The Key Is In Your Data

I know Stella has said that face-to-face visits are the gold standard of development work, and that's true. But the information about whom to visit and what to talk with them about is all in your database. I love databases and people who know how to look for things in them will rule the world.

People who know how to find lists of entities that have key attributes in common will rule the world even more. This post from the Tom Donovan in the Harvard Business Review blog goes through why and how this is so. These are good insights about data use. My favorite:

Everybody who makes observations has to collaborate in entering the data.

Saints preserve me from development databases where the gift officers don't enter their own data or who aren't capable of pulling their own reports. I know you're busy folks, but you cannot be too important to take control of the nuts and bolts of your business.

Tips for Booking Your On-Site Time

In the world where Stella works (non-profit fundraising and advancement), making visits is the bread and butter of the work. Major gift officers are assigned a territory and start mining the people in those areas to find folks to visit and engage in the work of the non-profit. Ideally, you see a mix of people whom you're meeting for the first time, along with more established prospects whom you're trying to move along toward making a greater commitment to your cause. But unfortunately, what sometimes happens with gift officers is they go back and see the same people over and over again because they have developed a rapport with them, and they're fun to visit with. But if they aren't moving along toward a gift you have to focus on new faces, too.

For the telecommuter the same risk exists. When you are on-site, it can be tempting to go back to the old standbys -- people who always have an hour to meet with you, people who are good to have a happy hour with, people who know where the good lunch spots are. You want to fill up your on-site time with face-to-face meetings, and familiar faces make it easy.

But it's important to keep your schedule mixed up. Some tips:

• You should have a balance of people with whom you have on-going projects and relationships, and also make a big point of figuring out who the new faces, emerging trouble spots, and up-and-comers are and seek those people out. Aim for a 60% on-going business/40% new faces mix.
• Consider taking less focused meetings into overtime: put together small happy hour groups, for example, or use lunches to have those conversations that fall more into the "Remember me? I work here like you! We have a lot in common. Don't forget!" range rather than the "Let's hammer out these requirements and figure out our action plan"-type meetings.
• Be ready to rock: when you're an infrequent visitor to the Real Office, each visit is a bit like a job interview because you never know when you're going to meet someone important for the first time. Yes, of course, you already have the job, but if you flip the Bozo switch with someone recently hired into a leadership position, you may not get another chance to make a better impression for another quarter. So always be prepared to put your best foot forward.
• Have a little flexibility: don't book yourself completely before you show up. You'll discover when you're face to face with people that there are things you didn't know before you got there. Have a some room in your schedule toward the middle and end of your time to schedule follow-ups with new folks that you've identified as new faces, emerging trouble spots, or up-and-comers.

Needless to say, Stella's schedule for her next on-site doesn't completely follow all these rules. A couple of existing projects are dominating my time, and I have a feeling that a few other emergent issues will pop up that will eat into the open space that is still there on Thursday and Friday. I do have a couple of new faces in my schedule, and I'm also making a presentation to the whole staff that will max out my personal visibility in a quick ten minute show and tell, so that's promising. We'll see how it all works out.

It's Hard to Vacation

When you live in your office building (e.g. you work out of your home) it is really tough to do the stay-cation thing over the holidays. Stella has been doing a supremely lousy job of it this holiday season. In part it is because this is one of the most important times of year in online fundraising (one of my primary concerns). I need to stay on top of the online giving data, make sure the system is working well, and resolve any donor problems that may arise quickly.

But it is also too darn easy to come out to the office and just do a little work. Maybe I should change the locks on my doors or something. No, that's not it. I need to have a little self-discipline that pulls in the opposite direction from where my self-discipline usually pulls me. Which is into my home office at six every morning.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

To be a telecommuter, that is. Yes, Hannukah and Christmas are a bundle of laughs, family, lights, food and so on. And Stella is planning to take some time off to spend with her family -- the kids don't have school for two weeks and so it would be hard to work here anyway.

But it's also the busiest time of year for non-profit fundraising. And this is where telecommuting really works out for me. Because even though I'm technically taking vacation days, I still will come into work every single day of the break to run data, monitor the health of the online giving systems, respond to email, and the like. Having the flexibility to mostly be "out of the office" while still being just as in the office at a moment's notice is critical.

