My home away from home (aka. the cube). Tip: New car smell offsets mold quite nicely.

You know that old saying “use it or lose it”? Well if “it” refers to any resemblance of a social life or social skills, then sure enough, I think I’ve lost it. Sitting in front of a computer for the last 4 years of my life (damn near straight) has put a slight damper on my social activities. I talk/yell much more regularly with a machine than a person these days. And now that I am also working at home, my social life is pretty much non-existent. I think it’s time to face facts here. Somehow I have managed to regress into a workaholic webmonkey of some sort and can no longer communicate with the human species. What are you supposed to say to them? Seriously, I’d like to know.

I guess I’m just not as user-friendly as I used to be. It’s not that I necessarily enjoy being out of touch with the human race, it’s just that I don’t get a whole lot of practice at it. This is the profession I chose and now I must deal with the adverse effects. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy programming, but it would be nice if I could stop inadvertently slipping into binary code mid-sentence. And the worst part is, I’m pretty sure nobody notices when I do (which I don’t…wait, huh?). I guess this comes with the territory when you’re an introverted computer programmer who gets easily annoyed.

I think one of the keys to my success will be networking and building relationships with fellow IT professionals, entrepreneurs, potential customers/clients, etc. So, I need to start spending some quality time away from work and out in the world. It’s time to quit being an entreprenerd and treat social interaction as more of a priority in my life. I need to enhance my networking skills … and I’m not talking TCP/IP here (get it? nudge nudge, wink wink, somebody please slap me). I think it’s time to upgrade to the new Zack 2.0, Entrepreneur Edition. It comes fully integrated with social software and I hear it’s even human compatible! Ok, that last joke only helps illustrate my point…I need help people!

So all those organizations and clubs I never thought I had time for, are now climbing my priority list: Chamber of Commerce, Trade Associations, OSU Alumni Association, Club Whatever. My goal is to attend one meeting/event for each of these in the next few months and see how much networking I can do. It’s time to venture out from my cube and explore the strange environment that lurks outside. I will need to adapt quickly though if I want to survive. But first I shall study their habits…

Zack’s Journal

Day 1: The air in Outer-Cube is oddly fresher than what I am used to. Who can breathe this crap? Fortunately, I brought along my trusty mold-mask to protect me. The inhabitants are very odd looking indeed. Their keyboards and mice appear to have been torn from their limbs leaving these weird dangling digits of sorts. It’s horrible! They also seem to have an evolved spine that allows them to stand up-right and walk away from their computers, for whatever reason. The lack of fluorescent lighting is making me nauseous and there is a strange lack of a strange buzzing noise. What’s that about? I can almost think clearly out here for Pete’s sakes. SWEET BINARY CODE, I think one of them is trying to communicate. What should I do??? I must return to my cube at once…

You see what I did there? I took a joke entirely too far and completely over-exaggerated my situation. This is why 1110010101101010101101111000101010!

(audience smiles and nods)