By Jared Dunn

Hello, friends. I am writing to you from my cozy corner of Erlich’s garage (although the photo above depicts otherwise). Which, thanks to a helpful and reasonably priced exterminator, is now almost primarily rat-free, judging by the decreased instance of both droppings and bites on my extremities as I sleep. I gave you an excellent Yelp review, Mr. Yaruslav!

Oh, I can hear those eyebrows raising; I know it doesn’t sound like much. But I’ll have you know none of my foster homes were remotely this luxurious, and my dorm room at Vassar was nearly as Spartan. Furthermore, Erlich is still not charging me rent, which could not be said of my college lodgings and the crushing debt I incurred there, nor of the attics and semi-enclosed porches of my childhood, which I paid for with endless, backbreaking chores and things no child should see. But I digress!

In any case. My topic today is “personal management.” Which is a fancy way of saying a concerted effort to maintain a healthy work-life balance. An example: Shortly after being rightfully reinstated as Pied Piper’s leader, my CEO Richard Hendricks embarked upon a liaison with a highly suitable senior Facebook engineer. Their relationship unfortunately ended after a disagreement over an arcane question of coding protocol. Engineers, am I correct?

Nonetheless, I took Richard’s dip into the dating pool as a cue to relaunch my brand in that arena, as it were. Because devoted as I have been to the company’s well-being, I’ve found if I fail to devote myself to to my personal well-being to some extent, I am doing the company a disservice. And since I started “getting out there” and meeting potential romantic partners, my productivity at work and my general well-being have both skyrocketed: I am getting more done, and the frequency of my night terrors has slightly decreased. As for Dinesh, who once told me in a very fresh manner, “Jared, if you ever actually got laid, I bet you’d ejaculate for six hours, and afterwards you’d be four feet tall and translucent.” Well, Dinesh…still just as tall, and no paler!