Yodi The Puppy

 This is the eight month old puppy my daughter wants to adopt.

The New Frontier Of Suicide

I was cleaning up my office and I found a slip of paper with the title of this post on it. I wanted to write about how suicide today has a new frontier

as compared to when I grew up. It's been on my mind for some time, but I haven't been able to construct the post in my head. So the slip of paper lay in wait of either a post, or a dump into the office trash. 

I can't let it turn into trash so here I am typing and thinking at the same time. Hmmm. I think the first thing you should know is that the first time I ever thought about suicide was when I was eight years old. Life for me was miserable and I didn't want to live anymore. As a grown up I'm in tears, as how could an eight year old want to take their life? A child should always have nothing but joy, security and love. Then I realized it's me, I'm the eight year old. 

The word suicide was a word I had not ever heard of at eight years old. I did know, that living was unbearable and I didn't want to do it. I lay in bed and wished I was never born. Then because I didn't know how to kill myself, I went into fantasy land and made stories up. I had invented a hide-away in my head that I could go to, to escape the pain of living. It was a basement below our basement. A secret basement. Because it was so deep into the ground it had no windows, yet it was so bright. It had a spiral stairway and it was covered in long white fur lined carpet. It was the most beautiful place ever to me as an eight year old. 

What did I do in this secret place? Well, I never did anything. The fantasy was always that I escaped to it, and it was peaceful and happy. Their was no torment or torture. There was no one in this place but me, and as lonely as it seems, I was somehow very happy there.

Don't Come Here To Early

The new frontier of suicide is social networks. Suicidal people can post how they feel. Others can encourage them either positively or negatively. Mostly it's always positive. It's a whole new world. For me, my thoughts of taking my life were only known to me, until I attempted it and ended up in some hospital. Now a days there are so many ways to reach out and get help, even if the people are strangers, they help. There was not this kind of help available to me when I was suffering the strongest. There were NO people I could reach out to, but today these young kids have a multitude of social network's to express their pain on. Today is a good day, because beautiful people can talk to someone anonymously, and find hope.

It's Not Your Time

What did I have back then? No one. I couldn't share with millions of people I cut myself and I had thoughts of hanging or jumping. I had absolutely no one to talk to. The new frontier offers a hope I could have loved to have back then. The new frontier is beautiful if you ask me. These kids today have more hope to live. The loneliest of the lonely has a chance. How I survived my suicide years, I do not know.

I think about Robin Williams, and wonder. I think it's impossible that he just decided to take his life at the age of sixty three. I think, he struggled with suicide thoughts on and off for his entire life, like I do. Once the poisonous thought enters, you can't take it out of your mind. It resurfaces every time you are struggling with life. It's right there to help you out. Ugg. There is no delete for the thoughts in the human brain. This is why we suffer.

This new frontier of suicide is amazing. It's super easy for a suffering person to make contact. You can get help, or help someone. I see people do this everyday. Yep, it's true, some of us are not going to make it. Some of us are going to walk into the next world earlier then our loved ones would want. 

I think with this new frontier, the chances of longer survival are increased greatly. I think some tech startup will develop a tool that takes the notch up even higher. Us who suffer this secret life destroyer will have greater hope. We are not self centered or hopelessly doomed. Our infliction will be annihilated one day. We shall not suffer in silence and fear condemnation for our burden. We are people who display our joy and humor in the mist of a tormentor. We are stable minded on the most part, yet we have to carry the "crazy" whom seeks to take our lives. None of us want it, but we have no choice, it's our gift. It helps us to create. We just need extra love ~ 

Dale Chihuly~ This Is Love To Me
Stay Alive To Create

The Rules Of My Startup Blog

The first few rules are, for me.

1.  I must always improve my grammar and spelling. I must never say hurtful things about others. (yep I've screwed up on that one)
2.  I must work to be positive (which has been hard with all these deaths)
3.  I must never delete a popular post even if I'm unhappy with it later.

You see the top ten most popular post are not me who picks them, it's you. I've watched my top ten change over time, and it's the articles I write that you like the most that get on my blogs top ten list. I don't pick them, it's not my top ten list, it's what is the most popular with you.

It's What You Pick

 I find so much joy in seeing what you like. I'm happy when an article I write resonates with you. For almost a year this one was on the top ten list Wrapping Your Head Around The Self Judgement Of Yourself. It got bumped about two months ago. I was sort of sad about it being sent to the below ten list. It wasn't such a good article, but it was special to me.


