In order to prove to myself that I have a purpose in my life, I decided to read “How Will You Measure Your Life?” by Clay Christensen this past weekend. I’m not usually a fan of self help books, but I’ve found that I’ve been reading more of them these days than any other genre (no Hunger Games plz). Besides the fact that the intended audience of the book is the type-A high achieving, 2+2+2 track ivy league educated parent, I found it pretty interesting and insightful, giving rational steps to get what you want out of life. I’m not going to rehash the contents of the book, but will say that if you’ve got some down time (I’m on vacation) it’s a pretty quick read (link is below).

I’ve decided to take the next week off for vacation. I’m kind of worn down and need some rest. I’ve been looking forward to not going into work for a while now. I don’t have any of the typical vacation plans set up for the upcoming week, so it’s going to be much more of a “staycation” (I hate this term by the way).

I've been thinking a lot lately about quitting my job outright, without anything lined up. I have a number of reasons behind wanting to do this, hygiene factors are a big part of this recurring daydream but what it comes down to is that I don't think this is the place in the world where I can add the most value. What it boils down to is my job admittedly is a poor fit for me. Im WAY too much of a cynic and a low level misanthrope for this line of work.

Fuck. I set a goal to quit and fail every time. I resolve to stop smoking almost daily. I state it out loud and humiliate myself within 24 hours. My stupid brain seems to automatically lead me to the nearest gas station to pick up a pack of smokes. I then proceed to smoke the entire pack within a week. This cycle gets repeated without fail almost every week.

I know smoking is terrible for you, I took the same D.A.R.E. classes in middle school everyone else did. I’m going to die a lot sooner, have health problems, etc. I’ve read all the medical literature and understand why I will get lung cancer. I’ve seen the pictures of blackened lungs on the cigarette boxes. I know what happened to the Marlboro Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_McLaren). So much for making good decisions…

I am still actively resisting social media. I can’t stand it. It makes me angry.

I disabled my Facebook account because I was tired of looking at all the Tim Tebow statuses.

I don’t like you, stop sending me invitations on LinkedIn.

I already know Kanye’s retarded, there’s no need to read his Tweets.

Much to my chagrin, as much as I’ve tried to avoid it, it appears to have made its way into deal-making. Axialmarket (https://www.axialmarket.com) seems to have ambitions to be the Facebook of the sponsor community, among I’m sure countless other VC-backed online deal-making sites. As a brief background, the site currently has tools to connect with the sell-side and see what deals they have posted, in hopes of matching up sponsors with companies offline. At work, we signed up more as a curiosity, but have recently seen some of the investment bankers that we have long relationships with cross-post deals they show us on the site.