The last few weeks have seen a bit of change here in San Francisco.  I have yet to settle into a more permanent living situation since I left my place in SOMA.  It has actually been a wonderful way to get a better sense of the city.  It has taken me a little while to get into the swing of things in this city.  I feel that finally I am really starting to learn how it all tends to function together.  There are just so many different cultural influences to it and so many perspectives to take in and they all seem to be compressed into a small space.  While it keeps the city interesting, it also creates a great degree of glaring disparity.  In most of the other cities that I have lived in there has tended to be space for different communities to expand within, here most of the communities haven’t quite blended, but rather rub up against each other, sometimes integrating well, sometimes cause great friction between the residents.

A few weeks ago Zoosk closed a third round of funding and we all ended up renting a boat to do a great boat party.  There ended up being around 35 people in attendance with a DJ and a full catered dinner.  It was really an eye opening experience to see how our celebrations have progressed to just a few of us having pizza and a beer at a shop across from one of our apartments to a full party, suits, boat, limo and all of the other little pieces which go along with it.  Sometimes it is hard to gauge a sense of scale of the company when you are working in the same office for a long while.  Even though the number of employees has ballooned (18 now I believe) the impact that we feel from customers is a bit isolated from me.  There are a lot of big challenges over the course of the next year to overcome, not the least of which is really understanding what our customers need and making sure that we can deliver a product which will enable them to get the greatest benefit from Zoosk.

The next few weeks I am starting to ramp up my climbing traning again, so expect to see more posts on my climbing blog.  I have around six months to get to my personal climbing goal for the year (send a V10 outside) and I am getting stronger without any form of structured training.  The other day I did two V8s while sick.  Now it is time to get back on track!!

Brad

It has been a little while since I updated so I thought I would write out a few of my thoughts.  It has been a whirlwind of a new year with work, starting training, getting injured and trying to map out what the next few months will hold for me.  At work we just finished up a bit of a stressful release which took a bit of massaging to get it out the door.  I am going to be taking the next three days to spend some time in Seattle and catch up with some old friends and recharge myself a bit.  I haven’t really gotten much good downtime over the last few months and I am hoping that these few days will be a bit rejuvenating.

One of my major goals for 2009 is to climb a V10 by the time the year is out.  I started out this year by doing some training and making a few doctor appointments to make sure that everything was healed properly etc…  Unfortunately I was told that my tendonosis has not healed from late last year and I am going to have to spend the next 2-3 months recovering from that.  Over the course of the next few weeks I am mostly going to be focusing on running and perhaps yoga instead of climbing as I had planned before.  It seems like as I get older my body just doesn’t seem to hold up as well as it use to.  I have been dealing with one form of injury or another consistently over the course of the last year and a half.  Hopefully doing the right things for my body for the next few weeks and focusing on physical therapy I will be able to get my body to the point where I can focus on being active and climbing again without a high risk of injury.

It has been a long time I have posted and a lot has changed in my life.  I have moved to San Francisco and have settled back into the startup life.  The company has been thriving despite the economy and the changes which have been going on within the social networking space.

I have found a home in the SOMA district which is very close to the Financial District so I am able to walk or bike into work daily.  Unfortunately I haven’t made the time just yet to really get intot he swing of things with this city, but I have been able to start climbing again after spending a few months doing PT.  Amazingly, sitting in a chair for 12 hours a day somehow hasn’t completely killed my ability to scramble up mostly plastic.  I’m going to be trying to blog more in the near future, but I thought it would be good to at least put out a quick “hello”. 

So I’m back in San Francisco on my last day before I head out to Bishop.  I’ve closed up my gym membership at Mission Cliffs, packed up all of my things back into my van and am just about ready to get going.  It is strange seeing that I could have at any point in the last two months put everything in my van and headed up, but the time didn’t feel right for me personally just yet.  Now, finally after training myself back into shape, visiting some old friends, waiting for the weather to be wonderful and mentally being in a positive place I am finally ready to get going.

I’m not really sure which places I will be going to over the next few months, but I am looking forward to Bishop and hopefully Joe’s Valley.  Once I hit the road fully life tends to get into a good rhythm and I have a better feeling as to where I will be going to next.