I'm super happy that you made An Entrepreneurs Timeline To Success number two. You don't know how much that means to me. I am honored by you in the deepest way. I hope I said the things you didn't expect to be in the timeline. Maybe I made you upset because the timeline is life? not the fast expectancy of a startup. Yeah, we all want to get it done in five years, but hey, what if you gave yourself some breathing room and chose to not follow the pressure of all the other successes? Can it ever be bad if you succeed in maybe thirty years? If you succeed, it's always good. Who is to say that success has a time limit? 

I can never be a failure if I have no time limit to my success. I will succeed one day. I have never doubted that. Oh! back to the rules of my blog. There isn't any for you. That's kind of nice

Okay so the number one post on my blog, well, it's Whisperapp. It's not a very good written article of mine. It has problems, but it was the truth for me at the time of my writing it. And it had the skills of mine at the time. Hopefully I've improved since then. So why is it number one? The answer is CHINA. Yep, after I wrote it, Whisper had a worker who was from China or was popular in China, and she had a ton of connections, and she worked that article as much as she could to get it to be number one on my list. Now, why would my list matter? I'm not some popular blogger at all. I'm nothing really. But to this Whisper worker it was important that she make it BIG. So she did. She did her job for Whisper. For about three months the country of China hit that article like crazy. Today it stands at 1,176 hits. You see none of my articles I write have come close to overtaking that. I hope An Entrepreneurs Timeline To Success will beat it one day. It has to date:517 reads,so a little less than half. 

Now I do have the power to just delete the Whisper article, but that would break one of my rules. The people picked it. The people hit on it. I do not have the right to take it away even if I don't necessarily like it anymore. I do admit I have deleted a few of my articles that were rants of hatred towards people who made me angry. Yep, I'm human, I get mad and I do stupid shit. So yeah, I delete those. The Whisper article is not of hatred, it is joy and love. I love Whisper, I do. It's an amazing startup. It's spot on what all startups seek. Getting humans addicted to their product. I just don't think that article is the best one I've written and I kind of wish my other writings would over take it. Not because I don't like Whisper, I do. I just don't like my writing, and why cry over spilled milk? It was pure and clean when I wrote it. 

As crazy as I and my life are, I will continue on finding my startup way. I will keep improving my writing and using courage to do the uncomfortable parts. I will grow old building. As frustrating hard as it is, a trep life is who I've always been. Okay you do have one rule: Never stop building startups.

Challenge To Accelerators

Wow, tonight I received my first ever invite to apply to Y Combinator. This is a first for them. I'm stunned. I threw my hands in the air with disbelief! Why would they even need to invite my team and I to apply? Y Combinator is the top accelerator in the world and they don't need to advertise or invite past applicants to apply again. They get thousands of applicants each cycle. 

So here it is:

Here is what I think all accelerators should do. Well, MUST DO, if they are cool. Out of all your applicants you should pick one team as a "Wild Card". One team that does not have to be subjected to the "interview" one team that just has that something odd about it. One team that's application may have really sucked. One team that knows, they are only there because they got the "Wild Card". That team knows they have to prove themselves because they didn't pass the application, and they got a free pass on the interview. No team will know who the wild card team is. 

Just do it. Let someone in that you normally would not let in. Each cycle. See what happens. 

Trep Tragedy On St Patrick's Day

It was just a few minutes into Saint Patrick's day 2015. He was on his way home from work. Not a job working for someone else as he had done for years. This time it was his business. He decided to become an entrepreneur, and he was six months into it. Happy to be in charge of his own business he was.

He posted on Facebook just before midnight something about ISIS. Then he headed home to his wife and three small children. Shortly after midnight a vehicle driving in the opposite direction of him went out of control, hit the median, became airborne and flew into the oncoming traffic. A drunk driver they say.

The flying car hit a fellow member of my church. I didn't know Jason well, but I sat in the same pew area as his family for years. I know what good people they are. I watched them suffer for years childless and wanting children, I saw how God blessed them with three in the last seven years. I know he was a man of God and that he loved the Lord. 

Here is what the accident looked like. All of the people in the upside down car survived. The driver fled the scene but was caught shortly after.

I do not know how to make sense of this. It's not fair is my first thought. Tremendous sorrow second thought. Forgiveness third. I forgive the man who is accused of drunken driving who did this, as I know all the people in my church will. Still I am praying and weeping for all involved in this tragedy. 

Today was the funeral for Jason. It was a packed house. It was sad and beautiful. 

