Tag: Community

The Best Times of Your Life
In the last episode of The Office, Andy Bernard says, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ole’ days before you’ve actually left them.”

Have you ever wondered if the best times of your life are behind you? How do you know when you’re in the best times of your life? How do you know if there are still good times to come?

I remember sitting with my best friend, eating pizza, and watching TV while laying back in our recliners. My friend turned to me and asked, “What if this is the best time of our lives and it’s all downhill from here?” The year was 2001 and shortly after we each lost our jobs, moved apart, and September 11th happened. Things change.

What if there isn’t one best time in your life, but “episodes of greatness” – pockets of time in different times of your life that can be considered the best times of that era?

While there are many years I cannot consider the best times of my life, I’ve had many periods I consider the best parts of my life. Those episodes always include the following factors:
- Actively spending time with people I love
- Basic needs are met (ie. secure job and location)
- Working on a project or something bigger than myself
If you’re wondering if your best times are behind you, look at what made those times great and vehemently seek out those same conditions in the future. If your friends or family don’t have time for you, first make time for them, but seek out new experiences. Get out of your comfort zone. Eventually the new zone will become comfortable too.

If your basic needs aren’t being met, first make sure you are safe and that you have reliable housing and income. That’s easy to say and sometimes very hard to do. I understand. But realize that things do get better through incremental progress, even if it’s slow. Make one change a month and you’ll be a completely different person in a year.

If you aren’t working towards any big goals or are aren’t part of a team working on something bigger than yourself, it’s hard to feel fulfilled in life. Not everyone can find their purpose in life, but you can make an effort to work purposefully, and through that work, feel fulfilled and happy. It could be one of the best times of your life.
January 28, 2014
Seektivity – My First Failed Startup
This is a story about Seektivity, the idea I had for an activity and event locator app that I worked on, but never completed. While I did a lot of fun things growing up, I wouldn’t say I had a lot of fun. I grew up in an environment of scarcity. There was never money to play games or buy snacks. While I got to participate in bike rides, Boy Scouts, church activities, and the occasional trip to an amusement park, I didn’t go to as many movies, arcades, and social events as I would have liked to growing up. #firstworldproblems

The summer before I entered 3rd grade my parents moved to Indiana and by 5th grade I was walking with a neighborhood friend back from the store when we came up with the idea for an activity park for kids. It would have the “normal” stuff like arcade games and go-karts, but also weird and dangerous stuff like hot air balloons, hang gliding, bicycles that fly, recumbent bicycles, and a zip line. It would also have spa-like attractions such as a lounge, a pool, and an indoor eating area.

In August of 2012 I had an idea for an app that would “facilitate play”. The idea was born out of a desire for anyone to improve where they live (wherever they live) by communicating and facilitating activities in their community. I proposed an app called Seektivity or Outure or something else as a new business for me to run. I began looking for feedback and criticism of this idea (and whether or not they wanted to be a part of it). Initially nobody gave me any feedback at all and no one wanted to help. I began defining what the app would do:
- It will allow people to create paths/routes for others to follow based on GPS tracking (gamification and/or nature trail creation from public streets and paths)
- Incorporate geocaching element if wanted (again with the gamification element to outdoor activities)
- Allow others to find and post activities to do (based on a Foursquare-like interface where users can add activities, set them to reoccur or occur once)
- Facilitate the creation of activities/games (allow users to turn their life into a game, their town into a game, but basically just make their lives better/funner)
- Allow users to upload/add what equipment they have (this allows users to find activities that match their equipment ie. pickup hockey games)
- Monetized by selling equipment/things to upgrade/do activities (affiliate links or ads) or by selling app
- Predict and announce upcoming activities based on likes/equipment/past history (push notifications / emails)
I didn’t know how to program and so I decided to create a minimally viable product (MVP) using an architecture I was already familiar with to begin building the app: WordPress. Although it would eventually be a mobile app also, I decided to first build it as a website (or web app). The thinking went that worst-case scenario the mobile app would simply be a ‘wrapper’ that displays the website’s content. This is similar to how Facebook’s app initially worked.

