Happy Monday all!

When my last blog left off I was preparing to leave for Chinle, AZ for an FBLA speaking event at the local high school. It’s been an eventful 4 days since then. Here’s the quick rundown.

I left for Chinle on Wednesday afternoon and I have to admit, I wasn’t looking forward to the drive. In spite of all my road experience, doing a 6 hour drive by myself is still a daunting task. Luckily about an hour into the drive I remembered… road trips are dope. Some wouldn’t consider the drive between Phoenix and Chinle scenic. Those people are not looking hard enough. It was a beautiful drive and the smaller Arizona towns are a trip. Going through Holbrook definitely reminds you that reality is a relative term dictated entirely by who’s your occupying at any given moment.

The presentations themselves went well. Chinle High’s FBLA Chapter was incredibly accommodating and really took care of me. The students were engaged and polite, although I have to admit by the sixth presentation I think we were all a little burnt.

On Friday, still in a post Chinle haze, I attended the inaugural class of our 18 month Jobing MDP Program. The MDP is an internal talent development program focused on team work, business strategy and Jobing. If the first weekend was any indication it’s gonna be a tremendous experience and a lot of work. I’m excited to see how it develops.

Even with this work filled weekend I still found some time to embrace the frivolous. First of all I caught the second half of the U of A - ASU football game. I’ll leave out the gory details for the benefit of my local constituency. What’s truly important is that U of A is going to the Las Vegas Bowl. I will be there.

Lastly I put up some Holiday decorations on Sunday. We opted for lights and a Christmas tree deciding they both should be in the front yard, so we can really share the spirit. It looks good and it made us wonder, why don’t more people do a tree in their front yard for decoration? I assume we’ll find out.

So that was a quick rundown. Eventful yes. Interesting… hard to say. God bless the blog.

Today is a sad day as two of the most wonderfully interesting people I have been familiar with have passed on. Through ones stubborn disregard for the taboo and the others stalwart escape of the mundane, both changed my conception of the status quo and effectively enriched my life by shifting out the borders of my perception, even if only slightly.

Of these two individuals Jack Dulles was the only one whom I had the pleasure of meeting in person. Born in 1913 Professor Dulles was the oldest Professor at the University of Texas when we met him in October of last year. Having attended Princeton for his undergraduate education, Harvard for his MBA and working several years at a Bank in New York, Dulles decided to head south of the border to work in the mining industry. He would begin studying the communist military regimes of South America, ultimately becoming one of the world’s primary historical authorities.

Professor Dulles’ stories of meeting with communist government officials and surviving the dangers of the mining industry while friends and co-workers perished before his eyes were of a romantic nature I did not realized existed outside of wildly creative historical fiction. Sporting wild grey hair, candy red framed sunglasses and a smile with more sincerity than some express in a lifetime the 95 year old professor let us in on the secret to life, “Have a great interest in what one is doing and be active.”

The second person that we’ve lost today is none other than George Carlin. While I can’t say I new him personally his cultural significance is unquestionable. Comedians are some of the most tireless studies of human nature and in my opinion offer incredibly valuable and astute social commentary. George Carlin challenged issues in a public forum that few had the guts to question privately and through this vocal disregard for the status quo enabled us to be far more brazen and free in our own lives. Carlin was a professional wordsmith and has left the world with more valuable quotes, quips and phrases than I could begin to describe. One of my favorites, “Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.”

These men had one profound similarity that was characteristic of who they were and the successes they realized. They never stopped growing, questioning and evolving and were prolific and significant in their chosen fields until the day they died.

I think I’ll always recognize the importance of romance and idealism in the way I choose to live. But, it was certainly nice having these two men around to remind me.

I have a real problem with career tests. I believe the questions force the person providing the answers into a should complex. People don’t know what they like or want, (which is one reason why they’re taking the test in the first place) so they try to provide the “right” answer. The “right” answers just lead to a match of occupations that confuse the tester even more.

I just took a test to test my theory. I answered to the best of my ability, even when I caught myself falling into the should complex. The results:

“Based on your results, it appears you enjoy DATA, and perhaps, THINGS. The careers that are suited for your interests include:”

Park Ranger
Accountant
Wedding Photographer
FBI Agent
Fish and Game Warden
Food and Drug Inspector

Really? What am I supposed to do with this?

