Halfway Done In AZ

One week in, one week to go in Arizona. Not forever. I'll be back here. Often, I hope. But after a few days of taking in the FBR Open and Super Bowl festivities, this is fast becoming a very productive second week.

I wasn't going to blog today, or even this week, but I just got home from running around all day and just had a real urge to write a few things. One thing I knew wouldn't be the most pleasant of tasks for this trip was trying to take care of my taxes. I spent half the afternoon visiting four different CPA offices, trying to find a good accountant who can help me this year. I've always used HR Block. It's quick, easy, pretty painless and relatively inexpensive (so long as you're getting a refund, which I usually have). But with having spent 11 out of 12 months in 2007 doing volunteer and charity work, I need someone who is creative and knows what they're doing so that I can get the most deductions possible. Well, after talking to a few of them, it doesn't sound like it's going to be all that complicated. It's something I would never likely do (not my personality), but oh how I wish I had been keeping a spreadsheet of all the money I spent. I know what I've spent in my head (ballpark, of course), and I have a handful of receipts. But having more data already on paper would help. Nonetheless, I should be able to piece together a good estimate in about an hour. Not that I don't have anything else to do this week.

My only beef with the people I sat down with today, all of whom were pretty nice, is that I wish just one of them had said affirmatively that, "yes, this can be deducted", or "no that cannot". I got a little too much, "I think that ...... can be deducted". Oh well. One of them will get the greenlight from me by Thursday. So long as they get done. I had five weeks of income in '07, and so long as I get what I paid in federal taxes during that time back, I guess I'll be happy.

Another stop I had was at my Primary Care Physician's office. This one was more pleasant. I went in to see if I can get in this week, to at least get a check up since it's been over a year, and lord knows what the mold, muck and critters that I've slept with in St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans might have put into my body in that time (nothing, I'm sure, but it's ok to be dramatic once in awhile). Anyway, I don't have health insurance and was hopeful that if I told the office manager my situation (that I've been volunteering for the past year in New Orleans), that they'd hold the cost down on me since I'd be paying out of pocket. I had a few run ins with her before, unfortunately. She's my PCP's wife actually. He's a great guy, and talks golf non-stop (imagine being a Family Doctor in Scottsdale, AZ...talk about a recipe for golf courses and easy Wednesdays), but she's pretty tough. I disputed a charge with her one time -- you know, one of those 20 minutes and you're out and nothing was done yet you're still charged $120 buck -- and we didn't end up best of friends after that.

So I go into the office today, it was pretty busy, and this rather large guy, about 20 years my senior, with a breathing apparatus in his nose, was leaning on the counter filling out paperwork. I asked Mrs. PCP if I could get in to see him this week, and if so, what would it cost out of pocket. Not surprisingly, he has no openings, but I can see one of the Nurse Practitioners, and, it would cost me $80 bucks. I was hoping for the $55 range. Whatever, health is important, so I said ok, and she got me in the books, gave me my little appointment reminder, and off I went. By this time, the guy with the oxygen tank had sat down, and right as I was about to exit, he yelled out, "hey buddy, come here". I went over, and after shaking my hand, he leaned up and almost in a whisper he apologized for overhearing my conversation, gave me the name and address of a walk-in clinic in downtown Scottsdale and said that they would probably take me for free. Pretty impressed, I thanked him, and without further prodding from me at all, he said, "an upstanding guy like you, you should get a free check up. And seriously, thanks for what you're doing down there".

No one can ever tell me there aren't a lot of good people out there.

One last stop. The local middle school so that I could vote in the Arizona Primary. I'm still registered here, I have a preferred candidate, so why not. Unfortunately, after waiting in line for 20 minutes, I came to find out that as a registered Independent, I could not vote. I had to have a party affiliation. Interesting, I said to the guy working the check-in table. Because I'm an Independent and don't want a particular party affiliation (I judge issues and political candidates on their own merit, and not at all on party affiliation. There are some Dems I like, some I dislike. There are some Republicans I like, some I loathe), I cannot have any say in who may win a nomination to run for President. That doesn't seem right. I was then told that I could, but I would have had to change my affiliation to Rep or Democrat by January 4 in order to have been able to vote for someone today. As much as I love politics, all I have to say to that is, What a bunch of crap! I liked my visit to the Dr's office better.

Things are good, though. I just sold my washer/dryer set, which had been sitting in storage for a year, to a very nice woman who came over in a truck with her son, with cash, ready to take them away. After having my phone ring all day with people inquiring about them thanks to my ad on Craigslist, I was thrilled to have them go, and to a very nice family at that.

Time to eat dinner.