I've had five friends or family members pass away in the span of one year. I don't really know how to grieve at this point. I have a million mixed up feelings. I want to work on my startup Passdown, but it's been super hard to do that. I wander around wondering "what am I doing?" "what is my purpose?" "why all these deaths?"

For now I carry the broken heart for Jason's wife Karen and their three small children. For now I weep, for an entrepreneurs life cut short. I weep for his dream to work for himself and build a great company. I weep......and I weep....

  

Death and Sorrow

December 5th 2014: Granddad Schneider
January 24th 2015: My brother in law lost his battle to cancer.
February 25th 2015: My cousin lost his battle to early onset Alzheimer's.
March 17th:Yesterday a member of my church was killed by a drunk driver.
March 18th: Today is the anniversary of my brother Tim's death. 16 years.
March 19th: Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of my brother Marks death.

Okay Lord, I've had enough death and sorrow. 

My grief is overflowing.........

Treps in a Wild Spring Break ~

This side of wild spring break, we are keeping track of nothing! 

It's a weird spring break. It's not, sunny beaches filled with bikini clad woman and men seeking to score. It's a snow covered mountain, a year round heated pool, two hot tubs, beer on a Dollie by east coast men, and bikinis are shown, but it's on women, whom are not fit.

In all my life I have never went on a "Spring Break" in fact I was well out of high school before I had ever heard of Spring Break. 


I'm up in Summit county Colorado with my husband and daughter Shayla. We are staying is a super expensive condo, only a two minute walk to the gondola in Keystone. It would be a three to four hundred dollar a night stay, but it was gifted to us by great people who know that luxury for many is a never. Nine hundred bucks they could make by booking it, yet they toss that aside.

They gift this beautiful place to whom ever ask. To people who have suffered, to people who have sinned, to people who seek to find a peace they cannot find in the city, like me. It's a condo for people whom stay on the path to God and to those who do not, or no not. If you suck at the religion stuff, then you are the perfect guest. If your heart is wrecked, your soul distressed then you are blessed if Cal and Shirley give you this stay at a luxury condo in Colorado!

It's humans stressed, humans with joy to be expressed, people with courage depressed. It's I and you gifted to relax. Yeah, just accept it, learn how to relax. Not so easy ............................

Enjoy your spring break no matter where it is, and keep building your startups. Cold or Hot us treps continue on.: - ) and it's not always fast, it can be a Slow Ride. Be Happy always!

Founders Path Determined by Childhood Book

From time to time I come across this book I've had since I was a little girl. The title is Finding My Way by Chisachi Suehiro, printed in 1967. Every time I come across it, I think of how it seems to fit the story of my life. I'm always finding my way. 

I think because I am a creative type with a mind full of ideas to help humanity that I've bounced around the career path like the little girl in this story, finding her way. 

When we match up to our childhood book or look like our dog when we are out walking the pooch, it just seems eerily odd to me. Was it because I had read this book as a small child that the title Finding My Way, went into my brain and lodged into some sort of spot that holds the key to my life's walk? 

On the fifth page of the book is the oddest statement.

Here it is: 

In a dark green forest

The trees watch my walk

They make me ashamed

Of my own footprints

What would I have thought reading this book around the age of four or five? What small child knows what ashamed is? Why would I be ashamed of my footprints? 

Shame is a powerful crippler of humans. To be ashamed of your footprints in a forest would mean you trashed the forest. You ruined it or dirtied it because it was so perfect and pure, and your footprints messed things up. 

Green is my favorite color, but not dark green. I love trees and I take photos of them often and post them. I have things I'm ashamed of, as we all do. I'm only ashamed of my footprints if they hurt another. Otherwise it's my path, and mine is not shaped by a five year plan. It's the, finding my way plan. 

She went through all kinds of travels and in the end of the book she finds her way home to her mother. Well, my mother is a successful startup. I am not searching for my birth mother. I take care of my birth mother, as she went blind in old age. I don't need to find my way to her. She cannot see and I help her see.

I need to find my way to humanity. I will go through every dark green forest, fear, physical pain,loneliness,happiness, rainstorm, to find you. 

Keep Building Your Startups.

Got My Marijuana License ; - )

Okay, I can't help but feel this funny odd feeling that selling pot legally is not real. Marijuana was illegal for most of my life. Even though medical has been legal for years now in my state, and recreational use, legal for fourteen months, I find myself to be shocked that today I got my occupational support license, also known as your MED license. (Marijuana Enforcement Division) Wish my pot smoking dead brother was alive to see it. 

