I’ve been putting in long hours at the studio since we’ve launched the new lifeteen.com. A big difference between this site and the old one is that I am using more contributing writers. Even though I’m the only one who works full-time on the site, we have over 50 people who volunteer a few hours a week towards the site.

There’s a restaurant near the studio that is super-hip boutique market, sandwich shop, and coffee shop. Their little restaurant become so popular, they bought up the space next door just to give their customers more places to sit and eat. They started a wine bar on the other side of the parking lot in an old post office. Now that spot is outrageously popular. With more people coming for lunch at both restaurants, they were forced to acquire a third parking lot. But even that is not enough, so they have two guys who valet at lunch. The parking lot is bumper-to-bumper with luxury cars that are too new to have license plates. All of this commotion for a seven-dollar sandwich!

It’s stunning to see a restaurant done that well. There is no detail that is missed. I could eat lunch there everyday because their creativity inspires me. I eat a good meal and then I truck back to the studio sparkling with creativity. I want to create a website that is as good as that restaurant. I’ve done everything possible to expand lifeteen.com to become a cool and inviting home online, but my creativity is limited because I am the only one. As long as it is only me working on the site, we’ll never know how big it could be.

Earlier this year, we looked for a Web Developer to hire full time. But after reading many resumes and holding just as many interviews, it became obvious that there was little chance of finding someone who has what we need: very talented, very skilled, very smart, very Catholic, and willing to work for next to nothing. At best, we found someone who could do one of those, but none of the others.

One of our old Interns from a couple summers ago is away at college, and he called last week to tell me about a classmate who’s graduating that he thinks might be a qualified Intern. I’m praying that something will happen, because it gets disheartening working like this.