I was able to cobble together pre-existing parts in WordPress to create an MVP that did most of the things I was looking for the app to do. I experimented with several different plugins and custom post types, but settled on GEO my WP, which “Adds location to any post types, pages or members (using Buddypress) and creates an advance proximity search.” It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but logged in users of the site could add locations and anyone could search for locations.

The primary benefit the application was supposed to provide over similar apps like Foursquare was the ability to add activities and events to a physical location. WordPress would allow users to add a location via a post and tag it using WordPress tags, but those who followed behind wouldn’t be able to add tags or events to that location without having editor permissions or by using the comments functionality of WordPress. This was enough to have users start to use and test it.

I loaded up the database with several places and activities so that there would be something to search for, but it didn’t survive the first interaction with a user. She typed in “tennis”, which wasn’t in the database anywhere so she saw little value in the application. Welcome to the chicken and egg problem. One way to get around this would be to attach this application onto Foursquare’s database and use it for locations, and then adding events and activities on top of that.

In January of 2013 I contacted a local iPhone app developer and said:

I am looking for a developer to code an app that is like Foursquare for activities and events rather than just places. It will need to store user account information on a web server and be able to use GPS mapping tech to locate the user in space. They should be able to browse activities and events around them or do custom searches without logging in. With an account they can add activities or events. Places should exist as close to once as possible in the database so an address lookup feature would be necessary. Each event should also have privacy settings and be able to invite and get checked into. Users should also be able to comment or add meta tags to an activity or event. Activities can occur based on a set of criteria I’ve come up with. I have tables and diagrams and wireframes on how all this works, I just need a developer to help code it up.

He said it would take at least 2 months at $10,000 a month to get to a MVP. I decided to wait, but that first user, Joy, thought the idea was good enough to urge me to keep working on it so I thought I’d take 2 months and learn Ruby on Rails, which I started to do in March. I was working through Michael Hartl’s Rails Tutorial, but I couldn’t even get through the first chapter. Even at the most beginning levels, it was still over my head.

Reflections on a Failed App

Joy thought it would be a good idea for me to document my thoughts on the development of Seektivity at this moment so that when people are writing a book about my future success they will be able to give a correct account of how the company and app got started. Even though this probably will not happen, I thought it would be a good exercise in figuring out what went wrong. Before that I’ll start by describing a little bit about our backgrounds, how we met, and what we have been up to lately.

Joy grew up around presidents, astronauts, and famous writers. Her father ran a large Christian organization in Colorado and is well connected. She helped friends make millions of dollars with one of her ideas and one of her friends ended up marrying a millionaire. She married an Air Force pilot and after having four kids, started her own interior design company. After dating a NFL player from Wisconsin, she ended up marrying a dentist in Indiana and that is how she met me.

I grew up around computers, the Internet, and farmers. My father worked for General Motors in Indiana and was well liked at his job. I helped friends start businesses and helped small business owners survive and thrive. One of these businesses was called Neighborhood Geeks, where I worked part time as a computer technician. After moving to Indiana, Joy called Neighborhood Geeks to help setup her children’s computers for school and that is how we met.

I worked for Joy off and on for several years at her home, until eventually also taking over the website management and marketing functions for her husband’s dental practice. Years later I would also take over the IT work at the office and then assist with a staff transition period when Dr. Reese was between managers. It was during this period of time working in the dentist office for 9 months when I first shared the idea of Seektivity with Joy.

Before I worked full time at the dental office I was a business analyst at a regional bank. During the day I would daydream about starting new business ventures all while running a side business of IT and web consulting at night. One of these ideas was a search engine called Seektivity. The idea didn’t get very far – just a search engine that used Google search to deliver Google Ads via search results, but I liked the name enough to hold onto the domain.

The summer I started working at the dental office as interim manager I would go on long walks through Tipton to exercise and think. It was during one of these walks that I decided that I should start an e-Commerce business – one that sold stuff to “facilitate play”. I thought I’d use my Outure™ brand to make an outdoor adventure company, but after doing some customer interviews found that there was more of a need for finding and sharing things to do, which brought me back to Seektivity.

Joy initially thought the idea was good and encouraged me to build it. I worked on the specifics and even created a web version as a prototype, but when faced with programming obstacles beyond my reach I dropped the project to focus on areas where my web design and IT skills could be better used: eCommerce. I began to work on building the original Outure idea and went looking for a partner. Joy was excited to help, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Seektivity.

