A call from my best friend.
With a cadence that waxes and wanes in frequency, for a month to go by without a single word shared is not unheard of, however, rare.
A consistent presence in my life, you are.
A reminder that always brings me back into reality.
If it’s a critical word I need to hear, you never fear to share.
It might make me upset, but you do not care.
And for that, I appreciate you, I sure do declare.
When I say you don’t care, I must clarify what I mean. It is my ego that you don’t care for. You don’t care to tell me what I want to hear; You care to tell me what I need to hear. Whether it be a back-and-forth venture capitalist roleplay that results in my distress or an analysis of my actions in life that results in my joy, I can always rely on you to offer guidance that is rooted in truth and reality.
You knew exactly what it was that I needed to hear today: encouragement. A word that you would be at whatever it is that I start, wherever it is that I go. An energetic hug that you would not leave my side, solely because I choose to leave the career that we share. To think that I thought such a thing, I now realize how foolish I was.
You know more about me than most people on this planet. Not just from my past, but from my present. You have not only seen my behavior in its darkness and in its light, but you have understood my behavior. You have consistently remained grounded through whatever it is that I throw at you. It might be that I whipped up a new enterprise business plan overnight and need your critique, or that I am running away to become a full-time painter. Whatever it is, you support me with your presence and your intelligence-rooted opinion.
That day I found you on LinkedIn, I found something special: you. Since I have deleted my LinkedIn account, we can no longer go back in remembrance of the way I bombarded you with 20 questions in one message about how you got to be where you are. The way you disrupted your already busy life to offer to meet with me on a video call speaks mountains of volumes of decibels towards your character. To think that we are now on year three of a beautiful friendship that has formed between two, and now coming up on three, cities. Whether we are hacking and clubbing in Las Vegas or exploring and relaxing in San Diego, it is always such a pleasure to spend time with you.
The pure state of awe I was in when I first found you on LinkedIn remains to be true still to this day. Your achievements continue to grow, and yet you remain so humble. Your empathy, your ability to recognize when I need space versus when I need you near, your intelligence through all the definitions, your humor, your giving nature, your appreciation upon receipt (even if my gifts aren’t good, like when I sent you a bunch of Easter-themed candy). Those aspects aren’t on your LinkedIn profile, yet they are the traits I have come to simultaneously appreciate and admire over the years. The way that your technology-based accomplishments are so significant that not even all of those can fit on there either.
We both know I have verbally said all of these words to you, but reading them is different. I actually began to handwrite this letter to mail out to you, but I realized that my words form better when typing. Who knew that the backspace key could be so significant?
As you read over what I have shared on Everest and the Frogz so far, just know that the posts up were haphazardly typed, in my opinion, at least. I have a feeling you will gas them up and tell me how wonderful they all are.
The past month has been stressful, to say the least. It was necessary, to say the most. I know you said I appear the exact same, besides my now amazingly bald head, but internally, a thousand tons of bricks have been lifted off of my soul. I never realized how much the weight of the past had been dragging me back. To accept what has happened as a part of me rather than a shameful side of me that I need to hide has been freeing.
Onwards and upwards, we both are!
Cheers to seeing each other in the flesh next week!