The Deleted

Sitting in the bright sunshine on a beautiful Monday morning in the corporate headquarters of Micheal Elliott Enterprises, I was streaming WKYZ out of Key West and my bare feet were grooving on the deck. My tee shirt has a bunch of sharks on it with a lone diver descended between them. The caption reads "Test Your Faith".  The black running shorts complete the ensemble meeting the company dress code.

In juxtaposition, I'm pretty intense and focused alternating stares between two I-phones and two different laptops. On one is my contact list and the other is flashing LinkedIn. One I-phone is opened to contacts and the other has messages buzzing pretty consistently.

Our new venture Let Us Tell It ( www.letustellit.com ) has me completely absorbed and it's almost 8:00 in the morning. The rising sun tops the house behind ours and rests in the branches of the Palm Tree with the Oyster face, coconut bra and grass skirt. The phone buzzes and someone has re-tweeted my tweet. I'll check it out later.

Wearing less than me, Sarah stumbles into the kitchen which also serves as our smaller conference room, for coffee. Yawning, she blows me a kiss and says "Morning."

After admiring the view, I mumble back and return to the task at hand ... purging and updating my contact list. I haven't done it since I was at Union Mission so there were hundreds of names to go through.

It is a thoughtful exercise.

Some were dead and each gave me pause. I celebrated the lives of most while others I couldn't hit the "delete" button fast enough sending them to wherever they end up.

There were many who used to be friends and colleagues but aren't anymore. The ties that had bound us tightly have long loosened. We no longer hold each other dear having moved on with our lives. They join the dead as I hit the "delete" button.

As I'm doing this, the little red flag on LinkedIn keeps popping up as people ask me "What's Up?", "Where you been?", and "Wanna get together for beers?"

Of course this makes me go back and "un-delete" some of "the deleted." They aren't so bad after all!

I go get my sunglasses and take the "Keep the Faith" tee shirt off. The sunshine is too bright for me to read past the glare of the computer screens. Hitting "Control P" I print out the list of "the deleted" and "the chosen ones."

The first is far larger than the second.

I linger over them both.

Then I throw the first one away.

Then I go back to work.