Immediately after New Years 2013, while vacationing with her family in Hawaii, Joy finally had time to clear her head and it was through this clarity that Seektivity came back to mind. At the same time, back in Indiana, I was explaining the idea to a group of friends when one of them turned to him and said, “You know, I still think that’s a really good idea and even if you can’t build it yourself, you should try and pitch it to someone.”

When Joy came back she asked me to meet. I came to tell her that I couldn’t work with her anymore and that I was moving on. She understood, but wanted to share how she had come to think about Seektivity while on the beach in Hawaii. She said that a group of people wanted to go fishing, but had no way of finding someone to fish with. It was something that Seektivity would have fixed and this is how her interest was renewed.

Her interest in the project inspired me to ask her again if she’d like to be a part of making something great. She said she wanted to change the world and that she believed that the business had the capability of connecting people and creating experiences that simply would not occur without the app. She believed it would help bring people together and to be more active. It is in this way that Seektivity was born.

I AM thinking ALL THE TIME about possibilities with Seektivity…as I travel, ideas and options for the app become so evident!!! It is an Erich “DUH” moment — why it has taken us this long to capitalize on it is mind boggling!! -Joy

There’s nothing like doing something to realize what you need to do next. This happened to me when I was first developing Seektivity. When I actually could use the thing, my perspective changed a lot on what the product actually was. Design sure does matter a lot. Obviously Apple is a cliche example, but I’m thinking “Eventbrite” vs. “Foursquare”. Both allow user-generated content, but one is ‘cool’ and one is not. The difference? Design.

I considered making Seektivity using Foursquare’s API but even in the briefest of research I glimpsed that the idea violates their API terms. In other words, you can use their data like a data set and run analysis’ on it and make your own ‘pivot tables’ out of it or you can publish to it, but you can’t use it as a address database for a whole other service like I’m wanting to. I’m not sure I’d want to spend all that effort doing that either since one click would disconnect my whole app.

By February of 2013 somebody else made a Seektivity app called Shoutt. It wasn’t exactly the same but pretty neat and it actually worked. I signed up. I think my idea has more sticking power in the midwest where I live. My use cases are more practical I think than theirs. It’s all about the use cases. But use cases don’t matter if your app doesn’t work. As of this writing their app is still up and running. Meanwhile I’m writing this blog post.

Epilogue

By September of 2013 Joy and I had started an ecommerce company called SkinnyCoconutOil.com with her son. I was onboard as an SEO and IT advisor. My bio reflects what I was trying to accomplish at Seektivity:

I’d like to help people meet more people and do more things. I hear so many people say they don’t know what there is to do and don’t know who to do them with. I’m not talking about boyfriend/girflriend matchmaking – I’m talking about the question of how to make new friends and how to find new things to do. In a world with an overwhelming amount of information, people are more isolated than ever. I want to help fix that.

This problem is not from a lack of information, but from a lack of organization of that information. If Shoutt is not successful, someone else will be. In December of 2012 Foursquare added the ability to add events to a location. This problem is real and software like Foursquare, Shoutt, or Meetup can help bring people together and make the world a better, funner place. It’s all about #community.
November 9, 2013
How to Improve Your Stations in Life

While your “station in life” is a British phrase referencing your status in your community, I feel that it’s a negative term used to keep people in their place and so I’ve decided to commandeer it for a more positive use. The context of this article is about the different stations in your life. You do not have one station in life – you have many – and that’s a good thing. (Note: if you’re looking for how to improve your work life, try this article about how to work a life of purpose.)

I recently wrote about how the number of stations in your community (places you go regularly throughout your day) is directly linked to happiness. But what I didn’t mention was how to increase the number of stations in your life or how to improve the ones you already have. In this blog post I’ll share my ideas on how to get the most out of your community. The first step is to identify the community you already have. To do this I’ll give you three different examples.