There are lots of times when having the tools to be in the office wherever you are would be helpful. Nothing is worse than getting the panicky call from the Real Office whilst on vacation and not really being able to do anything about the situation. If everyone has access to the telecommuting tools and the basics of how to use them, everyone is able to pitch in when absolutely needed.

Not that employers should abuse this privilege. But it can come in handy.

Telecommuting Doing Good

As you may or may not know, Stella has worked her whole career in non-profits and higher education. Except for that brief stint as a secretary for a stock brokerage, during which one of my electrifying tasks was to review the company wide phone bills and identify every time an employee had called from one branch to another without using the tie lines, then add up how much each branch had cost the company by dialing outside lines rather than internally. Seriously. I did that.

But I digress. I work in the non-profit sector because it's nice to use your powers for good instead of evil. I could do web stuff for anyone, but it's really satisfying to advance education, research, and patient care like I do. And then I read about this: an effort to use the interwebs to bring online work to refugees.

I kind of like this a lot. Yes, I know, I'm drinking my own kook-aid, but I really believe that education and access to technology is the only way that people can escape poverty. And here is another example of how modest access to technology is making lives better.

Creating Connections to Physical Places from Afar

I have been a terrible poster* lately. Stella is not unaware of how she is neglecting her duties, and she apologizes, but every living brain cell has been going toward work work lately. That said, I've soldiered through a number of all-consuming projects (all of which came due at roughly the same moment) and now I'm trying to cast my brain on figuring out how to use the web to produce meaningful connections to a location without having people physically be there. And it seems I have some insight into this because of my own (remote) location.

I work in the fund raising and alumni relations arm of an eastern university. Not east coast. Eastern. In fact, it's in a place with a reputation as a snowy wonderland that is nearly impossible to get to by plane without making at least one connection, a reputation which is not entirely undeserved, honestly. But that said, it's also a wonderful place where people make lifelong connections and where really cutting edge research in a number of important areas is happening. A gem. We're gearing up to get a lot more people engaged and involved in the institution, and we're working to use the web to make it easier for people to be a part of the fun, without losing their luggage.

I'm thinking web video stuff. But what, and how, and what kind of production values do we want? The best, I'm thinking. I've seen the Parkinson's Foundation's use of the webinar, and I think this is a great thing -- a meld of important content, unique expertise, and a clear focus on the audience. But what other great uses are out there? Any ideas?

More On Finding Flow

It seems that people who write about flow find it most often in somewhat solitary pursuits -- writing, programming, running, or perhaps practicing an instrument. It's the time when your utter involvement in the task at hand is most noticeable, and I've personally experienced profound focus when engaged in all of these activities.

But I think it is also possible to find that state of flow in more social activities, too.

Take teaching, for example. I used to be a technical trainer -- it was the way I transitioned from a straight fundraising person to being a fundraising nerd. When you're running a class, sometimes you just really get on a roll. You are comfortable with the material (but not bored by it), you've got a class full of people who want to learn what you are there to teach them (or maybe not). You win over the skeptics, you get lots of questions that help everyone learn more than they would have otherwise, you're making great analogies, you see eyes light up and heads nod throughout your class room.

You're having social flow. It's a product of the same thing that makes you flow when you're by yourself:

- A certain mastery of the basics of the task at hand.
- An internal motivation to really bring it on.
- A feeling at the end that you've transcended just "okay" performance and really pushed yourself to get something great done.

Performers get this feeling all the time -- you're on stage and just hitting every note right. And training is certainly a lot like putting on a show. But you can also find social flow in meetings -- you just have to train yourself to recognize that it's happening. You can run a really great meeting where you're organized, you get decisions out of your colleagues, everyone has some good fellowshipping and that's flow. You can have a great social flow at a party -- everyone eats and drinks well, the conversations are awesome, people leave happier and more connected.

You've got to have your eyes open for it though. So next time you've got a day full of soul-sucking meetings, maybe if you look hard enough you'll find a little flow.

What Do You Do, Exactly?

I'm still very new at my job, closing in on six months, and so I'm still meeting a lot of people for the first time. And because I'm meeting a lot of people for the first time from 2000 miles away, it's extra important that I be able to clearly articulate what the heck it is that I do.

