This is fucked. Haven't achieved anything. Haven't met anyone. No one's replied to my emails. I'm only in San Francisco for four more days. What can happen in four days?
I go to a FedEx store to print out 15 copies of my business plan to hand deliver to all the investors on my treasure map. The guy in the store tells me it'll cost $279 - he also puts my bank card in a machine that starts charging me like a taxi metre counting up by the second. I dunno why he did that. I freak out and yell at him to take my card out. It had amounted 80 cents and I boil with anger.
I tell the guy to print them out and bind them and I'll be back to pay in an hour and I head back to my hotel and never return to FedEx again.
I email the investors our business plan instead. Fucked it. Could've emailed from London. What am I doing here?
---
That night I get a facebook message from Joey Flynn the Facebook guy. I'd sent him a great message about design and also about Story. His reply was a thumbs-up emoji. No message, just a thumb-up.
I google image search 'middle finger up' and browse through possible replies. Then I take a photo of me sticking my middle finger up. Is that funny? Nah. Instead I reply with "I know buddy. I know. It's going to be huge!"
He actually replies apologising and asks a question. I reply. Then he doesn't reply.
I send some emails.
---
I wake up.
Three days left.
My chest hurts. I lie in the hotel bed and stare up at the ceiling breathing slowly.
I have an email. It better not be from fucking Ocado. Hang on I have three emails. None of them are Ocado.
First email is from the CEO of byliner.com. He wants to meet and chat about Story. Brilliant. I like what that guy's doing. He's an editor and an author who is actually doing well bridging the gap between paid-for printed publishing and free mass-consumption internet words.
Second email is from a woman based in San Francisco who someone put me on to. I don't know who she is. I googled her name but her job description on LinkedIn is too complex for me to understand. All I get is that she works for the government and wants a meeting too.
And the third email gets my heart really thumping. It's from a meet-up group who want me to present Story with other entrepreneurs as part of the Google I/O event.
I sit up in bed grinning like a fool. The clouds part, the sun shines and the homeless people strip off their clothes, do a dance under a rainbow and blow bubbles from their crack pipes.