My Brother’s Stations in Life

My brother lives in Bargersville and drives to Terre Haute most weekdays. It’s an hour and a half commute by car. In the morning he stops in the kitchen for breakfast with coffee (Station 1). There he’s greeted by one to three kids, depending on their sleeping schedule. When low on gas he stops by the local gas station (Station 2) where he recognizes the clerk, makes small talk, but feels uncomfortable calling them by name (even though he knows it). When he gets to work (Station 3) he’s greeted by his coworkers – some happy to see him. For lunch he goes out to the same restaurant where he talks to the same host and the same waiter. Again he knows their name, but doesn’t move beyond small talk. After he gets home he goes to his garage (Station 4) to get his mower and heads off to his first lawn client (Station 5). Occasionally he might go to our parents house (Station 6) for dinner or to drop off his kids so he can go to a nice restaurant (Station 7) with his wife.

My Friend’s Stations in Life

My friend lives in Nora. He lives five minutes by car from his work in a walkable neighborhood right next to the Monon Trail. In the morning he stops in the kitchen (Station 1) for coffee before sitting at his desk in the living room (Station 2) to read his email before heading off to work (to check his other email). He rarely stops at the gas station (Station 3) anymore and while he lives near two Starbucks (Station 4), doesn’t go there as often anymore. At work (Station 5) he’s greeted by several coworkers, but most days he goes home for lunch. When he does go out it’s usually with coworkers and he doesn’t take the time to learn more about the staff at the counter. He doesn’t know their names and they don’t know him. When he comes home at night he’s greeted by his neighbors as he drives by or when he goes for a walk with his family. On the weekends he might go to his local hardware store (Station 6) and on Sunday his local church (Station 7).

My Stations in Life

I live in Tipton, but work mostly in Carmel, but travel all around the Indianapolis area. It takes me about 45 minutes by car to get to my first job each day. My wife wakes me up, makes me coffee and breakfast with a side of water. I sit down at the kitchen table (Station 1) to eat. While I’m eating my wife makes my lunch. By the time I’m done eating she has packed my lunch in my car with coffee to go. My kids are now awake, wait by the door, and demand kisses before I leave. When I arrive at my first job (Station 2) I get a few nods. Afterwards I may go to my second job (Station 3), to Starbucks (Station 4), or to my friend’s house in Nora (Station 5). If my gas tank is at a quarter or below I’ll stop at the gas station in Tipton (Station 6) on my way home. When I walk in the door I sit down to dinner, then get up to go check on the garden (Station 7). On Sundays I go to church in Noblesville (Station 8). Some weekends I go to parent’s homes (Station 9).

How to Improve Your Station in Life

Appreciating what you have and be thankful first. If you’re not first happy where you are now, you won’t be happy ‘there’. The grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence, it’s greener where you water it. Your community is made up of your stations in life and it’s up to you to be thankful, appreciative, engaging, and involved in order to get the most out of it. By helping others and continually adding value to your relationships, you will build a stronger community and improve your stations in life. If you don’t live in a walkable neighborhood, walk around. It will become walkable. If you hate where you live, don’t move (yet), first find what you like about it and practice focusing on that. Be the change you want to see in your community. Start with yourself – the only thing you can change. Don’t try to change too much at a time – the longest journey begins with the smallest step. So get walking!

June 6, 2013
Stations: How Community Leads to Happiness

As I sit here, alone, in my dark, home office, I want to share with you what I have learned about community and it’s role in work and happiness in my life.

Third Place

Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, made the term “The third place,” popular in his book, Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, but the “third place” is actually a phrase coined by contemporary sociologist Ray Oldenburg. Oldenburg postulated in 1990 that the third place is, “a public place where people gather for the social satisfaction that they can’t get from the first two domains of the home and the workplace.” Oldenburg argued that the availability of such gathering places in America was lacking. Schultz turned America’s ‘lack of place’ into a business opportunity encouraging loitering and turning Starbucks into that third place. In this post I will argue that their is a direct relationship between the number of third places and happiness (in life and work).

Social Structure

In Malcom Gladwell’s book, Outliers: The Story of Success, Gladwell recounts the story of a town whose inhabitants rarely got sick. After a doctor named Wolf began looking into why, he “slowly realized was that the secret of Roseto wasn’t diet or exercise or genes or the region where Roseto was situated. It had to be the Roseto itself.” The town’s social structure had multiple generations living under one roof, the townspeople talked to one another on the street, they cooked together in each other’s backyards, they went to the same church, and had “twenty-two separate civic organizations in a town of just under 2000 people”. In short, the towns people were a community and they had places they could go to congregate and interact. It’s these ‘third’ places that I call Community Stations.

