Shane Life

I got this tattoo when I was nineteen years old. I was home from college for the summer working a horrible job as a roofing contractor in LaCygne for Boone Brothers Roofing. It was 12-15 hour days in the blazing Kansas summer sun working with 550-degree tar and a foreman who was addicted to speed.

But we made decent money, especially with all the overtime, some of which I blew on my tattoo.

I went to Skin Illustrations in Lenexa and worked with a guy named Clayton to design my tattoo that I had in my mind. I’d been focusing on the word persevere a lot. I thought the word was cool and I loved how I could apply it to nearly every part of my life.

Besides hanging out with my friends and school, my life really focused on one other thing.

Volleyball.

At the time when I got my tattoo, the significance of the word and they ball were very connected. I’d had a disappointing first year at Graceland, but had really re-committed myself that summer to working hard (persevering, natch).

When Clayton gave me the first design, it was bigger than I expected. After waiting for him to reduce the size, I endured the four hours of tattooing. It wasn’t too bad, just like someone scraping my leg for four hours in the same place with a safety pin.

Now, over a decade later, I’m still happy with the tattoo, even if my volleyball-playing days have passed. I’m even ready to get another one. But I’ll save that story for another post.

Since the Bucket List Meme, I thought I should do my very own, not one that’s pre-conceived. I have a lot of things I want to do before I die. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a start.

1. Be the best husband I can be
2. Design a typeface
3. Publish a book
4. Visit Hawaii (in 2010 baby!)
5. Bungee jump
6. Visit Australia
7. Visit Africa
8. Stand in Red Square
9. Visit Germany
10. Drive cross-country with Alli
11. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
12. Buy a stranger a meal
13. Have my portrait painted (marrying a painter FTW!)
14. Write a screenplay
15. Be in a movie
16. Learn some card tricks so I can be a “cool” uncle
17. Go back to Italy
18. Have an amazingly landscaped backyard
19. Speak another language (probably Italian) fluently (just gotta buy Rosetta Stone, right?)
20. See the Great Pyramids
21. See Alaska
22. Own season tickets to the Chiefs
23. Visit the Great Wall of China
24. Design and sell a collection of T-shirts
25. Go sky diving
26. Visit a Nazi concentration camp
27. Fly in a helicopter
28. Eat caviar
29. Eat at Plaza III
30. Hike the Grand Canyon
31. Walk in Jerusalem
32. Make a difference
33. Sit on a jury
34. Lead a bible study
35. Live somewhere besides Kansas City
36. Rescue a dog
37. Own a bespoke suit
38. Retire early and travel with Alli
39. Own our home outright
40. Teach a class
41. Spend an entire 24 hours in silent meditation
42. Play a round of golf under 80
43. Read The Complete Calvin and Hobbes from cover to cover
44. Stand on the field for a Chiefs game
45. Return to St. Lucia
46. Attend a taping of a TV show that I like (should have tried to get to Friends back in the day)
47. Learn to draw
48. Write in a journal every day for a year
49. Eat at Top Chef Harold’s restaurant Perilla
50. Weigh less than 225 pounds again

What about you? What do you want to do before you kick the bucket?

So there’s this crazy note that’s been going around the Internet tubes and I’ve been tagged like 5 times on Facebook to do it. I’ll do my best not to propagate the meme (if only for Meesha’s sake), but I’ll do it here on the old blog and it will then go through the tubes automagically into my Facebook account. (Isn’t modern technology great?)

Now, where do I start?

1. I’m willing to try anything once…especially when it comes to food.
2. Each year, I am more excited to watch the Oscars than I am to watch the Super Bowl.
3. My favorite Muppets are Waldorf and Statler.
4. I think Ben Affleck gets a bad rap as an actor and is much more talented than people think.
5. When I was growing up, the first profession I remember wanting to do was to be President of the United States.
6. I am terrible at poker. But do not mess with me in any trivia-based game. Especially Scene It.
7. My wife is my best friend. I don’t say that lightly because I have very good friends that I’ve known longer than her, but she understands me better than anyone else in the world.
8. I hate mustard in all forms. I will choke it down to be polite, but avoid it if possible.
9. I have competed in 7 different sports in my lifetime (soccer, baseball, basketball, volleyball, football, swimming, tennis). I play golf, but that’s something I picked up in college. The sports that I listed are all ones that I played against other teams.
10. My favorite book of all-time is Catcher in the Rye.
11. My favorite T-shirt is a volleyball camp shirt that I got at the Marv Dunphy Volleyball Camp at Pepperdine over 15 years ago.
12. I like doing laundry. I enjoy the monotony of it…how I don’t really have to think about it.
13. My friends and I used to play hide and seek at my buddy’s farm…well into our college years.
14. It’s been years since I have not had facial hair of some sort.
15. I absolutely loved working at the Pizza Shack. I became friends with my wife there.
16. I am most comfortable in a T-shirt, jeans and flip flops.
17. If I had to eat one thing for the rest of my life, it would be cheeseburgers. Toasted bun, mayo, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes, monterey jack cheese, farm-raised ground beef, mayo, toasted bun.
18. My immediate family is all musically inclined. I am not. Although I really wish I could play guitar. I don’t have the patience to learn.
19. I am flipping awesome at self portrait photography.
20. Winter is my favorite season. BY FAR. I love snow. We haven’t had nearly enough this year.
21. I have sprained each of my ankles a half-dozen times each because of volleyball. Although my first ankle sprain ever (and the worst one by far) was incurred during a pickup basketball game at a birthday party.
22. I hate wearing suits, but if I looked like Don Draper in a suit, I’d wear one every single day.
23. My least favorite place in the world to be is a hospital.
24. I took the LSAT but did not apply to any law schools. I would have gotten in to most of them based on my score.
25. I want to design at least one typeface before I die.

