One of the biggest challenges of starting any new enterprise revolves around the most basic and essential factor of business--the name of your company. It requires you to know your own ideas and goals, as well as your target audience and customer, far ahead of time.

It can be tricky in the beginning, because not only do you have to take into account everything that you want to accomplish with your company, but you also factor in how people might possibly react to your brand, and maybe more importantly, how you'll be able to process said reactions. If you present your brand and aren't solid on what it is or what it means, you're going to have a hard time defending it or having to explain it on a regular basis, so it's best to choose something that you believe in and can stand behind.

I've had these for a little while now, but thought I'd take a minute to show them off now that we've put down our first issue. Seeing this thing take off from a nebulous idea into a reality has definitely been an adventure, and this is just the beginning.

It's like a wise man once said, "Shit just got real." I think it was Martin Lawrence.

So here's the deal. About a few weeks ago at work, before we hit the last deadline, something occurred to me. Something I had actually anticipated happening for a while.

I wasn't enjoying being at work anymore. All of a sudden, I could see right through everyone, past the jokes, past the gossip, past the petty bickering. I didn't notice it before, but it had all become a sort of white noise over time, and now here I was stepping back from the TV set. Then I discovered why.

Not only had I become part of it all, trying to make myself a driving force of the department, but I actually made it a daily thing to rattle people's cages at some point or another. All in good humor, of course, but not everyone saw it that way. That's when I realized I was becoming a pest. Not a nagging pest, but a constant, driving pest. I was getting in people's faces at inopportune times, stirring up conversations that no one cared about and just generally making a bunch of noise that no one wanted to hear. After our recent move to a new, crappier office, I had become such a vocal source of complaints and worry around the office that when I started hearing others bounce it back to me, I finally had to shut it up.

And so there was silence.

Um, I guess I'll just hang on to it for you.

Good luck!

I woke up this morning with my stomach in knots. Not because of something I'd eaten, but because of a dream I had. One of those dreams that just envelopes you with a sense of impending doom.

In this dream, I was out of work again. Not only me, but the entire office. We were shut down. In the same way that happened last time. Not necessarily the whole company, just our division. There were mentions of being integrated into other departments as an alternative, but that did little to comfort anyone. Just the idea that we'd all be suddenly left to our own devices was overwhelming to me.

At my last job, I joined the team and was there until the end. After seeing so many people come and go, it gets to you. I miss the people that I used to work with every day. Even though the occassional phone call or e-mail is a comfort, it'll never be like it was. You have to pick up the pieces and move on. I think I've done a good job of that so far. I'm just not looking to do it again.