Community Stations

If you went to a public school your teacher may have setup your classroom into stations. If you were in first grade there may have been a station for reading books, a station for building blocks or puzzles, and another station to watch an aquarium or greenhouse. These were all places you could go, sub-sections within the larger classroom to hang out with people like you doing things like you. When you grew up you may have been assigned a “work” station at your job and bought a “play” station for your home. In the 1800’s whole towns were built up around “train” stations and now every corner has a “gas” station for our cars. Third places like Starbucks are a “coffee” station – and like the stations set up around the classroom, is one where like-minded people gather to talk and share what’s going on in their work and their community.

Personal Community

Your community is more than the 2 square miles around your home. It’s made up of the various types of community stations, the most important ones being your home, your work, the stores you visit, and your friend’s homes. Each station in your personal community is like a node on a network and like Facebook, the more friends you have, the better the experience. This network value is called the Network Effect. But unless you live in a college dorm or in a close-knit community like Roseto, you have to travel greater distances to these different stations. But the more stations you have, the greater the chance you will be able to interact with these stations and the greater the value of the community. This is why density matters and it’s why more communities are choosing to infill instead of building sprawl.

Walkable Neighborhoods

Alex Steffen talks about infill in communities being used to build denser communities, but there are already places like that: cities. I recently wrote about how people under 30 are moving into the cities and driving less, what Nathan Norris calls The Great Migration of the 21st Century. More and more people want to live in walkable neighborhoods, places where shopping, fun, and friends are all within walking distance. There is even a website dedicated to judging the walkability of a neighborhood. But you don’t have to live in a city to have a walkable neighborhood. Suburburban “sub-divisions” like these in the Indianapolis area can be specifically built to be walkable.

Networking Indianapolis

In my post about working in Indianapolis, I wrote about how on Thursdays I would start out at the local BNI meeting, then go to Subway where the local Sandwich artist would remember me and ask me about my business. After breakfast I’d head to Starbucks where I’d normally run into someone I know and begin working. At night I’d attend a meetup or go to a friends house before heading home. After going full-time on my own business one of the first things I noticed was how lonely I was working from home (like right now?). I wrote:

When I worked for other companies I was around other people all day long. We had meetings. I sometimes got to go places on the company’s dime. Some of these times were good. Most of them were not noteworthy. However, once they were gone, I started to miss that in my life. Sure, I met with clients occasionally, but for the most part I stayed in my office at home. While my family is a joy to me, there is a certain need to go beyond that and meetups can help with that.

Work Communities

My wife used to work at a hospital with a man named Melvin whose job was to keep rooms stocked each day. He had worked at the hospital for many years and had developed a routine that involved starting out in the stock room and making rounds around the hospital, stopping to talk to various people in each location. These were his stations within the hospital and without them he would not have been as happy at his job. He needed the community that the stations provided him. As an IT and web consultant, my clients were scattered around the city of Indianapolis and it created many places I could go throughout the day. My clients became part of my community and added to my work enjoyment. It didn’t feel like work – it felt more like visiting a friend.

Seeking Stations

I live in Tipton, Indiana and there isn’t a whole lot to do here. There is no coffee shop and none of my friends live around here. There is a bowling alley, a movie theater, and several gas stations. My kids like walking to the gas station to get candy and occasionally I’ll walk to watch a movie, but the only place for me to go to ‘work’ is McDonald’s and Jim Dandy. One is depressing and the other won’t leave you alone. There is no place to ‘hang out’. It’s a walkable neighborhood, but where would I be walking to? I decided that there must be something to do here, it’s just that I don’t have the information as to what that is. That’s when I got the idea for Seektivity – an app that lets you share activities and events going on around you – kind of like a Foursquare for activities instead of places. A lot of my friends thought it was a good idea. Shoutt has since come out with something similar, but it adds a ‘borrowing/lending’ feature. I shoutted in Tipton, but so far there has been no one listening (if you live in Tipton, give me a shout out on Twitter).

I take a drink of my coffee and get a text from a customer. The room seems brighter now. I feel like I’m a part of a community – and for a second I am happy.

If you enjoyed this post, you might also like, How to Work a Life of Purpose.