What do you think?

• I bought a cow with the readers of my blog and didn’t eat red meat for 6 months.
• I bought a MacBook (which I love).
• I continually called for the firing of Herm Edwards.
• I supported Barack Obama for President (still do).
• My cholesterol went up then down.
• I returned to New Orleans for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.
• I got to see my boyhood hero return to the screen.
• My brother got married in Jamaica.
• HGTV’s Next Design Star (from Olathe!) commented on my blog.
• Heath Ledger left us with a genius performance in The Dark Knight.
• My 5-year-old iMac died.
• The U.S. brought back the Ryder Cup.
• The Chiefs were horrible and we finally fired Carl. Hopefully the under-qualified Herm Edwards will follow him out of town.
• I got to preview the Fork & Screen with a bunch of bloggers.
• I got into Mad Men.
• My sister-in-law got engaged to a great guy.
• I tweeted.
• I blogged for all of November.
• I attended a Seminar on Blogging for Business that sucked so I put out my own rules.
• I changed my domain name and blog name to Shane Life.
• I got downsized.
• I redesigned my blog again.
• I turned 32.
• Christmas was fun, but sorta weird because I don’t know when my vacation will be over.

Still, 2008 was another great trip around the sun. I got to spend lots of time with Alli, I got to be the best man at my brother’s wedding in Jamaica, and I got the time to reevaluate what I want to do with my career. It was a good year.

And I’m excited for 2009. Happy New Year.

My Birthday Haul, originally uploaded by ishane.

I got some great presents for my 32nd birthday. If you go through to the Flickr photo, you’ll see a larger pic with tags as to what exactly everything is.

I turn 32 years old today.

It seems old, but I don’t feel older. I still don’t have a job…that would be a decent present for me today. Anyone got one of those for me?

We’ve got some decent plans today. We’re gonna go see Yes Man at the Fork & Screen and then we’re meeting up with the whole fam at McCormick & Schmick tonight. 

Happy birthday to me!

Before today, there were lots of things that had never happened to me. Today, I can no longer say that I’ve never been downsized.

The company that I worked for had to let go of a significant amount of its workforce in order to make through these very difficult economic times. There were signs of this happening for a few months and I can’t say I was surprised. People in marketing rarely have much job security…they’re often the first to go when a company experiences a downturn.

I’m actually feeling OK. Back when I made the decision to move from Perceptive Software to SunBridge Capital, I was excited to make a change. If someone can be excited about getting laid off, it’s me.

Truth is, I never really unpacked my bags. Sure, I accomplished plenty in my two years, but I found myself in a situation where I wasn’t particularly inspired by the work I was doing. Was I making the world a better place? It’s not a commentary on the company…it was a good enough company who is just trying to survive.

I can see lots of good in this. I’m not sure that anyone is going to be hiring before the end of the year, but I’ll certainly be on the lookout. I’m taking Derek Powazek’s advice I saw on Twitter yesterday in response to the folks that got let go at Yahoo:

Dear Yahoo firedlings, take it from someone who’s been “let go” more than once: it’s always led to something better. Go forth and kick ass.

I know that something good will come of this. Sure, my hand has been forced, but I’m not worried.

So attention potential-employers!

I’ve been a marketer for my entire career and have held jobs that have involved everything from writing features and case studies to planning a trade show schedule of 80+ events annually. I’ve been a print designer, web designer, and interactive designer. I know the web and social media. I’ve marketed software and I’ve marketed financial products. I’ve designed logos, websites, brochures, booklets, and more.

I’m an agile worker who can easily adapt to many different situations. When I was hired at Perceptive Software in 2000, there were 18 employees. When I left in 2006, there were over 300. Working in a growing organization like that, I was asked to wear a lot of hats. That experience blessed me with a diverse skill set that I feel I can apply to any situation.

If you’re interested in hiring me, check out my resume and portfolio here.

So I’m thinking about moving my blog off of this here topfivedesign.com domain. I’d like to make it disconnected and more personal. I’ve considered moving to Tumblr, but then I saw Agregado, which combines lifestreams from various inputs.

But I have a problem: it needs a domain.

To help you out, I’ve created this nifty little image from my about page using Wordle. You can use the following or any of my other pages to help you come up with an idea for my domain.

Go.