Thoughts From The Air

It’s been so long since I’ve done this. At least it feels that way. I’m at about 38,000 feet, on a Southwest flight heading from Florida to Phoenix, AZ, and I have my laptop propped open and in my laptop. This used to be such a regular occurrence for me, going back to my days working for a software company. I’d fly all over the place, almost weekly, and rarely go a flight without propping open my Dell and doing an hour or two of work on my laptop. Of course, I’m not working right now, I’m writing, which is something I’ve never considered work, even when I was a kid in school.

Today, I have an HP, my own HP, not company-owned, and I’m writing and thinking about me, about New Orleans, and about SBRC, not about my boss or a client. And I’m certainly not thinking about how many hours my team might be over budget on our latest project. Today, all days as of late, I’m thinking about my next steps, the future of SBRC, and I couldn’t be more excited. I have my anxiety points – money being one. But believe me, after a year now of not drawing a paycheck, I’m almost numb to it. At this point, what are a few more withdrawals from the savings account? I’m way beyond the point of letting things like that worry me or dictate what I do. These days, I’m following my gut, and my heart.

I left New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. Not for good. I’ll be back there in February. I carved out time to pro-actively get out and work on and plan the next steps for my program of helping families in need get furniture and household goods as they moved back into homes more than two years after Hurricane Katrina became famous. I’ve already been to Florida, Boston, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and back to Florida. Along the way, I made a number of new contacts and met a handful of very gracious and generous and encouraging people -- Katrina Shaw in Boston, Ira Smith and Mark Sigman in Acton, Mass., Anne Leyh and Tony Pitale and their wonderful family in New Jersey, Scott Walchak in Maryland and several others. My brother Chris and his wife Kristan were a huge help in Maryland in helping me gather a load of donated furniture that we’ll be getting down to New Orleans soon, as well as to meet some very talented and gracious people.

It’s amazing, too, because when I left New Orleans to take these four weeks or so to garner more support and raise more awareness and clear my head a bit, I knew I had to take some sort of action, and go out and find help, find contributions (of all sorts). And already, just a couple of weeks in, my plans have crystallized. Not materialized, that will come as I execute and act on it. But I feel like I have the plan now, and I have all those people mentioned above to thank for helping me to get to this point.

Now I’m in mid-flight to Arizona, where I’ll spend the next 9 or 10 days taking another big step in my life. I remember in the spring of 2004, when I took my parents to dinner in Jacksonville, FL, and told them I was going to move from Boston to Scottsdale, AZ. They just gave me this look, asked me if I was sure and if that was what I wanted. At the time, I sure was, and it turned out to be the right move, for several reasons. I had a great few years there, made some great friends, and will always go back to vacation and visit. But it’s definitely time for me to pack up that apartment I’ve been keeping, close things down there, and say goodbye to Arizona being the place I call home.

I don’t have many of the 5 and 10-year from now goals (I’m very much a day to day, week to week person), but one that I do have is that I want to own a condo one day in Scottsdale, so I can go visit a couple times a year. But that’s for my 40s. Today is for New Orleans, St. Bernard, re-building SBRC into an even better organization, and getting back into the working world, all at the same time.

For most of this flight, when I look out the window, I see nothing but cloud cover. I can’t see any of the landscape or ground, as if I can’t see where I’m going. Fortunately, that view is not a metaphor for my life, as on this day, I feel as if I know exactly where I’m going.

A few not-so-serious random thoughts….

Airports are great places to just watch people and observe so many interesting and unusual things. Sometimes it’s stuff I just don’t get. For instance, what possesses anyone, save an elderly or disabled person, to get on one of those moving walkways, and not keep walking? Are you that lazy that you’re content to coast along at 1.5 mph as people who are slumbering along on foot breeze by you? It blows my mind that people do that. Just walk, you’ll get there faster, and not look like such ___ . (you can fill in the blank).

Speaking of laziness, going back to Massachusetts brought back some memories. Nothing like seeing convenience stores with drive-thru Dunkin’ Donuts. My brother and I went into one of these stores to get some water and a snack, breezed in and out, yet there were 4, 5 and 6 cars sitting in line to get a Dunkin’ coffee, at about 1 p.m. no less. Some things in this country scare me.

Lastly, if you’re ever driving on Hwy 295 in the Baltimore area (it heads west out of BWI Airport), make sure you do NOT get off the exit marked, “NSA – Restricted Access Only”. Yours truly made that mistake as I was trying to turn around and go back the other way after missing my exit. Let’s just say that the 5 armed security personnel who immediately surrounded my car weren’t helped by the fact that I had an Arizona Driver’s License and was driving a rental car. Trust me, steer clear of that place, especially if you’re running late for a meeting.