I went to the grocery store at around eleven o’clock last night. Wearing my Arizona basketball jersey, I stood in line annoyed at yet another first round exit from the March Madness tournament.  A Sun Devil fan walked by in a t-shirt with that horrid yellow color, which to Wildcat fans, has the same effect the color red does on a raging bull. My matador smirked at the sight on my jersey, smugly walking by to let me know his side of the rivalry won this round.   I hate what UofA basketball has become.  I’ve come up with five tips, all of which could be applied to the workplace if you so choose, for the Wildcats to consider if they want to keep that twenty-three straight seasons of postseason appearances alive next year.

1)  We all know about the candidate, player, or recruit with the perfect credentials.  Degree from Harvard, 4.0 GPA, quick first step, a McDonald’s all American.  Very rarely do these types of people have the impact on an organization or team that you’d like them to.  They are the individualistic and/or egotistical that play for the “I” in team. 

Tip: Make them (aka Jerryd Bayless) humble.  Don’t allow them to put themselves on their own pedestal.  Teach them how to play as a part of the team, and don’t allow them to play until they learn that lesson.   

2)  To be successful in any organization you need a leader with a vision.  A vision gets everyone on the same page.  A leader empowers others to work towards that vision.

If a leader kinda has a vision, or if they are leading with the mindset they just want to get by without making any mistakes so they can really get em next year, then they will never be able to lead others.  

Tip: Find a new leader (aka head coach. Sorry Kevin)

3)  Companies pride themselves on culture.  The culture of an organization can greatly enhance, or severely hinder people in their success.  If the culture of a company relies on name or buzzwords alone, that is not culture.  A culture exists within each and every person that operates in an organization.  

Tip: Just because the name Arizona is labeled across the chest of every jersey does not mean other teams fear you.  If anything, it fires them up.  Opposing teams can sense the lack of heart and leadership within the culture, and know that if they are able to bring just one person with heart or talent down (Fendi, Jordan Hill, Nic Wise) the rest of the culture will crumble.  Build a new selfless culture that puts emphasis on the word “team.”  Maybe have everyone write “I will play as a team” a thousand times on the blackboard.

4)  An organization cannot exist without clear communication.  Especially when that communication is coming from the top.  This year Lute Olson temporarily resigned, then resigned, then was coming back, then wasn’t.  It left the team in limbo all year.   

Tip: Lute, I love you.  I don’t know what happened this year, but I hope that you communicated with your team, because it didn’t look like they were ever on the same page.

5) Life deals all types of things that are unfair.  Things we don’t agree with.  Things we would dispute.  But it all comes down to the same thing: you have to deal with it.  

Tip: So what if the ref didn’t call a foul.  Maybe it was a block instead of a charge.  Control what you can control.  Shut up and play.

You should not be happy with yourselves as a collective whole right now Zona.  The committee put you in the tournament instead of the Sun Devils (who deserved it more, btw) and you did not give them any reason why they should let you in next year.  There’s a lot of work to do.   

Have a good off-season, gentleman.

Whether I like it or not, I have been influenced by living in a RV for the last four months. In the RV, I had two overhead compartments for clothes and books, and one drawer underneath the refrigerator to store shoes. I learned to live simply.

When I returned home to Phoenix a few days ago, I did four loads of laundry. I stuffed clean socks into an overflowing, bedside drawer. Boxers poured out from the drawer below the socks. The closet did not have enough hangers for the new t-shirt additions I had picked up from various stops around the country. The simple lifestyle I had assumed on the road did not roll over to life at home.

So yesterday, I decided I needed to make the changes to live simply. I canceled my cable TV, leaving a desolate, 50 inch TV in the living room. I cleansed my closet, donating a hundred and nine items of clothing to goodwill. The products that took up space in the cabinet below the bathroom sink are long gone. Today, the daunting tasks of the garage and kitchen loom.

What started as a way to avoid reflecting on what happened over the previous four months actually turned into my first realization.

