village. Wish them well.

The tea kettle clicks. I'll make a pot in a black tea pot I bought around Christmas time this year and then walk down the main corridor of Building 2 -- it's the big one on the end under the shade of that explosion of pansies, aka, forget-me-nots.