Excavating the secrets, scandals, and untold stories hiding below the surface of life, and giving voice to the characters who make or made those hiStories happen.
We live in revolutionary times, my friends. And except for the melting ice caps and unfortunate proliferation of weapons and plastic, I like this brave new world. It allows us to be generous. It demands that we be generous. The more generous we are, the better, in fact. Because with generosity, everybody wins.
This was never so obvious to me than during my team’s recent Kickstarter campaign. The success of our Kickstarter can be measured in many ways. Most visibly, 277 backers pledged $41,491 to help bring our project to life. They are all being publicly thanked on our website homepage here as part of our basic reward: the Social Media Shout Out of Gratitude.
But to stop the thanks there would neglect the many contributions of the friends, colleagues, team members, and even a few strangers-turned-friends, who showed up in droves to support our campaign by sharing of themselves. Their in-kind support not only resulted in campaign pledges, it also saved us money, and kept us going through the campaign downs as well as the ups.
One week ago today, on the last morning of our 38-day Kickstarter campaign that involved four live events and uncountable networking meet ups, taking me first to Florence, then from London to Nashville to New York to Rhode Island, back to New York, then to London, then Paris, and back to London again, I awoke at 4:30am GMT with a start.
It had become commonplace for me to sprint for 16-18 hours a day between dog walks and 4-5 hour nightly naps. Some nights I didn’t really sleep at all, merely rested, while going over the to do list again and again in my head. I was running on sheer adrenaline by this point – that and the fumes of way too much caffeine ingested for way too many days that coursed through my veins and caused my nervous system to fritz out at even the slightest provocation. I was exhausted, but exhilarated and unwilling, unable to stop, because one thing was clear: The crowd was behind me. YOU were behind me. I now had a responsibility, not just to myself, but also to the TTT&T Team, who had all worked so hard and given me so much, as well as to a community of supporters that was expanding daily with every new campaign backer, twitter follower, and Facebook friend.
On the penultimate night of the campaign, I stopped work early – at about 8:30pm. I couldn’t hold my head up any longer, couldn’t will my fingers to type another word. As I closed my computer, we had only $750 left to raise. I felt certain we would make that goal by midnight GMT the next day. I fell to sleep quickly and slept soundly...
Captain’s Log: Campaign Date 23. I woke this morning with an odd sense of calm, a sensation I haven’t felt in weeks. For fifteen days, we’ve been in the doldrums, steering our ship through the murky middle of this campaign. The way forward hasn't always been clear. Certain routes we expected to be lined with gold, gave us only copper. The ticking of the clock grew louder with each passing day even as the hours seemed to slow.
My own sense of time has been warped by late nights and early mornings, jet lag, and a to-do list that just won't quit. My body suffers from the effects of way too much caffeine and way too little exercise, making sleep elusive. My left hand, now smothered in Tiger Balm and wrapped in a splint, has seized up from all the typing of guest posts and press blurbs and thank you notes and direct appeals to the as-of-yet-unpledged. Progress is painful and fraught with typos, and still I can't manage to get it all done...
We’ve been busy over here at TTT&T Kickstarter Campaign Headquarters, which has over the course of the last ten days moved from London to Nashville to New York to Providence, RI, and back to New York again.