When I was about 4 years old, we moved into our first home and I had my own bedroom. My parents bought me a nightlight so that I wouldn’t be scared of the dark. It was so bright that there was no way I could fall asleep with the nightlight on. So instead, I lay…
Author: Steve Ainslie
Aging Well
My Aunt Essie used to jokingly call herself an “Old Maid”. She was a retired elementary school teacher who never married. Essie lived in the home that her parents raised her and her 12 siblings in. She shared the downstairs apartment with her brother -my Uncle Bob. Upstairs in a separate apartment, lived her other…
The Winemaker
During the dotcom boom in the late 1990s, there was a high flying tech startup named FreeMarkets. They made quite a splash in my hometown of Pittsburgh. I remember meeting the two founders during a happy hour on a rooftop bar when they had a few dozen employees. Two years later the company occupied a…
Kids, Purpose and Missions
A friend whom I hadn’t spoken with in years reached out to me last week. In the course of catching up, we talked about work, family, children, retirement, mission and purpose. He talked about wanting to “give back” to society in a meaningful way. He’s considering fostering under privileged children or mentoring them through big…
Offline
Most of the blogs, forums and websites I used to visit regularly have turned sour. The content is similar to the comments on YouTube, Reddit (and I suspect other social media sites I don’t visit). I used to visit forums for entertainment, for thought provoking discussions and for information. Now, they seem to quickly devolve…
Cash Only
Until I was 18 years old, I never purchased anything I couldn’t pay for with cash. I grew up poor and started working in my early teens so I could buy things I wanted – like clothes, books and food. I saved 50% of my paycheck and spent 50%. Since I was working minimum wage…
Living In A Covid World
I have been paying far less attention to Covid lately. After more than two-and-a-half years of daily updates, every worsening news and constant speculation, conjecture and grandstanding from politicians, public health officials and media pundits, I am burnt out. But, I still don’t want to get Covid. I’m still not afraid of getting it, but…
End Of Longing
Ever since I was a teenager I wanted to be married. I longed to have a beautiful wife, a stable family, a nice house, a dog and 2-3 kids. As a teen I wasn’t ready for marriage, but I desperately wanted a girlfriend. Driven by hormones, lust, a desire for companionship, youth, mass marketing, and…
Intentionally Imprecise
My favorite subjects in school were Math and Science. They came to me naturally – especially Math. It also appealed to me that in these subjects there was always one “right” answer. There was no ambiguity or gray areas. Or at least, that’s how I was taught*. In most of my other classes we were…
Kiss The Ring
The dotcom boom period of the late ’90s was when my sales career took off like a rocket. I had joined a startup as employee number 38 as the first Business Sales rep and within 2 years was managing a sales team of 35 people selling millions of dollars of services a year. I ate…