Frankly it's something that I've struggled with a little bit. Which is odd, because generally speaking, Stella isn't at a loss for words. But dig it, here's what I do:

I launched an intranet for the fund raising division of the university I work for. I feed it with tidbits as well as figuring out what features and what not we need to add to it. I can do some of the technical stuff, but the guys who manage the server haven't really freed up my permissions. Plus I didn't work with Sharepoint even a little bit until I started this project, so I'm pretty much flying by the seat of my pants. Thank goodness I'm not troubled by not actually knowing how things work and willing to monkey around with it to make it do what I need.

I'm trying to get online giving squared away. This seems to involve everything from creating templates and training the finance people so they can adequately reconcile the various accounts, to working out the logistics of account set up, to building forms, to counseling various fund raising offices on how best to use online forms in their sites.

I execute mass email campaigns -- but actually we're still trying to figure out what technology will be best. So in fact, I cajole the central IT guys to install upgrades on their list server, I paw through the various systems that we're already subscribed to to figure out what they're capable of, I advise the direct mail people on how best to segment and proof their copy, and hope that we can actually drop the stuff on their target date.

External web presence for the Advancement operation is also my job. But I'm not a designer, and so I really just try to get stuff to happen by serving as a useful go-between amongst the fund raisers, the designers, the programmers, and the people who let us into the centrally managed servers. It's kind of all over the place, semi-technical, semi-business, a lot of yakking at people, and explaining it has not been easy. But I finally came up with it:

I'm an internal account manager for all of our electronic communications projects.

That's it. It's actually pretty simple: I am here to ensure that customers (my advancement colleagues) get the results they need on their web projects. If they don't know what results they need, I help them figure that part out, and then I recommend ways to get to that end. If I hear about something that is going on that should have a web component, I insert myself into that process on behalf of my customers. Okay, so whether that role actually makes structural sense, given that I operate out of the Advancement Services part of the organization I don't know. But much like all my web projects, I don't care where it is on the org chart -- does it make sense from the customer's point of view?

I hope so.

Thinking About How To Build Great Web Stuff

I've been charged with figuring out a bunch of web stuff for my new job. The position I occupy didn't exist before, and there is quite a backlog of dusty sites that need to really do something much more than they are. Once I can kick out the jams on some basic needs (an intranet! functional online giving that we can make changes to without waiting six weeks for an over-committed central programmer to get to it! other duties as assigned!), I'll be focusing on some more epistemological web service issues.

There are ideas bubbling in my head about what we should be striving to achieve with our online offerings, but then I read this at Seth Godin's blog, and darn it if he hasn't completely hit the nail on the head. As usual.

Data, Stories, Products (services), Interactions, Connection

This is what a website that seeks to make a meaningful philanthropic experience should have. All five, on every page. We tend to think of stories -- Little Janie's life was saved by the research at Hospital X -- and products -- The ever popular and always stultifying Ways To Give section -- and miss opportunities to do more. We also tend to understand data as something that we may use in private to govern our interaction with individual donors, but turning it around to drive what we put on our website is something we might feel less comfortable with. Non-profit site design often turns into everyone-gets-a-top-level-menu-item exercise, rather than featuring the six programs or causes that garner the lion's share of giving.

If we're doing a good job understanding our data, we would understand that those six programs are our "brand". They're what our donors come to us to support because they recognize us as a leader in those areas, a good place to invest their hopes for a better future, and their money.

Interactions? We tend to just try and get people to call us or email us, because we're focused on major gift fundraising, and nobody gives a million dollars on the web. Except when they give you $5,000 on the web and see how you handle it before they deepen their relationship with you.

Connection is a struggle -- figuring out how we can make that connection deep and meaningful through a lukewarm medium like the web. I don't know.

I need to think more about this, but it makes my brain start to race.

An Important Note for College Planned Giving Fundraisers

For pity's sake, please do not start sending planned giving brochures to people who are turning 40. Look, I am in the business, and I know what you ghouls are thinking: she's getting older. But I am so NOT READY for information about making my bequest intentions known (and making sure they benefit my college). I'm already dealing with mixed feelings about turning into an old bag -- should I continue to dye my hair? am I too old to wear shirts from Threadless? is that my ass? -- I don't need you, Planned Giving Advisors, advising me that I've got one foot in the grave. Thank you very much.

I am still working hard, I am still saving diligently for retirement and hoping that my children will be able to partake of the New Mexico Lottery scholarship when they get to college (and/or earn ginormous merit-based scholarships, and/or consider attending the fine institution of higher education where I work). My will has to deal with who will steward my children through their formative years should I be killed in an unfortunate encounter with an industrial mixer.

