Supafly.com

I’m on the seventh floor of a hotel in St. Louis. My recliner is a patterned pink and my computer wallpaper is patterned purple. The sky is so blue and the trees are so green. The coffee maker is popping to get my attention.
It has been a slow week at the studio. I am frozen by my inability to write code. With out a solid programmer to write the ASP backend for our site, I get frustrated.

A programmer (code writer) is like an architect of a nightclub. His job is to plan and build a solid and functional structure. The designer takes the bare building and makes it cool and desirable so people want to come in and stay. If the staircases are in the wrong place or the doors too narrow, it makes the designer’s job difficult. If the dance floor falls through when too many people show up to the party, then all the nifty lighting and sofas mean nothing.

I am not an architect, but I’ve had a year of experience trying to run a nightclub that wasn’t built right. There wasn’t enough planning ahead of time, the construction was weak, and some things weren’t even finished. It’s been a tough year.

So, as we prepare to build a whole new LIFETEEN.com nightclub, I’ll be the project planner, and we’ll hire out someone to be the building constructor. My blueprints won’t be perfect. But with his experience and knowledge, we’ll make necessary improvements and the site will become what is should be.

In just a few days, it will be one year since I moved to Phoenix. I have learned so much!

I’ve learned that I am a real grown-up who can do real grown-up things. (And oh it’s so much fun to do real grown-up things!) I may listen to punk rock, have a new-hawk, and live the MTV life, but that doesn’t mean I am a little kid who can’t play with the big boys. In college, there was always the holy grounds of “the professionals.” We turned in homework and got an A, they turned in real work and got paid lots of money. We were learning, they knew.

You do know, don’t you? No, there are a lot of people in the work force who suck at what they do. At our first meeting with the web development company last September, they used technical words and talked about projects they knocked out of the park. I confessed I only have done supa-fly.com. They applauded me for my student effort, then used some more big words.

After months of headaches, they finally handed over the finished site, our custom-built nightclub. The place sucked. No one would come here. Did you all notice how ugly this thing is?

One day at a time, I cleaned up the mess. Some rooms I had to tear done, others I had to redesign, and some I had to build from nothing. Those months were long and stressful. So now lifeteen.com is a lot happier of a place. People come and hang out, read, and learn. But, it’s nowhere near where it needs to be.

We will become the top teen site on the Internet. There is a real need, we have the support, and most of all, we have the blessing from above. These aren’t just fluffy words or a campaign promise—this is my passion. My passion is a reality, not a fleeting enthusiasm.

“Say not that you are too young.”

I am in my new space at the studio. The room is stacked with stuff left over from the LT TV set we had a couple weeks ago. I had to climb through it all to get to the desk. It’s lunchtime and I wanted a change of scenery.

Maybe I’m in my “office,” but that sounds way too stiff. I can’t call this “the studio” b/c that’s next door. I could go back to the “Matt Cave”. That’s what I named my basement room in high school. Or maybe something trendy, like “the DotComDen”. Uh huh, yeah.

Speaking of “uh huh, yeah.” I am quoting PDiddy back when he was Puff Daddy. In the song, “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems” with Biggy Smalls, he always nodded, “uh huh yeah.” I said that a month ago to a group of 350 teens, and none of ‘em seemed to know what I was talking about. That song was only five years ago.

Last night we had a healing Mass for the Church. The parish had been praying for healing all week, and this Mass finished off the week. Every Mass at St. Timothy is good. I don’t care who you are, or what you don’t believe–a Mass at St. Timothy will bother you out of what you presume Mass to be. I am so blessed to be a parishioner there.

After Mass I talked to Michelle for a few minutes. She has such a genuine spirit. Not many people know who they are, so how can they share that with others? But Michelle is so present to you and to herself. I don’t know her too well, so it was nice to get to know her better.

Brandon told me they’d be moving the Life Teen coffee cart over into a nook outside of the church. It’s a cozy corner with a bubbling fountain and cafe tables. They’ll be extending the wall up and putting a roof over it all. That’s good b/c that corner is so cute and no one goes in there. At first I thought he needed help redesigning their sign, but now it looks like we can build out own little coffee house. I’ve been eyeing the coffee cups and have been sketching their redesign. I never thought I’d get to be a part of redoing the whole coffee cart.

