Out last night watching some boxing on the pay per view with The Girth, then over to shoot a little pool at the ACME. The omnipresent question between the two of us is what the hell we're doing with our lives as "careers" begin to take off but everything else stagnates and the world around us seems to veer inexorably toward the ditch. What does it take to get a little satisfaction?

Harkening back to my post on Maslow's Pyramid of Human Needs, there's something wired into me and most of my friends that drives us to want to help people out, to look outward with a problem-solving eye. There's a kind of juice one gets from this that can't be replicated any other way, the cheap and generally unprofitable thrill of Doin' Right.

Mark's hooked on this too, via Americorps. There might be more money in being an artisan handyman, building fences from special Japanese cedar boards for the neo-bohemian HC bourgeoisie, but at the end of the day he says it can't touch the rush of helping a kid with a fucked up life steady his or her feet and move in a positive direction as a human being. Even though the latter pays less than minimum wage -- Americorps workers get s "stipend" and instructions on applying for food stamps, something that I find extremely unjust -- he's back again for another tour of duty.

For my part, I don't get this feeling too much from my work. Bootstrapping a business is kind of a cutthroat process, or at least one that requires a primary focus on self-interest. While I got a good charge out of starting the Drupal Dojo, and a healthy portion of our clients are do-gooders of one stripe or another, the main thing for the past 10 months has been figuring out how to pay the bills in a steady and dependable fashion.

First: more of Big Media Mark on the news. It explains a bit about his program, and has a nice clean-cut guy giving an even better soundbyte:

Other notes:

• Had a great weekend visit from the Girth, JD and Shamus. We all (them, me and Mark) headed up into the mountains, Trinity County Outlaw style: guns, dogs, bushwacking trails, mad-dogging up mountains in Moammar the 2WD Scorpion. It was epic. JD has photos.
• Things are all lined up for me to establish a base in the Bay this week. I have a little more work to do getting the pickup in order (adding a bed and a lock to the camper shell) but shelter has been secured and the wheel is in spin.
• Work is going so well that we got to give our awesome Sr. Web Ninja a raise. Considering how integral he's been to everything over the last six months, it's very well-deserved, and for me personally it's a big warm fuzzy.
• Got my Burning Man ticket in the mail, and Mark says he's all-in too, so it's on like Donkey Kong. Working camp theme is Rastafarian Navy. More plans soon, but if you want to get in on the action the first thing you do is procure one of those spendy pieces of paper they want to see at the gate. They only get spendier.

I've got a lot of wild loose ends to tie up but I feel great momentum, like I might just up and blossom one of these days.

UPDATE: Oh man; I have pain. Ursa Vehicularis did great, moving like a tank through water, sand, and land. The kids are allright, and their infectious spirit -- plus maybe the big bear balls hanging from the rear of the sculpture -- earned them the coveted rider's choice awards. I'm totally beat, but totally happy to have been able to take part.

I've been participating in the Kinetic Grand Championship, helping out my man Mark's Pacific Coast high school team. It's basically a three-day, 42-mile, human-powered machine/sculpture race covering roads, sand, and a section in Humboldt Bay. The motto: For The Glory.

I'm having a lot of fun with it.

There's a lot of media on a blog KHUM set up. It's a pretty well-attended event, and the number of people (me included) with little digicams assures there will be plenty of citizen coverage.

The story for us is rivalry with the Six Rivers Charter School team, featured here. Our Bear got out to an early lead -- they had some mechanical issues -- but they caught up with some well-timed bending of the rules. Cheating and sabotage are part of the tradition, so you can't really begrudge them, though they were a little brazen about it. "Am I the only one who gives a shit about the rules!"

We overtook them on the final downhill home-stretch, though, so all is well. For today.

Tomorrow starts off with the water section, where the wheels will get paddles attached and pontoons will be inflated. Every team has their own strategy for floatability, but it's well-known that this is the leg that most unsparingly separates the wheat from the chaff. I'll probably have to miss that part and catch up later in the afternoon, but I'll bring word of the final outcome for sure.

It's been a pretty good week overall. Not without some troubles, but for the most part they are challenges which have been overcome. I'm starting to feel like I'm getting a good pace going. So, here's a step through where things are at:

Work
This has been the biggest weight on my mind lately. We're getting very close to having a truly stable business, but it's (as I've mentioned) a very two steps forward/one step back kind of affair. I've been struggling with my responsibilities. I handle a lot of the day-to-day organization and scheduling of the work that we do -- taskmaster stuff -- in addition to taking on the harder Drupal coding. I've also got more business experience than my partner, so I tend to have the skeptical/devil's advocate role in those discussions.

I'm not used to being in a position like this, and it's definitely a learning experience figuring out peer-leadership. It's good though, because that's the future.

It hasn't been helping that lately we've been under external pressures. Matt had a run-in with the muni track on his bike, and he's been laid up for the past couple weeks. Has a screw in his wrist. Luckily the man has his own health coverage; we're still about a month away from providing.

Then there was tax day, which is never fun, and at the beginning of the month we lost a big high-profile client before we managed to get started, which was a bummer. Things are picking up, but it's hard with a man down. These are a challenges I'm confident we'll overcome, but it definitely adds tension, and just as I'm coming to appreciate how important it is to keep a cool head.