Could you give me another 25 years, please? Trust me, I know how it works. I love my college, and I am really and truly grateful for the ways in which it transformed my life. But seriously, ask me about a CRUT again, and you're out of the will.

I'm Raising Money Again

What? Stella, didn't you just leave that front-line fundraising gig to go back to the bits and bytes of worrying about raising money on the web? Well, yes, but I'm now raising money in my spare time, and I'm hoping you'll consider joining me. In August, a group of friends and relatives are participating in the Climb to Conquer Cancer -- I'll be staggering up the Sandia Mountain in August. And while the altitude does make it a bit cooler up there, it's still August and all. It should be a fun challenge.

I know what you're thinking: I wish that I could stagger up the side of a mountain in August!

Alas, not every Stella reader lives in New Mexico, but you can get involved by going here and making a tiny little online gift. You'll be doing more than helping me raise money for the American Cancer Society, an organization that provides funding for research, patient education and support, and lots of other direct services for people with cancer throughout the country (including here in New Mexico and wherever you are, too). You'll also be helping me evaluate the Convio fundraising management system, which is what ACS uses to manage these friend-to-friend fundraising events.

More important, every last one of you...every single person reading this...has been touched by cancer. Maybe you have a friend, maybe you're related to someone, maybe you yourself have had cancer. In my case most of those are true, plus I'm also feeling mighty grateful that some people I know who thought they had cancer didn't. So that's why I'm doing the Climb to Conquer Cancer.

You have your reasons. But you don't have to climb a mountain. Just a few clicks and you're in.

Okay, I Got A Little Inspired

For people about my age, Live Aid was one of those things that was big. Really big. For many of us it was the first time we really knew about things that were outside our little tiny towns and dull little high schools. It was huge, and it was the idea of one guy: Bob Geldof. Stella heard him speak today, and while I'm sure it was a set piece that he's done a zillion and one times, it was still kind of amazing to hear him and see him in person.

Pink.

But with eyebrows.

In any event, it got me to thinking about some folks I've been admiring and learning about for years, folks like Pete Seeger, Joe Strummer, and now Bob Geldof. These are people who firmly believe that the actions of a single human being can really have an impact. And, dare I say, it's not foolish idealism if you actually do something. Now I'm forced to wonder if I'm really using my powers for modest good, or crazy good.

Maybe we should all shoot for crazy good.

A Profile of Modern Philanthropy

From the New York Times, David Brooks writes about how people who want to do good today are really different from those who came before. This must be one of those generational things, because as a member of GenX, his description of the expectations and methods of younger people (50 and under) involved in charitable giving and action makes complete, no-questions-asked sense to me. Long-standing targets of philanthropy (higher ed, among others) would do well to turn this insight into practice. There are implications here for case statements, for asking, for stewardship, for all the information you might want to offer them as they make gift and volunteer decisions.

But of course, it all depends on who your donor base is, and where it's trending. And you might could ask them what they like and then give it to them.

Death By Powerpoint

I'm attending training at a very prestigious facility in my industry and while the content is really good, their slides are, ummm, what can I say? Three little words:

Comic Sans MS

Honestly, I want to put out my eyes. There is a lot else wrong with their slides (too many words, reading the whole slide, terrible graphs and charts) but I'll leave that to your imagination. My strategy for today is to avert my eyes from the slides and just look at their more sensible printed materials.

Sigh. Stella has two more days of this.

Work Can Be A Privilege

For all Stella's complaining about cruddy data management practices and confusing communication problems on the job, there are many, many parts of the job that are truly wonderful. In fund raising, you spend a lot of time trying to sit down with people, and when you're starting out with an organization, like I am, most of the people you contact say no. They know when they get a call from someone in the development office that eventually someone is going to slip their wallets out of their pockets. A lot of people feel uncomfortable with this idea.

But the really great thing is that the people who say yes and agree to meet with you are a self-selecting group that is predisposed to liking what you have to say about the organization. They say yes because they want to connect with the place, or maybe because they understand how the philanthropy thing works and want to see if your joint would be a good place to lay some dough, or maybe because they really have a love of your institution.

Whatever their motivation, it works. If you can get in the door, you're halfway home. You'll probably have a complaint portion of the meeting (particularly if you're working cold, hard prospects like I am), but once you get through the airing of grievances you can tap into the reasons why they agreed to see you in the first place. And it's because they like you(r institution).

