Tomorrow, Third Wave will celebrate its first anniversary. For me personally, it has been the most exciting year since I moved to Germany. In many ways, it was the most exciting year of my life.
Mostly, because I finally grew up.
Taking the leap of faith and jumping off the cliff ended up being easier then accepting the consequences of the jump itself. This, of course, is part of the learning curve. As soon as you start doing something, you realize that there is only one way to go: forward. You might not end up doing it all in the right direction or in a constant pace, but as long as you move forward you are most like doing the right thing.
Acknowledging mistakes is the hardest part in it all. We all talk, tweet and write about the value of failing. Actually failing and in the same process being actually able to extract a lesson out of it is much, much harder. Nobody is really prepared for this unless you experience it once in a while. And this is the growing up part. This is the one that will teach you a couple of things about how to run a company and in many ways even more about yourself. Or it doesn’t and you fail without learning anything.
Fortunately, our mistakes haven’t been so savior that we couldn’t manage to tackle them on our own. Fortunately, we’ve been able to learn our lessons and grow up a bit. I’m proud of our accomplishments, of our way to work and handle the business of our company. This might not be a humble thing to say, but in this case it is just fact.
But: growing part is a process. We learned a lot in one year, we accomplished even more (this mostly because we have amazing friends who listen, talk to and help us). There is much more to come and I’m happy as always to be doing this together with Johannes & Peter.
To invoke once again the genius writing of The West Wing, there is only one more thing to say: what’s next?
Als Falk mich vor ein paar Tagen angepingt hat, ob ich in letzter Zeit von Jörg-Olaf etwas gehört habe, konnte ich mir nicht vorstellen, dass mich dann diese Nachricht ereilen wird.
Ich weiss gar nicht, wo ich anfangen soll. Jörg-Olaf und ich haben uns zum ersten Mal vor ungefähr 10 Jahren in einem IRC Chat kennen gelernt. Das muss ungefähr 10 Jahre her gewesen sein. Ich war damals 16 oder 17, ein Teenager und er war “ix”, der Mann der schon einiges gemacht, viel Erfahrung hatte und vor allem bei Odem.org aktiv gewesen ist. Wir haben uns oft gerieben, oft widersprochen aber ich habe ihn immer für seine Fähigkeit wertgeschätzt sich allumfassend mit einem Thema auseinanderzusetzen.
Ein paar Jahre später haben wir zusammen bei medienrauschen.de gebloggt und obwohl der Deutsche Welle Preis für das beste journalistische Blog von an das gesamte Team gegangen ist, war es vor allem Jörg-Olafs Einsatz, der uns den Sieg gesichert hat.
Obwohl sich unsere Wege immer wieder kreuzten, haben wir in den letzten Jahren nicht mehr viel Kontakt gehabt. Dennoch habe ich nie seine Leistung und seine Fähigkeit aufgehört wertzuschätzen. Sein Tot ist ein großer Verlust für die deutsche Netzszene, mit ihm ist ein einflussreicher, sehr bedachter Mensch von uns gegangen.
Ruhe in Frieden, Jörg-Olaf. Wir werden dich vermissen.
Poetry. I gave it far too seldom my attention. And yet, John Keats did crossed my path often enough for me to have read his work. Not all of it, but enough to feel comfortable with it.
These days, I found myself thinking of Keats and just now, I started rereading Hyperion.
Deep in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.10
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad ‘mid her reeds
Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.
It’s a majestic read, worth your time.