Van
Over Twenty Years Ago
My mind was too consumed with all that was happening, all the balls in the air. My drive to succeed, to accomplish more, to show the world I was capable ruled my thoughts and physical being. When the time came to sleep, I’d lie down only to stare at the ceiling. It was as if my body couldn’t rest, knowing that there were i’s to dot and t’s to cross. There were people to schmooze and investments to be made.
And then there was the fucking tightrope—the balancing act of stretching assets until they were so taut, they were ready to snap. It was no secret: I wasn’t working with a large budget. That also didn’t impede my determination that one day I’d have more.
More money—more power.
I was on the verge of greatness. It was right there, close enough to touch.
It would happen.
That belief wasn’t conceit. It was that deep-down-fucking-to-your-toes knowledge that I was meant for more than some small-town schmuck from Texas. Chicago was my new home, the third-largest city in the country, and the place where I would become more.
It was where I came to reinvent myself.
Lost in the cloud of thoughts, I barely saw outside my own bubble. My inability to sleep had me up in the middle of the night at a nearby coffee shop. Stepping inside, I gazed around the nearly empty café, my focus momentarily attracted to a woman.
There was something about her that caught my eye.
Nothing in my life had me interested in developing a relationship. There already wasn’t enough of me to go around. And yet I was drawn to her, the way she sat contentedly alone, in the middle of the night, consumed with her task at hand. With her light-yellow hair as a veil hanging over her face, a paper cup of coffee on the table, she was staring down at a book.
Is she like me, with too many fires lit to sleep?
While I was intrigued, my mind wasn’t fully on a woman.
My thoughts were racing with my latest project. My start-up company was gaining investors. The concept was simple. Only a year earlier the world had survived the predicted Y2K collapse of technology.
It seemed that these days everyone was working to navigate the worldwide web. At the same time, they were willingly divulging their personal information. SixDegrees was a relatively new way to connect to friends and family. Only in its infancy, the platform had potential. It was also a place to share, something the average person was all too willing to do.
My start-up was an investment in a programming idea. These programs created firewalls, obstacles to people’s protected personal information. Whether gaming or creating an account on SixDegrees, people entered their names, addresses, sometimes their Social Security numbers. The information was requested for demographic data. And it was a ticking time bomb.
The worldwide web was growing, and I predicted that in time, it would only grow more. The world was shrinking, and the web was the next step in communications.
I foresaw a future when anything we wanted to know would be at our fingertips, eliminating the need to spend countless hours and days thumbing through old periodicals or obsolete textbooks.
The web was also facilitating communication as revolutionary as the invention of the telephone. Telecom companies were struggling to keep up. Every family wanted their own computer. Though home computers became available in the early 1980s, twenty years later, the desire had multiplied exponentially. This technology was the way of the future and only had one way to go.
More.
Bigger.
More powerful.
Working my way through college, I saw the potential of investing in web-based companies.
What could be better?
Create web-based products, ones that would be wanted by the masses.
The old way of creating items that lasted forever was disappearing for a reason. The idea of the refrigerator in my parents’ home that was as old as we children didn’t provide incentive for buying new. The world was changing. The technology was moving at unprecedented speed. I knew that I wasn’t the only one who wanted the best and the top of the line.
My theory was to capitalize on the individual’s need for more, their lack of satisfaction. Release a program and within months, release a better one. And six months later, better than that. It was a spiral that would spin over the world—a tornado to demolish what was old, leaving behind the innate need for new.
Taking my cup of coffee, I made my way to the long bench with small two-person tables, sitting a few feet away from the blond. Facing her direction across our tables, I waited. It was as she looked up and I saw her staggering green stare that I grinned. “It’s late to be out alone.”
“If that’s a threat, I know the owner.”