Too Much Excitement

You guys may have seen these pictures before today, but it is appropriate that you see them again as they are a very important part of a funny story.
As you know that is the Tower of the US Bank Building. That tower is something that I look at everyday. I used to look at it from my family neighborhood in Leimert Park, the Crenshaw District and it would amaze me that I could see that tower from my
street.

Well, you all know that I have been very interested in Stickam. Well, my friends, Stickam has offices in that tower. Before I go any further I want it to be known that Stickam.com has very gracious people working for them.
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Here is how the story goes.
I applied to Stickam for a yesterday. Of course, I was waiting on baited breath hoping that they would get back to me immediately. I bugged everyone of my friends like a high school kid as to how long it would take for them to contact me back. I do not know what the usual protocols are for online replies for job positions so I was a bit out of my territory. Plus, I saw where a couple of people had suddenly looked at my stickam profile. I thought it was they and they decided that they were not going to contact me. The funny part about all of this is that I emailed them yesterday afternoon at 4:00pm. I started feeling the rejection at about 7:00PM, after I saw where someone had looked at my profile right after I emailed them my resume. So I gave Stickam a grand total of 3 hours to read my cover letter and resume and decide that they wanted to talk to me and decide when we were going to talk about an interview. Of course, everybody who would be involved in the process had nothing to do. Of course they all had to be in the office. Of course they did not have anything more important to do than stop everything they were doing and tend to some job applicant that they did not know. Of course, getting back to me was more important than dealing with a website that has approximately 100,000 new members every week. Last year they were at 260,000 and now they are at approximately 1,400,000 members. With that increase in members you have problems.
Of course, I know this. Any Idiot who went to business school knows at least two basic problems from growth in a business; finance and management.

So somewhere around 9 o'clock last night I decided to stop acting like a high school kid who was waiting to see if he were going to go on his first date or not.
I went to sleep. I woke up and began to pursue the job hunt. I wrote a blog this morning just to keep my clarity of purpose and, actually, to let off steam as I wrote. I had to distract myself from looking at the email. At around 10:40AM, after finishing some work I looked at the email. I saw that there was bold print at the top. That meant that I had new mail. My heart started pumping when I noticed something that seemed familiar. I focused in and realized that it was from Stickam but it was not from the marketing department. Someone requested to be on my friends list.

Usually I do not respond to the requests as some of the requests are from people who are very young. However, the user name seemed familiar. I clicked on the link and, yes, I had seen the profile page on an eccasion when I was doing some member searching. She was a standout from the masses, no doubt about it. "I'll be damned", I said. Quickly I approved the friendship and sent her a thank you note.

I looked at her profile again and saw where she was a film maker and that she liked to do documentaries. I quickly emailed her, again, and asked her if she would be interested in doing something from a different angle than most do when it comes to Skid Row.

I have long wanted to do one but my skills are limited at best, even though I feel I know the angle to do a great documentary. I know the people on Skidrow and that makes for different potential angles as you learn about the people, and after they open up, you see a common thread that would not have been discovered had relationships not been formed.

Then something caught my eye. I thought I read something where she said she worked for Stickam. I thought I was seeing things as I had stickam on the brain for the past month. but no, I did see correctly. "Are you kidding me? You mean tesa works for stickam!! Whoa!!!!" I still thought she might have been joking about it but I emailed her again to ask. I also apologized for emailing her so much. She sends in one request and the next thing you know she is deluged with email from me.

I get up and walk down the street and tried to find Monica from Banguette. She was not in. I started to go up and see if I could see Tom Gilmore but I decided that I should not go upstairs in combat boots and sweat outfit. Tom is tolerant, I know. But there are limits and to go up there in my outfit would not have furthered my cause in the least.

I leave and was on my way to get something to eat when I decided to visit Chrysalis again. I had to do something and there was no better time than to do it than the present, I thought. I finished what I was doing and got up. Something told me to sit back down and check my email. I did just that.

STICKAM was what I saw, in big bold uppercase letters. I damn near fell out of the chair. My breathing quickened. I got up. I sat down. I got up. I sat down. One of the employees at the agency looked at me like I was having an episode.

I honestly did not know what to do so I decided to get some water. Ah yes,
stall. That always works. buy some time and gain some damn composure, for God's sake. It took a minute or two but finally I did regain some sense of self. The staff man return his focus to his sport's page so I guess he felt I did not need any medication or Pysch meds.