That realization is that I can, and want to live simply. And that we shouldn’t take up more space than what is allotted.

by Noah Pollock

Although our journey across the nation comes to an end, in Tucson in 5 days, our most difficult journey has only just begun. In collecting the information we have collected, in experiencing what we have experienced, we learned to take things for what they are. In examining the trees throughout the forest, and minding not the forest itself, we learned to leave over-analysis behind.

It was not always so. Pursue the Passion set out to find what makes people passionate. Perhaps youthful arrogance led us to believe ourselves capable of distilling conversations to their passionate roots. The first leg of the trip, through mid-August, we faithfully executed our original plan. As we continued, our insecurity in the project’s simplicity grew. In retrospect, to believe that we could meet someone for an hour, cut their passion into a two-minute video, then progress to our next meeting, was a serious overestimation of our own abilities.

Dreaming big is always an overestimation. As feelings of doubt in the project mounted, we surveyed more honestly both the task before us, and our own abilities. It was difficult to come to grips with, watching our initial ideal exposed as somewhat frivolous, but we found comfort in several things. We found camaraderie, on the trip, with each other and those we met along the way. We received emails from readers who found genuine inspiration in what we offered. We found an incredible life experience being lived everyday.

What we have found is broken monotony. We departed as overly serious, business minded adventurers, and return humbled by our experiences. As a group, we have grown to support and nurture each other in a way none of us have ever known. What we have to offer is an honest interpretation of our travels, without presumptions of conclusions, which can help to avoid, or break, the mundane working existence. There is no singular, universal passion. Rather, there is an open-mindedness, fortitude and confidence shared among all we have found that is passionate.

Showering. Something you probably take for granted on a daily basis. But after spending close to four months on the road, we consider the act of showering somewhere between an enjoyable experience and something you would sell your soul for.

We started off this journey comfortably. We showered at my mom’s house. We showered at the house Jay grew up in during our stay in Los Angeles. Things got a little more out of the ordinary in the northwest when we showered and stayed at my stepdad’s great aunt Pinky’s house. But we definitely weren’t roughing it when we were being hit with the naked, dual headed shower sensation in Cape Cod, or in a cleanly kept condo located thirty-eight floors up in Chicago.

We have roughed it, showering at a dirty truck stop in Hastings, NY while paying eight dollars a shower to do so. We’ve had showering situations some would consider humorous, like when we showered in Jay’s cousin Tony’s artsy house in Portland. His shower was located in a room that was like a melting pot. The shower was next to the kitchen stove which was under a bedroom loft, where Tony and his girlfriend Stephanie slept. That time when we stayed with five girls in Delaware was pretty good too. The PTP crew upped the total shower hungry twenty somethings to nine that Wednesday morning, with only one ill-pressured shower available for use.

And oh, we’ve gone showerless. But let me tell you something. Showerless in Spokane is nothing compared to showerless in Mobile. It is humid and sticky in the south. If you don’t shower, you don’t survive.

Our most recent escapade to find a shower involved meeting girls at a bar on Beale Street in Memphis and latching on to them like they were the fountain of youth. Yesterday, Zach managed to finagle four showers from the attractive blonde working the counter of Hard Rock casino’s health and spa in Biloxi, MS. Today in New Orleans, we shower in a tub surrounded by rubber ducky curtains belonging to Ben, a friend of Brian Conley, who we briefly interviewed in Philly.

Despite the uncertainty of where and when we will shower next, there are two things you can count on.

There is no such thing as a group shower for the sake of conservation. And we will always use your shower products.

This morning, as I lay in the RV on Dauphin Street in Mobile, Alabama, I read a few signatures sketched on the ceiling in Sharpie.

“Good job enhancing the power to thrive”- Coach Valerie, Los Angeles

“Thanks for the inspiration!”- Kelly Faulk, Jobing.com, San Diego

“Keep spreading the joy.”- David Kravetz, Founder of Fairytale Brownies

I include all of these signatures because they were within the first week of us being on tour. We hadn’t done anything with the tour, yet, these individuals felt that need to write something regarding our accomplishments.

Ever since we started the roadtrip, I’ve been struggling to put a finger on why people are excited about what we are doing with Pursue the Passion. I have emails each day saying what we are doing is amazing. We have press coverage all the time. And sometimes I just wonder why.