I went over to Kevin and Stephanie’s house last night after Mass. Their house is so artsy…wood carvings, mosaics, and paintings. Stephanie is quite talented. Her high school drawings were beyond that of most college art students. She’s third or fourth year in college, and continues to do good work. She has an internship with a hipster magazine on my street, doing a lot of the stuff I do: graphics and webby work. It’ll be fun to learn from each other.

Wow…I’ve already gotten so much done in my unofficial first day in the DotComDen. The small stained glass windows spill so much light into the room. When I get back from Hiawassee, it’ll be fun to move on in.

Oh yeah…I get my three Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe paintings back from the frame shop today. Woo hoo!

When I got off The Real World, I was dying to DO something, not just sit around a talk about talking about people. I told my buddy Paul of blackhand.com that we needed to make a DesignTank.

There are think tanks where bright minds synergize and help the world along. I don’t know what they would look like, but in middle school I imagined a bunch of geeks in white lab coats in an airplane hanger out in the desert. They would come out from underneath their hanger a year later with some revelation about some form of science nobody else understands, but everybody would benefit from.

So Paul and I needed to build a DesignTank: a computer lab type art studio, smothered with visual stimulation, good music, goals, and the Holy Spirit. We could create, inspired by the Creator. I imagined fusing ministry and the Internet. We had to finish our senior thesis, so we never got around to the DesignTank.

It just dawned on me this morning that this DesignTank is happening around me. I’m embarrassed it’s taken me this long to unite the name of the vision with what I do every day.

When I move into my own studio space across the breezeway, I’ll really be able to build the atmosphere. What’s exciting about the studio is I get to make sure my enthusiasm and talent gets people, not just some web site floating out there in darkness cyberspace.
Tomorrow afternoon I am flying out to Notre Dame for the Life Teen Leadership Conference. I am happy to get away from computer screens and color palettes and be around lots of people. It takes that balance of creating for people, then being with those people, to make sure I don’t go and fall over one day on my way to do something else.

I guess it’s time to get out of bed. Woo hooo! A free Saturday.

I am finished designing the set for LT TV. The studio produces training resource tapes that go out to all the Life Teen parishes. Usually the tape of a few people in different places sharing what they’ve learned along the way. But over the next couple years, they want the tapes to be shot on the set of LT TV.

Frank, director of productions, quietly asked me if I knew of a place to get inexpensive old funky furniture. I spun my chair around and pelted him with questions. You just don’t ask me for a place to get the funky stuff, and not tell me why.

An hour later, Frank and I where at a coffee shop in Scottsdale sketching out the LT TV set. But, I didn’t have much money, less than $1000, and about two days to get it done. Oh my glory, am I on Trading Spaces? This is my dream. I was so excited I wanted to flip over the tables and listen to Polka music.

Well, I got more time, thank God. Unlike Trading Spaces, I was the designer without a carpenter or two helpers. I tore through thrift stores and Home Depot to compose my masterpiece. This couch from the 50’s (purple) was so rad. It was $29 and I had budgeted $400 for a couch. I was so excited to throw it in the van, I threw out my back.

I spray painted five translucent roofing panels and hung them from the ceiling. With Christmas lights dangling behind them, they look sexy. The couch and two plush canvas chairs with bright pillows make people want to be cool then go to sleep. There’s suede shag carpet under the 70’s mod coffee table (and matching end table). In the middle an old TV playing a video tape of a fireplace.

The guys hung scrims (thin white cloth) all around the room and colored them with lights. I cut out and painted an exaggerated cartoony picture frame. We stretched a screen across it and projected 3D stuff on it that Carlos built. Next time we’ll project my fish tank on it. With candles here and there, the set is done.

So people have been coming in and out to be on the set and tape LT TV. It’s fun to sit in the control room and see how slick everything will look on camera. With Josh lighting the set, Frank directing everything, Carlos doing the 3D graphics, and Mark and Serg writing, the whole thing has come together for perfection.

Everyone understands the old Mother Teresa, but how many were there when she was growing into her motherhood? My life is hard work. My gains always come at a cost.

But I know this hard work will pay off. No one is there to clap and thank me when I am alone in my bed at night. Too much of life is alone. I am so tired.

Sometimes, I just have to let God love me, and let everything else go.