It was from the a Marketing Manager, Paul. "Hi, I recently read your blog...."
While, I was saying, I like this internet world more and more. I knew the entertainment business was informal and I saw someone ride a unicycle on 60 minutes the other night while they discussed Facebook so I figured informality was the standard.(by the way, I can ride unicycles. I had two of them. If that is a prerequisite for internet employment, I qualify.)

Evidently Paul read my blog and thought someone had not gotten in touch with me. I could not figure how that could be but I knew that in my last blog I said "no word from stickam". Of course that was my play by play to my vast audience :).
Little did I know that someone from Stickam would have read my blog and then i wondered when he read it.

He was very gracious and told me to contact him any time. I saw something that caught my attention. It was the wording. "work together".

Wow, am I missing something, I asked myself? Is this a new way to talk about joining a firm. I have never read any correspondence from a potential employer that mentioned "hear my ideas on how we can work together." I did not care one bit.
I had heard from STickam. I felt great. I was ecstatic. I was on my way into the
television business, internet style.

I ran into tell the lady at Chrysalis. She heard me talk about stickam so many times, you would have thought that was the only company around.

I called people. I said. "Hey, I heard from Stickam. l I heard. I heard." You would have thought I got that long awaited acceptance letter from the college of my choice. I was giddy with excitement. THEN, my mind started working. went over every word of that letter. "This is the damnedest reply to a job that I have ever seen." Something did not seem right. I made copies of it and show some people who I respect and they had the same questions. Did he write you because of the blog? Did he find out about your blog because of your resume or what? I had the same questions. If he thought they had dropped the ball, not getting in touch with me, then I had a feeling all of this was a matter of timing.

I looked in the email again. I received another email from my new "friend" at stickam. Yes she did work for stickam. then she told me how a manager had flagged her about me. "Dang,". I thought. I did not read anything else. "Flagged", oh my god, I thought. I thought I was on the outs before I ever had a chance to be in the end crowd. You see, here is where the internet crowd and I have a generation gap.

I am at the tail end of the baby boomer crowd. There was a time when we would always say "that should give you a RED FLAG." It was a term used to tell you to halt everything you were doing and cease communication with someone. They were bad news.

MY heart sank. It just totally sank but something just did not seem right. I was flagged but she sent me her total contact information. that did not seem to make any sense. I was missing something.

Dam right I did. You remember those SAT exams were you missed an answer because you assumed what something said. That would make a difference in your score and you may not get a letter from the college of your choice as a result of it. Well, I did worse. I did not even see the sentence that said it was good timing. I was totally blinded by the term flagged which I interpreted in the wrong manner.

I could only think of what Garza had been saying to me. Yes, why not blame my good friend garza. Everybody blames someone. Why should I be any different. Why should I take responsibility for being a total idiot. He kept saying that wanting to do a project about skid row or mentioning anything about skid row would get me black balled by the corporations.

When I saw the word "flagged" I thought that is what happened. Of course, I did not tell you that I followed up with research on Paul on the net and was impressed with his website, Ktown213. I figured I would turn him on to a friend of mine from prep school. His family publishes the Korean Times.
I was excited to see how all of this linked up. Then I thought I was losing it all.
Funny.

Anyway, I called Tesa and she had no idea that I sent my resume into Stickam. I think he had no idea either. It was just a matter of timing although I think I aged about ten years as a result of all of the excitement.

They may not be in a hiring mode but from talking to Tesa, as frenzied as I was, I left with the impression that they are a patient and open group of people that want to please and work with the members of their website. I left with the feeling that there could be great potential. I just need to be creative. I made contact today and that is what is important. Tesa and I will talk again. Hopefully Paul will see how we both were a bit unaware of things. He obviously did not know I applied for a position.

They were so nice, and I would enjoy working in the office free to learn more about things. You never know what can happen. Today was a good day.
I want all of my readers who are interested in broadcasting, videos or photo sharing to check out stickam.com.

I was worried about being pigeoned in etc. No more listening to Garza. Of course I will hear from him about this. I am sure he will think this is funny.

Well, it is time to go home. I must think of ways that I could work together with stickam. His email challenges me to create something. they opened the door and who could ask for anything more than that. Thank you Stickam for an interesting day. You have a great product and I believe the sky is the limit with you guys. You have stirred up my creative juices.

I hope that people can see the comedy in the day. As for me, I must go lay down. too much excitement.

Good night world. I love you.