If all goes well, by the time you read this on Thanksgiving I’ll be up in the mountains of Colorado. No SQL Server questions to answer, no editorials to write, no articles to edit.
I think I say it often, but it bears some repeating. Get away from your day job and enjoy the rest of your life.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Today is the anniversary of one of the worst attacks in the US, the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. I wanted to pause my blog to remember the people who lost their lives that day, many of whom were innocent workers in downtown New York City.
I still remember that day visibly. I had family in town, it was the morning after the the Bronco game in Mile High Stadium where Ed McCaffrey broke his leg. I watched that game, went to bed, woke up the next morning and turned on the TV. This was the day that Michael Jordan was going to announce if we was returning to basketball. ESPN, however, was showing the World Trade Center instead of anything else.
My normal routine was to stretch in the morning, watch some TV, and then ride my bike 9 miles to work. I did that and found the entire office glued to a TV in the conference room. I arrived in time to see the second tower get hit by a plane. I still get chills thinking about that, especially as I spent a couple days on the 80th floor in Tower 2 working with a business partner in 2000. My heart went out to the many people I'd met, and talked with over months the previous year.
No work got done, and after watching the towers collapse, we went home with heavy hearts. I had family in town, and my sisters-in-law were terrified of flying home in a few days. They weren't even sure they'd be able to go home.
I don't know exactly what happened, who's to blame, or even how I feel about the events since. But I know many people died that day, too early in their lives, and the pain continues for the many more they left behind.
Take a moment of silence today and remember those people.
I study karate on a regular basis, and over the years I've practiced a number of different martial arts, most of them in fairly strict in the traditions and routines of student behavior. When I started this new school with me son, it was a lot less strict. That was OK with me, I'm older, and it was a new business with a fellow IT worker leaving his job to pursue his dream of a martial arts school.
Old habits die hard, and I was used to bowing before I moved, before/after kata, and at other times, without exception. Most people in the school only bowed when asked (begining or the end of class, when the teacher mentioned it at the start of kata, before partner drills, etc.) However I bowed every time before I moved to change position, line up, keeping with the routine that had been drilled into me at many places.
After about a year, most people were doing the same thing. Our teacher had noticed, and actually called it out one day. I hadn’t really noticed the others since it wasn't something I cared about. I study for myself, and I've tried to pass that belief on to my son. Our instructor did say that I set an example, and he appreciated that.
By living the way I thought was proper, I’d influenced people. I'm not sure what I take from that, but it did make me realize that our actions change change lives, even passively.
It was time.
I decided the other day that I needed to shave, and so the goatee came off. It's been close to two years since I've seen my face, and so this was a change for me.
My wife asked me if I was mad at her.
My son didn't like it and said I needed to grow it back.
My daughter said I looked like Uncle Jim. And that she was confused.
I'm not sure my oldest son noticed, though I doubt he cares. He's ravamped his "look" quite often and on a regular basis.
It was pretty much a consensus from most people that I should grow the goatee back. And that includes me, so I'll be avoiding shaving my chin and upper lip from now on. It hurt a little to shave it, and that reminded me of why I started growing it in the first place.
I'm not sure why I shaved. I used to shave it off every spring, growing it back in the fall. However the last 2 years or so I haven't done that, sticking with on look.
It just felt like the thing to do that day.
Reinventing yourself, or at least making some changes, is healthy. We often are pushed to make changes in our lives by external forces, and that's not always something we can control in the short term. It's definitely a good skill to be able to adapt and cope to change. Especially in the corporate world.
But we shouldn't forget that we control most of our lives, and we can make changes if we want to. We can pick up a new hobby, get in shape, spend more time with those we love, or start a new career.
Change can be good; remember that.
One of the guys I met at the Denver User Group pinged me last week for lunch, and I agreed. Today I headed into town and we had a long lunch, almost 90 minutes, while we chatted about business, life, kids, and more.
It’s interesting to get a new perspective and I realize how sheltered Tia and I are in our lives. She’s been thinking of joining a riding group to meet new people and get more social. She’s talks to more people than I do on a regular basis, or at least is friends with more, but it’s relatively few people by the numbers. I have more people I see at Scouts, karate, baseball, but don’t talk to them as much.
I thought I talked to plenty of people, especially through the online networks I have, but I’ve realized that’s not the case. I had the chance to hear new perspectives and learn a bit more about how someone else with a similar age, experiences, etc., has a much different look in life in some ways.
It was a good experience, and I’m glad I had the chance to go.
Someone tagged me, and I’ve lost the email in all the pile up from vacation where I was very, very unwired from work, despite being wired to the world. Actually I’ll make that one my first thing:
Not quit, not stop progressing on something or giving up, but knowing how to take a break, regular breaks. Early in my career I worked lots of extra hours, partially to impress people, partially to learn, and partially because I thought I might miss something and I had time. That’s probably part of being young, but I wish that I’d still learned to take my vacation, enjoy it, and make more time for things outside of work.
My wife taught me this.
Throughout most of my life before 32 or 33 years old, I took jobs as they were offered. I looked for new opportunities, but I worried about the opportunity and almost solely the opportunity (the challenge, the size of the database, etc.).
As a result in interviews I worried, I studied and crammed and tried to be the “perfect employee,” answering their questions, not asking many of my own and giving them no reason to avoid offering me a job.
Looking back I wish I’d interviewed the companies harder. I wished I’d been looking for jobs before I needed them, been more discriminating, talked to more people in the company, and really pushed them to match my needs as much as I tried to match theirs.
I learned this when I took a job to move to CO that really wrecked a good portion of my life and I quit. I slept in my office a half dozen times the first year, had bad management, and while I learned a lot, I think I could have done better. I’ve done this well for the last 8 or 9 years.
Some of this requires that you succeed in your own life and career, but I think that along the way you should be looking for ways go give back to the community.
Early in my career I was never that interested in participating in user groups, and I often let people stumble more to figure out their own solutions instead of speaking up and giving them more of a helping hand. Over the years, I’ve learned I should have done more to help others along the way, and give back as I could.
This is more of a business item, but I wish I’d learned earlier to focus on what I wanted to succeed in and play my game instead of trying so hard to please others. Not sure I’ve completely learned to do this, but I wish I’d have had someone to teach me this early on.
Thanks to Andy Warren for this one.
I have no idea who’s been tagged, so I’ll just leave this off here.
My current "to do" list, which is only partially written down and organized. Putting it all one one list is a little depressing
- 8 articles to edit
- 2 chapters to tech edit
- Prizes for the PASS Summit
- Create 10 QODs (getting low)
- Schedule out more book ads and articles from other sites
- Blog about the editorials
- Write more editorals (probably #1 on the list. My Q is low)
- Review JumpStartTV dev plan
- Write notes from the Indy Tech Fest
- Finish my Branding presentation for SQLSaturday
- Start editing the new Stumpers book
- Keep my fingers crossed that the Best Of v6 gets printed
that's leaving out the daily running, twice a week football practice with my son, scouts, time with my daughter for various daughter things, horse work, and more. Add in there the need to build some things around the ranch before winter and I'm buried.
Oi