May 26, 2013
The Epic Generation: From the Garden to the City

“You know I always wanted to pretend that I was an architect.” – George Costanza, Seinfeld

Nathan Norris recently wrote an article entitled, “Why Generation Y is Causing the Great Migration of the 21st Century” about ‘under 30’s’ moving into the cities and driving less – the new migration into urban spaces. Norris writes, “At the same time, television shifted from glorifying the surburban lifestyle in the 1960’s and 1970’s (e.g., Leave it to Beaver and the Brady Bunch) to glorifying the urban lifestyle in the 1990’s (e.g., Seinfeld and Friends). These cultural changes have pushed Generation Y to look for more adventure than previous generations, and they are less fearful of cities than previous generations.”

I forwarded it to a friend and he wrote, “Art (used loosely here) imitating life or vice versa?”

I wrote that I’ve been watching the TEDtalks “Building Wonder” curated channel on Netflix, which is mostly about architecture and it’s seemed to correlate with conversations I’ve had with him (in the past and recently) about the desire to be part of a community like Bloomington, Broad Ripple, or Nora. We sort of had that community in high school, now that I think about it, with Benjamin’s Coffee House or even to a small extent at Heiskell’s Restaurant (at the height of our takeover). We also had it at church and at college and we also had it for a time in Daleville (before the breakup began). Community is what you make of it – but physical constraints help.

This “art” reference he mentioned made me wonder if I haven’t been yearning after that ‘public living room’ that Friends had in that apartment or Jerry’s apartment. People came and went as they pleased. There were four locks on the door, but they were never locked. They also had that other space, the coffee shop down below – Seinfeld had it with the diner. In Daleville, we had La Hacienda and Starbucks. We knew the people working there and they new us. Remember when George found the rubber band in his soup and playfully sprang it back to the cook who left it there? I think we all long for that sort of community where we all know each other on that level.

Another friend wrote in reply, “I think it has to be ‘art’ imitating life. It isn’t like Seinfeld or Friends glorified New York as the central scene where all things are happening – that had already been the prevailing public opinion since at least the 1920’s. Although, I don’t think it is “imitating” so much as it is a broadcast company’s calculated offering of what the public will find interesting or novel. Green Acres wasn’t about the country, it was about the voyeuristic experience of someone foolishly leaving the wonders of the big city for the country – adding in the tension of the couple having different perspectives.. Beverly Hillbillies was about the opposite – people who don’t. belong in the wonderful urban/suburban area and the comedic tension. Andy Griffith played on the mundane and simpleton of the small-town, where previously there wasn’t any television that was centered on a “watch the paint dry” town. By and large, I think TV producers expect there to be curiosity and reverence for NY and LA from outsiders and appreciation from those who live there. Other than a few shows who are using the difference in location as a position separator or as central to the theme – shows and movies have generally been based in NY/LA/Other large metro.”

Here’s the list of TED Talks for those of you who don’t have Netflix:

1 Bjarke Ingels: Three Warp-Speed Architecture Tales 18m

2 Thomas Heatherwick: Building the Seed Cathedral 16m

3 William McDonough on Cradle to Cradle Design 19m

4 Cameron Sinclair on Open-Source Architecture 23m

5 Joshua Prince-Ramus on Seattle’s Library 19m

6 Liz Diller Plays with Architecture 19m

7 Alex Steffen: The Shareable Future of Cities 10m

8 James H. Kunstler Dissects Suburbia 19m

9 Kamal Meattle on How to Grow Fresh Air 4m

10 Jane Poynter: Life in Biosphere 2 15m

11 Anupam Mishra: The Ancient Ingenuity of Water Harvesting 17m

12 Mitchell Joachim: Don’t Build Your Home, Grow It! 2m

13 Rachel Armstrong: Architecture That Repairs Itself? 7m

14 Joshua Prince-Ramus: Building a Theater That Remakes Itself 18m

15 Magnus Larsson: Turning Dunes into Architecture 11m

16 Michael Pawlyn: Using Nature’s Genius in Architecture 13m

17 Ellen Dunham-Jones: Retrofitting Suburbia 19m

April 16, 2012
The Birth of a Neighborhood

This is a guest post by Zac Parsons. Enjoy. – Erich

About a year and a half of an earlier stage in my life was spent in the industry of new home sales. My experience in ministry didn’t pan out as I would have hoped. I still found myself in a position to want to help people, but not with all of the political red tape of working in a church. Since owning one’s own home is seemingly part of the American Dream, being a part of the that dream fulfillment was very attractive to me.