A Slice of Inspiration

One of the biggest influences on my life the past eight months has been a book written by John Wood. Wood left a very successful career at Microsoft to start his own non-profit, Room to Read. Inspired by what he saw during a trip he took to the Himalayas, namely the lack of books at a local school, Wood put together a fund raiser, reaching out to family, friends and business contacts all over the world. It went so well, the response was so overwhelming, Wood didn’t want to stop there. Soon after, Room to Read was born. Less than a decade later, Wood’s organization, with staff all over the world, has built dozens upon dozens of schools in poor, third world nations (mainly in Asia) and supplied over 1 million books.

I stumbled across Wood’s book, “Leaving Microsoft to Change the World”, published in 2006, by accident at a Barnes & Noble in New Orleans last summer. On my way out I happened to pass by one of those tables with the New Paperbacks, did a quick scan, saw Wood’s book, and said to myself, “this looks like a book I could glean some great info from”. I’ve done that, and much more. It’s inspired me, filled me with great ideas, picked me up when I’ve been frustrated by fundraising efforts, made me smile and given me hope.

There’s an insert at the end of one of the later chapters, written by Wood, that I just found so motivating that I wanted to post it on the blog and share. I typed this, verbatim, from Wood’s book. If I’ve broken any copyright laws, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t turn me in. Trust me, this is worth the read.

_________________

YOU SAY YOU WANT A REVOLUTION? ADVICE ON CHANGING THE WORLD

Stop Talking, Start Acting

If you are thinking about making some adjustments in your life to allow you to help change the world, my heartfelt recommendation is not to spend too much time thinking about it. Just dive in.

I know that all kinds of practical considerations make this advice difficult to embrace. There might be student loans to be repaid, the need for advice from friends and family, and the desire to write a serious business plan. I am not saying that you should not do any of these things – just that you should not spend too much time on them or you will lose momentum.

The biggest risk is that a lot of people will try to talk you out of pursuing your dream. The world has too many people who are happy discuss why something might not work, and too few who will cheer you on and say, “I’m there for you.” The more time you spend navel-gazing, the longer you give those negative gravitational forces to keep you in their tether.

As an example, I would cite our work in Sri Lanka. After the devastating tsunami, I had to prove to myself that I had the guts to follow my own advice. News reports indicated that hundreds of schools had been destroyed in Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Room to Read did not work in either of those countries, so it was difficult to decide how we could help. But I knew deep in my heart that “We don’t work there, it’s not our problem” was not an answer worthy of a bold, young charity that had never been willing to accept limits.

So I proposed to our team, and to our board, that we immediately launch operations in Sri Lanka, raise a million dollars to get started, and begin to identify communities whose schools had been destroyed. There was, needless to say, a Greek chorus telling me why we couldn’t do this – “We don’t have staff there.” “Room to Read is not licensed to work in Sri Lanka.” “We’re already busy enough with our existing five countries.”

On January 3, I convened an emergency call of the board of directors, and we included Erin, our chief operating officer, to gain her invaluable perspective. All of us were united in our desire to help tsunami victims, yet also scared of diving into something so new. I made my case.

“We’ve been working in South Asia (Nepal and India) for over five years now. We’ve partnered with over fifteen hundred communities throughout Asia to get new schools and libraries built. We know how to do this. Yes, Sri Lanka will be new for us, but it’s not as though we have not launched new countries before. And I think it’s important to remember that Room to Read is an organization that has been built on an ethos of bold thinking and direct action. Do we want to say to these devastated communities, “Sorry, but this is not part of our business plan, so we can’t help you?”

There was dead air on the phone. I was sweating. This was potentially a moment that would cause me to lose faith in our team’s ability to think big about creating change. The silence was broken by a member of our Board, whose opinion I greatly respected. “We know very little about Sri Lanka. If we want to make this decision, we should do a three-month study of the situation, then decide.” More dead air. Now I was really sweating.

Another Board member responded immediately. “With all due respect, if back in 1998 John had decided to do a three-month study of the situation in Nepal, he would have probably never even launched Room to Read. The study would have revealed so many daunting obstacles that he would have become a pessimist, and none of the great accomplishments of the last six years would have been reality. I think that we should go in.”

A third member of the Board opined, “You’re both right in your own way. We should move quickly because the children of Sri Lanka should not have to wait. But we have to realize that with a fast launch without a detailed study, we will hit obstacles. We should think about them in advance and plan our responses. We also need to trust our team to adjust and to figure things out, just as they always have.

Internally, I cheered, then suggested a vote. The board was unanimous in approving the immediate launch of Room to Read Sri Lanka. In our rookie year there, we began construction on 40 schools and also opened 25 libraries.

Sometimes, it’s really important to move with all deliberate speed. If there is something out there that you want to do to make the world a better place, don’t focus on the obstacles. Don’t ask for permission. Just dive in. Don’t let the naysayers get you down.

I know reading about non-profit work isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But if interested, it’s a good read, a very inspiring book. For more info on it, check out:

www.leavingmicrosoftbook.com