Right now I’m reading Atlas Shrugged, the 1,069 page book written by Ayn Rand. Throughout the book I have been intrigued by her writing style, but when I read a passage on page 216, I had found an answer as to why people are excited about Pursue the Passion.

Below is the passage.

“In the summer days and in the heavy stillness of the evenings of the city, there were moments when a lonely man or woman- on a park bench, on a street corner, at an open window- would see in a newspaper a brief mention of the progress of the John Galt Line, and would look at the city with a sudden stab of love. They were the very young, who felt that it was the kind of event they longed to see happening in the world- or the very old, who had seen a world in which such events did happen. They did not care about railroads, they knew nothing about business, they knew only that someone was fighting against great odds and winning. They did not admire the fighters’ purpose, they believed the voices of public opinion- and yet, when they read that the Line was growing, they had a moment’s sparkle and wondered why it made their own problems seem easier.”

One of the benefits of touring the country is having the opportunity to see how people live life. Through the hosts we politely impose upon, the professionals we meet in interviews, and people we randomly come across, we’ve been able to make a few observations.

One is that residents of a city or state rarely have been to what that city or state is known for. For example, how many New Yorkers have been to the Statue of Liberty? Memphians in Graceland? How many people from the Bay Area have walked across the Golden Gate bridge?

I’m guilty. I’ve lived in Arizona for the last five years and have never been to the Grand Canyon. Or the red rocks of Sedona, which to my surprise, is a nationally sought after destination. I guess we take it for granted because the opportunity will always be there.

We can always go, but we never do. Why not?

This is what you would call an exploratory, therapeutic post. It aims to analyze problems, and how I deal with them. By the time I write the last sentence, I hope to have analyzed whether it is best to address with them in a preventive approach, or as I have been doing, in a reactive manner.

Take a few problems that I have right now, all in different stages, all of different varieties, but nonetheless, problems.

Problem 1. My tenant called yesterday to tell me that my roof is leaking. I have had this roof fixed approximately nine times, each by the same company under a warranty. The last time I had it fixed was last year, when again, it was leaking. Now we are in reactive mode, and undoubtedly will be paying a pretty penny while waiting in a long line to resolve the problem.

Problem 2. The rear tire on the right hand side of the RV has a couple of rubber cracks that embody the 11,000 miles we have trekked on one set of treads. The cracks compliment a missing chunk near the center of the tire, which alarmed Zach enough to tell me I should consider getting it replaced.

Problem 3. My girlfriend is flying into Atlanta on Thursday evening. I haven’t seen her in two months. My hair is at a point where I could opt for the $12 haircut at Supercuts, or I could pull off the middle of the road look that prescribes a trim in two weeks.

Three different problems. Three different stages. Three different echelons.

I have indisputably dealt with problems in the past with a reactive mindset (please see Sleeping in an Auto Body Shop in Hastings, New York). The reason? Oh, I don’t know, how about because I’m optimistic about the problem not actually occurring? Or because I hate forking over money for something that hasn’t happened yet.

“The best time to fix a roof is when the sun is shining.”

Sure it is. Just like preventative maintenance on your car is a smart thing to do because it cost a helluva lot more to buy the thing in the first place.

I guess the root of my problem in dealing with problems is money, especially without an abundant, plentiful, worry free income stream. And having time to fix the problem. So how are problems avoided?

How about finding a balance between prevention and reactive? Oh yeah, the balance thing. Balance is impossible, and anyone that tells you different is a liar.

Maybe I could take a page from Barry Moltz’s book and say that sometimes, failure just sucks and there is nothing to learn from it. Maybe problems just suck and you have to roll up the sleeves.

Money and time are the two issues you have to evaluate. How much would buying a new tire cost me now, and how much will it cost me if it goes flat between Virginia Beach and Duke University today? What will my girlfriend think of my hair longer, or shorter? Should I buy a new roof (chaaaaaa-ching!) or patch the hole?

Problems just suck. They bite the procrastinators in the ass, and take advantage of planners like a NFL team in the prevent defense during the third quarter.

So the conclusion is that it’s a matter of evaluation.

Time and money. Risk versus reward. Prevention or reaction.

Ahhhh (deep sigh). Time to deal.