I began as a temp. A temp is someone who fills in for a full time new home sale associate on one of his or her days off. It wasn’t good money, but it gave me experience and allowed me to meet people within the new home industry. I was able to travel around the area, and learn what I liked and did not like about new home sales and the career path of a new home salesperson. Ultimately, it led me to a builder who was building a community less than a mile from the high school that I graduated from. After temping with the builder for a month, I was interviewed, tested, and ultimately offered a position as a full time floater for the company. Now, I would exclusively temp for this builder at all of their locations around town.

After a few months, I discovered that a position would be opening for a new community, just a mile away from where I had first met this builder. It was a farm that was near to the area in which I had grown up. I lobbied and applied for the position, and was thrilled when I was given the opportunity to sell homes for this neighborhood exclusively.

I had a sales partner, who had her own clients. Because of the length of time it takes to build a house, I got to know all of her clients as well. I answered their questions, demonstrated the features of their new home, and painted a picture of what the community would be like when it was no longer just dirt. It was a challenge at times to find the right way to describe what the neighborhood would look like. Some people wanted to perfectly manicured lawns. Other people wanted to see the streetlights lit up at night. Everyone loved the idea of people outside, knowing their neighbors, and using the playground and park area.

As the months went by, homeowners would stop back in to check on the progress of the lots sold, the plans for the development of the common areas, and the prices of the homes. Unfortunately, with our economic situation, it hurt for them to see the prices drop again and again. It hurt me as well, because I was with them on the journey to fulfill the American Dream. These homes were supposed to be investments. They were supposed to provide a base to grow from. I felt like I was a part of the sadness that they felt. I was one who advised them of making the decision to purchase. I wondered what they thought of me, in all of it. I wondered if they regretted their decision, since the community was still mostly a construction zone, and their homes were worth so much less than what they had paid for them.

About 6 months ago, I left that position, to pursue a career in psychological growth education. During that time, one of my home buyers mailed me an invitation to attend their engagement part at their new home. I hadn’t been back to the community in that time, and didn’t know what to expect. As I pulled into the neighborhood last Saturday, I could hardly believe my eyes. There were at least a dozen new homes started, where there had been dirt before. The grass in the common areas was completed. Three of the streets were completely finished and occupied. It was amazing.

I could not find a place to park on the street, so I circled around behind. As I was driving by, one of the young couples that I had sold a home to was standing outside with their dog. I stopped my car, rolled down my window, and gave them a friendly: “Howdy!” Their faces lit up and they practically bounded towards my car to greet me. They were extremely happy with their neighborhood, their new neighbors, and the fact that they were a part of something at it’s beginning. The financial implications of buying a home when they did, did not temper their goodwill towards me. We exchanged phone numbers and email addresses, and I felt great about the good fortune of running into them.

I ended up parking on the other side of the neighborhood, where I knew every one of the homeowners. As i walked down the street, I remembered putting SOLD stickers on the signs in what was a dirt lot with each different family. I imagined them living in their homes, eating their meals, playing together, and feeling safe. As I rounded the corner near the playground, I heard children shouting and playing. About 20 kids were engrossed in a game of kickball, barely being able to see in the twilight of the evening. Some parents were talking on nearby benches, peacefully enjoying the weather and the community.

At the party, I was greated with hugs and words of genuine appreciation for my role in helping them build their home. They spoke of how much it felt like a community now, and how happy they were to have such a place of their own. I didn’t stay long, but I thanked them for inviting me and gave them a small gift.

There are so many things in life that you cannot see for what they are until to take time to step away from them. On some level, I knew that I was a part of building a community, but when I was frustrated by slow sales, dropping prices, or other dramas of the industry, I lost that vision. There was not one moment of the dirt becoming a community. It was dozens and dozens of moments, many of which I was not in control of. This is how life functions. Where you are now is not exactly where you will be one year from now. Growth will occur. It is up to you how much you will be a part of that growth, and in which direction it will occur.

May 26, 2009