This week I've really seen this in action. I had a chance to sit down with some of the first people to ever pass through our doors, and they were so delightful, so thoughtful, and clearly so happy to be asked to help us. Years ago, a VP gave every staff member who had been involved in a major campaign a little plaque as a thank you. At the time, I was working back office operations, and thought it was strange, but now I really get the quote:

While the work of going from door to door and from office to office is hard, disagreeable, and costly in bodily strength, yet it has some compensations. Such work gives one a rare opportunity to study human nature. It also has its compensations in giving one an opportunity to meet some of the best people in the world -- to be more correct, I think I should say THE BEST people in the world. When one takes a broad survey of the country, he will find the most useful and influential people in it are those who take the deepr interest in institutions that exist for the purpose of making the world better.

-- Booker T. Washington

I know what you're thinking: she's drinking the Kool-Aid. This may be true, but sometimes it's hard to remain cynical in the face of a group of people who really have served humanity through their careers, and who are so willing to work with you to advance your institution's goals, too. It's pretty cool.

Oh, that Seth Godin

This post actually confirms everything I've ever observed about online giving in the seven or so years I've been doing it. Simply put, well-placed online giving forms are merely a convenience for the donor. In the main, by the time folks get to your website they have already made the decision to give, and, if all has gone right, you've accommodated them by making your "give now" button super-beyond-easy to find.

But this isn't how it has to be, my friends in non-profit land. I think that it's possible to engage the un-engaged through web magic. I firmly believe that it is possible to design a web experience that effectively nabs the donor who is seeking a meaningful involvement with what it is you're doing before s/he pulls the trigger on their bank account. The secret is to look critically at what you're doing that really, really has an impact, and figure out how to get folks to get into those things online.

Maybe you're looking to raise the sights of your annual donors: then you need to give them highly personalized (e.g. specific to the particular donors -- yes, they may have to log in) ways to see the impact that their modest gifts have had, and then show them how great things could be if they gave a little (or a lot) more.

Maybe you're trying to get people to give in the first place: this can be a question of giving them something highly focused and compelling to feel, along with an easy-to-complete giving opportunity that is closely tied to whatever brought them to you in the first place. Implied in this is search engine optimization so that your compelling pages turn up when they search for "sad, but cute puppies" or whatever your highly-worthy cause is.

There is a lot of opportunity around crafting online experiences that deepen your donors' emotional and financial involvement with what you're doing.

Don't you think?

This Is Disappointing

I wrote a while ago about GiveWell, but I'm really bummed out to see that two of its founders have now been tagged engaging in deceptive behavior to promote the organization. You know what, kids, when you purport to serve as a measure of integrity and accountability, it is really super duper important to not engage in duplicitous behavior yourself.

I can't stress this enough. If you aren't doing right, you shouldn't be publicly placing yourself in a position to judge whether others are doing right.

Argh.

I've been reduced to pirate talk.

Argh.

Thoughts on Non-Technical Work

I spent nine years working in an IT shop that supported fund raisers for one of the most capable tech (and people) managers it has ever been my pleasure to work for. Now I've gone back over to the dark side of direct fund raising, and I believe I've discovered the key difference between the IT-people (e.g. nerds and geeks) and the people-people: planning.

Even the most chaotic and flying by the seat-of-its-pants software development team knows in its heart of hearts that it should have statements of work, project plan documents, and a structured process that starts with analysis and ends with deployment. Even if what happens between analysis and deployment devolves into a morass of scope-creep and other hilarity, doing structured software development is what most teams aspire to. Good teams do it, too, delivering software to spec and on time (especially if their analysts and project managers have been careful to control customer expectations on both of those fronts!).

By contrast, offices full of social butterflies who value relationships over almost anything else do not get excited about sitting down and planning out six months worth of events, solicitations, and other goals, and mapping out all the steps that it will take to execute those plans. They just won't do it. Each year's holiday card mailing must have a flurry of last minute madness, even though it happens at the same time every single year. The year-long planning calendar has events mapped out, but people won't begin talking about invitation lists or other concrete plans until six weeks before a planned event (or even later), even though time and time again it proves difficult to get busy people to attend unless save-the-date cards are mailed early and often. The department spends more money than it should because there isn't a well-understood process for reviewing print materials and things must be re-printed frequently and at the last minute. And don't get me started on money goals that don't have any ties to the reality of the prospects available.

