Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives Read Free

Inside and outside Facebook, we had created a moment that touched people.
    I had now been working for nearly ninety hours straight. The set of the town hall was already being dismantled, and my team had taken off for the day. It was time to go home.
    I walked slowly through the streets of Palo Alto. I didn’t have my car. Driving was out of the question, because someone had closed all the streets.
    The realization came slowly. Oh. Wait. That was me.
    I was distracted, and as I walked, I felt incredibly restless. Today had been such a rush, such an amazing payoff after two weeks of nonstop work. But in that eruption of happiness, I felt a challenge mixed in with the reward. The gears were spinning furiously inside my head as I neared home. I walked up the path and climbed the steps to my front door. “Brent?” I called to my husband as I pushed open the door.
    There was a rustling in the kitchen. A familiar furry face appeared from around the corner.
    “Beast!” I cried. It was Mark’s dog.
    Another familiar face appeared. It was Mark. The tie and jacket from earlier, so unnatural on my brother, had vanished. The trademark hoodie and jeans were back.
    “Hey,” Mark said. “I was walking Beast and thought I’d stop by.” Mark lived a few blocks away and often walked his dog through the neighborhood in the evenings.
    I dumped my work bag on the ground heavily. I felt a sudden kick from the baby.
    “Great job today,” he continued. “Really huge props. It was awesome and everyone’s talking about it. I can’t believe you did it in two weeks.”
    That’s when it happened.
    “Mark . . .” I began slowly. “This was the best day I’ve ever had at Facebook.” I paused for a moment, trying to work out what to say next. And then I was off on a roll.
    I blurted out to him that this was what I loved doing. This was how I saw the future of live programming—reaching millions of people with amazing content produced for the web, produced for another generation. That all those days and nights working for this moment had shown me what my true passion was, and that it was something that went beyond my role at Facebook, or even Facebook itself. The entire media landscape was changing—how we got our news, how we experienced live events—and I had to be part of it. I needed to pursue my passion, all the way.
    Words tumbled out of my mouth, too fast and unprepared.
    “I want to leave.”
    The words hung in the air. I stopped, suddenly self-conscious and horrified with myself. I had never said any of these things aloud. I didn’t even know I truly felt this way until I had spoken the words. I stood there in my entrance hall half wishing I could put the words back in my mouth.
    Mark stared at me. Beast stared at me. I resisted the urge to giggle. Beast is too shaggy and adorable to be part of any serious conversation.
    If Mark was fazed, it didn’t last for more than a heartbeat.
    “Are you sure?” he asked calmly, as if he had been expecting it.
    I hesitated for a moment. I thought about all the people, all the moments during these past five and a half years on the crazy roller-coaster ride that was Facebook. For a moment, my mind raced through a hundred different memories and emotions.
    There was a reason I had said the words I never thought I would say and why I felt so restless. These ideas and feelings had been brewing in me for a long time.
    I was going to miss Facebook, but I wasn’t afraid to leave. It wasn’t the first time I had taken a chance to follow a different path.
     
    The Beginning of the Adventure
    I was born in 1982 in Dobbs Ferry, New York. I grew up in a perfectly normal (well, sort of) upper-middle-class family. I am the oldest of four siblings; after me came Mark, Donna, and Arielle, the youngest. Both my parents were doctors: my mom, Karen, a psychiatrist, who had Mark and me while still in medical school and somehow managed the crazy overnight hours of residency while also raising two