I work probably probably more than is healthy.  Startups are notorious for generating inordinate amounts of work and having far too few resources.  That said, the only thing worse than a regular startup is a nonprofit startup.  You'd really have to be crazy to start one of those.

When you work too much, entire areas of your life are forgotten.  Family, friends, finance and the basic overhead of daily life can be left neglected.   At times over the past two years, I've discarded life maintenance and left myself vulnerable to catastrophe.

This week two things went wrong:  I ruined my car and messed up my elbow.  

Why did I ruin my car?  It's pretty simple:  I haven't changed the oil since October.  The guy at Jiffy Lube is at least partially right; you should change your oil regularly.  It's not entirely a marketing scam dreamed up by the lube industry.  
If you don't, your engine will lock up -- no joke.  I experienced this first hand on 280 driving North last week.  The engine of my '91 Honda civic froze and started smoking.   I was late for a meeting in the Mission, kept driving -- ruined the engine for good.  A hole, the size of an orange in the engine casing and the pistons are all bent out of shape.  The car barely moves.  

And how did I mess up my elbow?  It's pretty stupid.  While writing at a cafe on Saturday, I leaned back in my chair and wiped out bigtime on the cafe floor.  That's embarassing, huh?  My elbow smashed pretty hard on the cement floor of the Arc Cafe in the Mission.  There was only one person there to see it all happen.  She didn't even laugh.

As I got up, I chuckled to myself and told her the only thing I hurt was my ego  (damn that hurt!).  I was wrong.  Later that day my arm kept throbbing and writing became impossible.  I spent the afternoon in a crowded Mission hospital.  The X-rays were inconclusive and I was supposed to go back yesterday.  The nurse gave me a sling which I haven't used.

Microcredit is known as a tool to give people padding in their lives so that they can weather the normal ups and down any family will face.  Right now, I need more padding in my life.  Most of all, I need to borrow some time.

I'm on a plane now headed to NYC for a panel where I will speak at NYU about the benefits and pitfalls of starting a social enterprise and the nonprofit structure.  I'm excited and I hope some of you can make it to the NYU talk tomorrow.  You should expect an interesting discussion.

One thing you shouldn't expect is to see me leaning on my right elbow.  It's still pretty messed up.  In fact the shape is actually different than my other elbow and I'm pretty sure I chipped off a substantial part of the bone in my fateful little fall.  It's a swollen, mushy, black and blue mess and it doesn't seem to be getting much better.

After telling her all this, my mom, Carol Flannery, got in her car yesterday and drove 10 hours down from Lake Oswego, Oregon.  She showed up with the family car and a strong word of motherly advice:  go back to the doctor!  We went out for lunch and she took me to the airport.

Sorry Mom, I have to go to New York.  Thanks for the car.

Kiva has struck a lot of deals in the past year. Microlending on the web, at least last year, was an idea that seemed to sell itself. The confluence of the Nobel prize, web 2.0 buzz, the Intl Year of Microcredit, and dawn of p2p lending were all lucky trends that put a lot of wind in our sails. It doesn't hurt, however, to have a business partner that can sell anything. He's no huckster, but if Premal cares about getting a message across, he won't quit until he changes minds. I can't tell you how many times this year I've sat across from him and just marvelled.

Two such deals came together a few weeks ago -- the Blowfish Sushi pact and the YouTube agreement.

Blowfish Sushi is the magnificent restaurant that shares a wall with our office building in the Mission. Walking through the halls of our industrial complex, you can often smell tempura in the fryer next door. It makes it difficult to concentrate sometimes. We started eating there religiously this summer. The problem is that its pretty pricey, but it's largely known as the best in SF. One day at lunch, Premal started pitching the waitress for discounted Sushi. This led to the manager coming out and hearing a confusing pitched. We wanted what? Free sushi? Why exactly? Absolutely not.

This stalled the Sushi deal, for the time being. A few months later, by chance, he met one of the owners of Blowfish outside and started pitching *him*. Free sushi? Nah. Wholesale sushi? Hmm...

So now, we're getting 75% off our Sushi. Wow. Thank you Blowfish. I didn't even eat Sushi before I started working here. Since I started, my experience has been a little like someone getting into drugs. I started with Tempura, more like the smoking of Sushi. Then it was on to the tuna roll, more of a gateway drug. I'm still stuck there. However, I hear that Sashimi is amazing and it's definitely the next step for me. I'll be ready when tuna loses its effect.

A few weeks ago we had the honor of going out to Blowfish with Steve Chen of YouTube. Steve is actually Premal's friend from PayPal and they started YouTube not too long before Kiva launched. .. We discussed a pretty inconvenient truth right now about their business model. Because of specific conservative interpretations of copyright law, YouTube does not place ads on any of their pages where possibly copyrighted video is being watched. Thus, this is one reason why the majority of the most viewed pages on YouTube have no ads at all.

That said, they are able to legally use the space as long as they assume no profit from it. Because of that, Steve and YouTube have been donating portions of the real estate to nonprofits. Kiva, again, is the lucky recipient of a new trend and other's goodwill. Our banner is now showing up alongside silly videos 40M times per month and YouTube is currently driving over 15% of our traffic. This is an incredible gesture from YouTube and google that is helping to fund small businesses in over 30 countries.

Thank you YouTube. Thank you Blowfish.