TNWM

I have a friend, Mikey and, every week -- with very few exceptions -- since about mid-1989, he and I have been going to dinner to talk about, well, pretty much whatever it is that we end up talking about.

When I first got a Job at Apple Computer, Mikey had just presented our co-manager with his idea of a "buddy checklist." Pretty straightforward stuff, the buddy checklist -- when a new person joins the group, they're assigned a "checklist buddy" who shows that new person where the bathrooms are, where the copy-machine is, helps them figure out who to talk to to get passwords for the various servers, how to set up a mail account (back then, you set up your own), where the good places to go for lunch are (this was before the cool new campus & cafeteria), etc. Now-a-days, nearly every company of any size has all of this happen as part of an HR indoc, or some similar thing, but Mikey's particular genius is that he saw this need back in '89 and devised a rather complete list of all the stuff that is typically missed in your average first-day "welcome to <Company Name>" schpiel but which is really necessary to function in your new job, and so Carol, our boss, assigned him to try out the new program on me. "How did you two meet?" people ask, and I always say "Mikey was assigned to me as my 'checklist buddy.'"

I think the first dinners were on Monday nights, but something came up that interrupted them, so we switched to Wednesdays. Back then, we were both single and so a lot of our Wed-night dinner talks centered around the trials & tribulations of dating (note to self: do a blog on dating strategy), and how we could enjoy that process more. One thing led to another, and it's been Tuesday nights for the last many-many years, and we've come to refer to it as "Tuesday Night With Mikey" or "TNWM", for short.

[Heh. So, tonight (Tuesday), Mikey's bailing because he wants to attend a town-meeting that's on a matter that's reasonably near & dear to him. Normally, I'd give him flak about it -- especially for missing on the day that I'm posting about how cool TNWM is -- but attending a town-meeting is a very TNWM kind of thing. In fact, we've spent many a Tuesday night doing something civic-minded, like going over the ballot-measures, or attending small claims court or similar. So... I hope you convince 'em, Mikey!]

Ignoring the fact that Mikey's a pretty smart guy, I just think it's cool that we've managed to maintain our friendship and keep in touch on a regular basis for over a decade and a half through several changes of jobs, apartments, houses, girlfriends (we're both married, now), and other normally-drift-apart-causing items here in fast-paced Silicon Valley.

To some people, this might not be much of a big deal -- my wife, Vicki, has lived on the peninsula her entire life (save a couple of years in VA and college in La Jolla), and still has lunch with people with whom she went to kindergarden. I, on the other hand, grew up in a military (Navy) family, and got used to the idea of moving, going to an entirely new school and making a whole new set of friends every 1.5-2 years until I was 10, when we stayed in the same place for 4 years, when we moved to Wisconsin, which I disliked a great deal, and couldn't wait to leave. I don't even remember where I went to kindergarden! (I'm pretty sure it was in Monterrey, though, although I'd have to check to be sure.)

And, to be fair, I have a few friends from the Wisconsin days with whom I still am in touch on a nearly-annual basis -- we've had some of them stay at our place for West-coast vacations, and we always try to visit when I'm back there to see my daughter (a Sr. at UWM, and I occasionally hear from some of the people I went to high-school with (including my 1st WI girlfriend, who's now in L.A. and occasionally comes to a bonfire or similar party-visit with her husband) and write (not often enough :\) a friend from the Navy days -- but, by and large, when someone "goes somewhere else" (leaves work, if that's where I know them from, or moves, or whatever), we tend to drift apart. So I think it's way-cool that Mikey and I decided "we're going to make the effort to not drift apart", and stuck to it.

Good on us!

Seriously, though -- there are, in my opinion, not enough truly top-notch people in the world and, if you happen to know one, it's to your advantage to nurture the friendship make make darned good and sure that, if one of you gets another job, or moves to another city/state or otherwise becomes less accessable, that you make the effort to not lose that person from your life. And it is effort! It's not much, but it's "more than zero", and it's well worth it.

(Heh, when I started writing about TNWM, I didn't think I'd get off on this tangent, but it is important! Such is blogging, eh?)

So, again, maybe lots of people already know all about this, because they've been doing it their whole life but, for those of us who have an early history of pulling-up stakes and starting over, that's my advice: when you run into a rare individual that would be a shame to drift away from, make the effort not to drift away.

Ok, I think I've beat that one to death...

So: TNWM. Over the years, Mikey and I have had a lot of conversations about a lot of interesting things -- neither of us are much "into" sports (except as observers of the fans) or weather, but we both do enjoy talking about philosophy, the economy, psychology, computers (of course!), constitutional law and who knows what else; we we always have plenty to talk about. Also, over the years, we've invited other friends or couples to join us and they always have a great time (of course, they're hand-picked because they're the kind of person who would really "get into" this sort of thing), and then they sort of become regulars and then, as the extra-friends mount up, TNWM started to be this big weekly dinner with a dozen or more interesting, talkative people and we started to notice: hey! We never get to argue about this or that just between the two of us, anymore. Tuesday nights had started to take on a life of their own, and we no longer get to spend all day Monday & Tuesday (or sometimes the whole week leading up) stewing over some topic and then work it out on Tuesday night, because someone else wants to steer things toward whatever they've been thinking about.

"Not that there's anything wrong with that..."

...But, as much as we enjoyed the group dynamic, we also wanted to reclaim the one-on-one conversation, too. So we decided that the first Tuesday of every month should be TNWE -- Tuesday Night With Everybody -- a sort of open-ended, free for all, "if you're cool & interesting & fun to be with and like this sort of thing, please join us" kind of affair, and the other Tuesdays are back to just me & Mikey. Actually, Vicki usually joins us, but that still keeps the "quiet, deep discussion" feel going, without things going 10 directions at once, the way the bigger group does.

Why am I telling you all of this? Well, a couple of reasons. First, because it's way-cool, and you should consider setting up something similar with one of the smart people in your life. One of the things that came out of the dating-days discussions was that Mikey noticed that nearly everyone will say "I just love the woods, and camping, and etc..." but, if you ask them "how many times have you been camping in the last 12 months?", they'll answer zero. Ok, then, "when was the last time you went camping?" -- uh... "not since I was a little kid, with Scouts" is a common response. Ok, there's nothing wrong with not going camping but, if you love it so much, why don't you do it?!

I told you that because it ties in: a lot of people that I know say they just love to get together and talk/bullshit/brainstorm/argue/discuss/whatever with other smart people but, when asked how many times they've done that, this year (architecture meetings at work, while close, don't, technically, count), the answer is often "never." Ok, then, when was the last time you did something like that? "Oh," comes the response, "I can't even remember the last time. Five, maybe ten years...?"

So I'm telling you all of this to urge you to go out there and do it! (If you don't like yapping with people so much, but love camping, then do that -- I like camping, but I like yapping more. The point is: if you really love it, then make time to do it!)

And if you can't figure out when you're going to squeeze all this stuff you really love to do into your busy schedule, I've just given you a model for how to make it work. Once a week too much for you? Well, what do you REALLY have to do that's so gosh-darned important that you can't blow it off to do the thing you really enjoy?! But maybe you have some weird set of comittments, ok -- you can still set aside the first Thursday of every month (or whatever) to spend time with the coolest people you know, can't you?!

I don't know your schedule -- I'm just saying: figure it out! It's really not that hard.

The other reason I'm telling you all of this is because, over the coming weeks, months & years, I'm likely to open several topics with some variation on "so, I was talking to Mikey last Tuesday about <blah>, and...", and now you'll have a context for why I do that.