We Miss You, Paisano
Things are very busy at SarahLacy.com these days. No sooner was I back from London then I had to hustle to finish a long-overdo BusinessWeek column and do about three shoots at Yahoo in two days. This afternoon-- still not quite over the London jet lag and exhaustion-- Olivia and I are trekking up to Sonoma where I'll speak at a two-day event for women in advertising hosted by BusinessWeek. I plan on coming up with exactly what I'll say in the car, because I haven't had another moment to think about it. I hope I don't suck.
Saturday night and Sunday night I am checking into a hotel in SF and sequestering myself until I come out with a new chapter for the paperback version of "Once You're Lucky." I've finally finished the reporting and this is the only way it's getting done. My house is too distracting and it, too, is late. I'm stealing this idea from Philip Kaplan who says that's how he finally wrote his FuckedCompany.com book back in 2000-- only I don't plan to drink quite as much because the book actually needs to be coherent. Then, four more shoots at Yahoo early next week and on Thursday I take off for a week and a half in Mexico. First there's the Young Entrepreneurs Summit in Cancun, then I'm hopping to the other side of the country for a Mexican Thanksgiving with my and Mr. Lacy's families-- my first vacation the year. Of course, by then I'll owe BusinessWeek another column and Gotham edits on that chapter. Oh, and did I mention I also have a very important conference call today that may determine my near-future?
Whew. I found myself saying, "If I can just get through November..." yesterday and then realized I've been saying that about every month this year. Is it naive to hope 2009 will be calmer?
But as I try not to get car sick typing on the Yahoo shuttle down south this morning, I wanted to take a moment to shout out to my first guest blogger on SarahLacy.com, the one and only Paisano. His time here was short, only writing six posts, but many of them were hotly debated and linked to. I'd wanted him to do more, but he got a bit spooked by the backlash of one on Y Combinator that created a firestorm when Arrington linked to it. I tried to convince him this was a compliment and that bloggers should be creating controversy and point out that a good many commenters agreed with him. But as I know full well, it's one thing to say that to someone and another to actually be the person in the middle of said firestorm. So I accepted his resignation with a heavy heart and he went on to the bigger (but not better of course) Mashable, where he's been a sensation.
He was kind enough to give me a shout out in his post yesterday about his blogging anniversary and what he'd learned. Here's an excerpt:
"Around April sometime I was asked for the first time to guest blog for someone else’s blog. It wasn’t just anyone either. It was none other than Sarah Lacy! She was the hottest news from the SXSW ‘08 conference and I was looking forward to reading her upcoming book called “Once Lucky, Twice Shy: Web 2.0”. She and I became acquainted on MySpace and Twitter and she was interested in a tweet I made regarding her employer, Yahoo and the horrible job I thought they were doing with Delicious (a service I loved and still do). So I was flattered and wrote my very first guest post and it was so exciting! I loved being read by a much larger audience and getting intelligent feedback in the comments, sometimes tough medicine is good for you. I went on to write several more pieces so I owe Sarah a great deal of thanks for giving a rookie such a break and so many lessons."
We miss you, Pai! The guest blogger slot is here for you whenever you want to step back in front of the firing squad! ;) Even if you don't know the actual name of my book....
