Taking Cues From MySpace Tom

Here I am, slowly approaching 4 years of early semi-retirement.  It blows my mind.  I’ve never been a planner in life, especially long term.  After a less than desirable childhood and let’s just call it a slow start, I’ve basically been winging it, doing the best I can day by day. 

I’m not complaining, life is good.  As I write this I’m on a two week hiatus from my part time W2 job, because I can.  My fun business provides me steady income whether I work on it or not. 

This week I went road cycling, rock climbing, standup paddleboarding, mountain biking, trail running, and I even shot some hoops in a nearby park.  I can’t remember the last time I woke to an alarm.

If you catch me bitching kick me in the shin. 

But I’m wondering where it’s all going.  It’s not that I don’t do long term planning, if I’m being honest I actually avoid it.  I even kind of dread the thought of it. 

What would MySpace Tom do in my shoes?

 

The Rise And Fall

Tom Anderson was a computer nerd as a kid, and a damn good one.  In 1985, six years before the world wide web existed, he hacked into Chase Manhattan Bank from his home in California and was the target of an FBI raid.  He was never arrested because he was all of 14. 

Anderson went on to co-found MySpace in 2003.  Though others preceded it, MySpace was the first social media site to really blow up and become part of our collective conscious.  The first one that your parents likely got on. 

In 2005 Anderson sold MySpace to NewsCorp for $580 million.  He stayed on as president, but the job started sucking.  He once said “Before [the acquisition], I could do whatever I wanted. Now it takes more time to get people to agree on things. All the budget reviews and processes. That can be a pain.” 

Yeah Tom, I know.  So he quit in 2009.  Technically he was replaced as president of MySpace but it was clear he was good with that.  He was 38. 

By 2009 Facebook and Twitter were growing fast and MySpace was sliding into obscurity, a has-been.  Tom was gone, and didn’t care.

 

Peace Out

Tom got sick of the bullshit.  He realized he wasn’t having fun anymore, and said peace out.  I know what you’re thinking – sure, that’s easy to do when you’ve already had a $580 million payday. 

Duh… obviously. 

But very very few of us know what it feels like to create something as huge and game changing as MySpace.  If that sounds silly, perhaps you weren’t around or old enough in 2004 to remember what that site did. 

It had 100 million users at its peak.  The people who create massive things like that and gain celebrity usually go on to try even bigger things, because its in their DNA.  Not Tom. 

He realized he won the game, so he stopped playing.

 

Not His Problem

Looking at the story now, it’s natural to question if Anderson saw the big problems of social media looming on the horizon.  MySpace didn’t sell your data, censor speech based on political ideology, or try to influence elections. 

While the likes of Dorsey and Zuckerberg are in endless congressional hearings dealing with the mess they’ve made and the unfixable shit they’ve unleashed on the world, Anderson is living the good life.   

Not his circus, not his monkeys. 

He uses social media very sparingly now, perhaps disgusted like many of us at the toxic shit-shows they’ve become.  But when he does it’s sometimes a zinger.

Take this interaction back in 2012 when he tried to quell the fears of some over a change in Instagram’s TOS:

 

As funny as that is, it was clear even in 2012 that Facebook and Twitter especially were starting to fill up with (or more accurately create) bullies and assholes.  Now we just have outright tribal mobs. 

I’m sure Anderson watched it play out, feeling happier with his decision every passing moment.  

 

Holy Shit, I Won

While contemplating Tom’s story, I realized it’s also mine.  No I didn’t sell a website for half a billion dollars.  But I achieved financial independence more than 6 years ago, and am way beyond it. 

Just as $580 million is more than enough for Tom to live happily ever after, my net worth by all realistic calculations is more than I’ll ever need. 

“When you’ve won the game, you should quit playing”. 

I’m currently playing two games that I should perhaps quit.  I’m working part time at my “real” job, the one I had a successful 25-plus year career in.  And I’m still heavily invested in equities. 

The first game is the one I’m more focused on.  Even though I only work 2 days a week, it’s still work.  When things are going well as they have been lately, it’s okay.  It keeps me engaged in the industry I studied in college and subsequently taught at the university level for 17 years.

And of course there’s the health insurance, which is way better than being on the ACA and a large part of the reason I stay.

But there are still bad days, and plenty of stupid bureaucracy.  Just last week I couldn’t get our buggy HR software to work so I could submit my time sheet.  I had 3 or 4 nasty-grams warning me that I won’t get paid unless I submit my time sheet, and I’ll cause all sorts of hassle for my managers. 

The shit just wouldn’t work.  I wasted a good hour and a half of my life trying to fix the problem.  When I finally got it to work I thought “that was an hour and a half of my time I’ll never get back. Time, my most precious resource…”. 

It left a bad taste in my mouth like I hadn’t had in a while, and I went for a run right afterward to just process the information.  As if the run could get back my hour and a half…

 

My Nagging Bucket List

I’m no longer slaving away hoping for a half-day off, like the target of MySpace’s Tom’s funny tweet above.  But I’m still working 20 hours a week hoping for a few consecutive months off. 

I have lots of bucket list things to accomplish in life that require big chunks of consecutive time off.  I want to hike the Appalachian Trail, ride my bike across the country, and climb a lot of mountains that require weeks or even months of time. 

But I still can’t do those things.  Every time I think of that I also have this voice saying “you’ve won the game…” 

And that brings me back to long term planning.  Maybe I should take my cues from MySpace Tom and just peace out.  I don’t need $580 million, maybe I just need a plan.