These problems are similar to those that plague poorly-structured software projects -- the cost of last minute changes because developers didn't review design carefully with the stakeholders before starting coding, and thus left out key features that were in the spec. The recurring problems when you don't do the basics right -- like forgetting to involve the testing and training teams in the analysis and specification steps so you can benefit from their experience in dealing with the goddamn customers and not make dumb mistakes over and over again.

The difference is that geeks seek structure (at least some of them do), and non-geeks think that chaos is normal and desirable (at least some of them do).

Taking Accountability to the Next Level

I think this is a really interesting idea: these guys at givewell.net are asking non-profits to really quantify what results they achieve with donations. Their methods sound a little hard to take (one charity said that the person who called them for stats and facts seemed evasive about what they were doing and for whom they were doing it) but the idea of taking accountability beyond the "how much do you spend on fund raising v. how much do you spend on your programs" is the right way to go.

When you're raising money, it is absolutely critical that the donations that people make go to the places they intended for them to go. That's it. So we need to have transparent and rigorous systems in place to account for this. If someone gives me $10,000 for the division of embarrassing problems, I should be able to follow that check into the accounting system and out the other end to address embarrassing problems. That is the bottom line, at least from the donor's perspective, and systems that allow me to quickly report that back to my donor are the minimum requirement for accountability.

In a perfect world, all non-profits would have tight fiscal controls that allow them to more quickly and easily answer the kinds of questions the GiveWell guys are asking them. Seriously, if I give you $10,000 for a particular use, say for repellent-infused mosquito nets, you should be able to show me that you really put $10,000 worth of repellent-infused mosquito nets into people's houses. Donors deserve it.

A special note to GiveWell -- you might could go ahead and get the .org version of your domain name instead of having an unfriendly 403 error display there.

Okay, I might miss telecommuting a little

I don't want to be an anti-telecommuting bummer, and I realize that I haven't been as positive about the telecommuting as I was in the past, like, when I actually was a telecommuter. So, while I love my new job, I do miss some key things about telecommuting.

I miss the ability to be around the house to get little things done during the day. I love my house and it was fun to spend my lunch doing little yard things and whatnot. I find that even the short commute eats into the day, and now that it's dark so early, I feel like I'm getting less done than I should. This feeling is also probably compounded by the fact that I was traveling last weekend, so I really didn't get things done. We only got one out of three jack-o-lanterns carved, and managed to not take any pictures of Halloween costumes.

I also miss being able to work in a steady and concentrated way. I find myself feeling frustrated by the level of interruption in the real office, not so much for me, because I'm pretty good at focusing and keeping my head down, but moreso for my colleagues. Some days I see folks spending what seems like an inordinate amount of time massaging a project that really should be kicked out the door lickety-split. Or it seems like we veer from coffee, to a two hour luncheon with a prospect, to an afternoon meeting about how we're going to count planned gifts, to quitting time without actually doing anything.

But of course we are doing what we're supposed to do. We in development are at the whim of the donor, the doctor or scientist, the dean. We exist to make those other things happy and fulfilled, and sometimes that means dropping everything to get something done. So this kind of work is pretty different from programming and web stuff, where you have a project, it's mapped out and you hit your deliverables. Getting things done is a much fuzzier area, and sometimes it's hard to tell that you're really working, especially as you dine on a cobb salad at the country club. But trust me, it's work.

I may also be feeling a little negative because there are attempts to rope me into office politics. In the old job I had a long-standing reputation as a relentlessly positive vault. People knew they could piss and moan to me and I

a) would not comiserate, agree, or disagree

b) would not repeat what they said to the person or persons involved

c) would not fink them out to the boss

d) would try to see the best in the whole situation and make the complainer feel listened to and less miserable.

In the new job my attributes are not well known to my colleagues yet, and so they're actively trying to whip me into a frenzy around certain issues. Good luck. I am a rock, and I'm not going to repeat anything out of turn. Although I'm not sure if similar levels of discretion extend upward. But I'm learning to govern myself accordingly.

But I digress. What I'm really trying to say is that I seem to get nostalgic for the liberty of telecommuting and the familiarity of a long-time job when things in the new job get a little sticky. But that's okay.

Because I'm on the verge of raising some money, and that's going to be a nice kick in the pants.