This is the least expensive license to get. $150.00 for two years, in my state of Colorado. Now I can work in any MMC, OPC, MIP, Retail store, cultivation or product manufacturing facility. You can't work with out some type of license. I will not  be able to be a manager or someone who makes decisions for the company unless I upgrade my license to a $300.00 dollar badge. 



According to the local news there were nine thousand of these types of badges issued in 2014. Wow, that's a ton of people looking for jobs! The day I applied the small office was packed full of applicants. Multiply that by five days a week, times the entire state of Colorado, and that's my competition! Add in the fact I have absolutely no experience in the black market or legal marijuana market. I can't put on my application "Oh, yeah man, I'm a seasoned stoner" or "I do dabs daily" All I know about pot, I learned growing into adolescence in the seventies. Don't let the cops find it!  ; - )

If there are any amazingly ambitious marijuana companies in the Denver area willing to give this wild startup girl a job, please contact me. Do know that I will blog about the company that hires me and I will be taking a ton of photo's. Posting on multiple social networks,and talking about the legal cannabis industry, will be my pleasure. 

jana@passdownapp.com
janamon@gmail.com

Everyday there has been one new job posting for a bud tender or other type of marijuana job on Craigslist. I apply to them. I wonder how many applicants they get for one ad? Probably hundreds.

*An interesting fact shared on the local news today: Colorado sold 148,000 pounds of marijuana in 2014. Now that's a market! 

An Entrepreneur's Beautiful Love Story

If you met a woman, and you happen to fall into the thirsty feeding of a waterfall, that pours out millions of gallons of love on you. I'd say that you hit the lottery of love.

Today I helped my sister Sara. She is my sister-in-law but she doesn't like the in law part. She just calls me her sister. I was helping her go through her house that she shared briefly with Rob, the man she fell so deep in love with. The man, who she had not seen the edge of three years with. The man that made her beautiful daughter. I helped her, and this is my take on this love story.

One day Sara was going to hang out with me and do a serious workout. She called to cancel because she had some date. It was Rob. From that day on they were enmeshed with each other. Inseperable. The facebook post were almost annoying at times as all the rest of us had lived our beautiful love and now were well into our struggle years. As we watched the two display the amazing love of  a new love, we were counting the days to the misery of a relationship. It was never to be for them, because what they had would be cut short by cancer. It would be a beautiful love story, that we all can learn lessons from. 

I watched them from my corner of love. I saw what Sara did for her husband. How she did everything possible to save his life. How she, not only prayed endlessly for Rob to be healed, she got hundreds of others to pray for him too. How she reached her arms around him and said "You are so brave" Sara and Rob took a short journey together, testing every kind of venture to heal him,and take the horrible monster out of his body. As I watched, I saw one thing. I saw how much she LOVED. I saw every aspect of what love is. I witnessed something few get to see. I saw what Real, True, Love is. It's amazing! Not for one moment did she ever think her love would die. Sara believed without any doubt that her husband would live. She did everything possible to keep him alive, and as, many of thought she might be blindsided when he passed she was not. She didn't blame God. She didn't blame herself.

When Rob passed away, my husband was there. He had relieved his sister of her steadfast post next to Rob. Sara went to get a bit of sleep. My husband went and woke her up. She ran into the room and screamed at Rob "You are not supposed to die!" you are not supposed to die.........

We thought Sara might be really messed up because she had believed without doubt that her husband would be healed. Even though many of us knew he had no chance. It was a very aggressive brutal cancer. Most don't survive it.  Rob didn't.

What did survive is LOVE. When Rob passed all I could think of was, what a beautiful love story. There was so much love. The love of falling in love. All the giggles and the many shared Facebook post of those two. The love of getting closer and getting married. The love of having a child. It was everything so many people want, and then it takes the turn into the survival to stay alive. And before anyone could believe it, Rob passed away. 

The one thing that stands tall in all of this is Sara,and how she can love. I think God put them together to show us all, how love should be. It's beautiful. I think in the less than three years they had, the kind of love that could one up all of us. If I could be such a woman as Sara, then I could be a woman. 

Be grateful if you a meet a Sara, cause this kind of love is rare. Yet we all have it in us. We just don't know how, to let it SHINE. She did.

*Rob, I'm so happy Sara showed, sowed and gave you ultimate LOVE. Rest at Peace my fellow trep!

Rob's last Christmas with us and his beautiful love story. Please watch it.