Tag Archives: me

Permission to Take a Break

A few weekends ago, I looked through my stub posts to see which I could finish up to post; they were all a long way from done, and none were really grabbing me in any real way. Ultimately, I got distracted and, by the time Wednesday rolled around, nothing was ready to post, so I missed a week.

This week, as I look at the things available to post, I find myself in the same spot. I have a handful of drafts that are in no way ready to post and a handful of political rants of which I am so weary that I can’t imagine you don’t dread them. (Honestly, after my recent floods of them on Twitter, you can get your fill there.)

At the intersection of a chapter that I really want to get written, a review that I’m having difficulty coalescing into reality, and the flood of new-ness that I’m trying to absorb at work, I’m fairly intellectually exhausted.

So, I’m giving myself permission to take a break. Posts for the next month will potentially be sporadic or unsatisfying updates about life with the new gig. Or not. I don’t know, I’m not the boss of me.

Extra Life 2016

Each year, some friends and I form together like a grossly inappropriate Voltron to form team Light Recoil with one purpose: to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network. This will be our fourth year of fundraising, and each year we’ve managed to up our game some; last year we raised over $1,600. This year I’d love to make it $2,000. If you want to help, donate now!

This is where we sweeten the pot; what’s in it for you?

Continue reading Extra Life 2016

Gig-quest 2016 Edition

I feel like there is scant discussion out there surrounding job searching mid-career. The Internet is full of helpful advice for early-career job seekers describing resume creation, job posting, searching job boards, and the like. What I don’t see very often is what to do when you’ve been in the field for a while; when you have built up a network of contacts, when you’re no longer looking for entry-level or near entry-level work, or when what you’re looking for is very narrow in terms of specificity or of job prospects.

This is probably not going to be that post either, but I would like to take some time to describe my job searching journey this summer.

Continue reading Gig-quest 2016 Edition

Stepping Down

This post was originally going to be posted once the formal announcement of the change it describes was announced at work. Having been laid off mid-month, that announcement will never come, but I consider the concepts to be important enough to post anyway.


I resigned from my managerial role today.

Actually, it is more accurate to say that at the beginning of this month, I gave notice that I would be stepping down from my managerial role by month’s end. Today, that resignation simply became official. [Edit: Plus or minus a little…]

Continue reading Stepping Down

Malaise

I have so much going on at the moment; several cool development projects to work on that I’m really excited about, numerous books on the queue, the weather is nice and the bikes and kayaks are calling, there are some recently released video games that I enjoy quite a bit, I have writing ideas that sound like fun, my foot pain seems to be improving…I’m surrounded by great shit and life is, by any real measure, great!

Continue reading Malaise

Poor Sleep and Decisions

I have been sleeping ridiculously poorly. I am in a unique period of prolonged indecision; which it turns out is a thing that my brain does not like at all. I tend to be a pretty decisive person—I act on the knowledge that I have and course-correct based on new input as needed.

Currently, I’m working from a huge swath of unknowns and most of this decision is going to be based on gut feel. On emotion. Like a caveman. Continue reading Poor Sleep and Decisions

Tweets of 2015

Things I Said on Twitter in 2015

As I say each year: The year in review, in micro-blog form. This is mostly for my own reference, but, you might be bored enough to look at this as well. Who knows!

Tweets of 2012 • Tweets of 2013 • Tweets of 2014

I continue to hover in the “just shy of 1k tweets” club for the second year in a row, dropping slightly to around 870 tweets. I assume most are about teenage drama shows. Continue reading Tweets of 2015

Social Justice Warrior

“…but, you know, you have that whole thing you do on Facebook where you stand up for women and the poor and different races and stuff…”

This was actually said to me quite a while ago; and it has bothered me sufficiently that it has stuck with me for several weeks. My first draft of this opening actually implied that I wasn’t initially upset by it, that it grew to annoy me; that characterization isn’t true, though. I was sufficiently off-put by it the first time that I heard it that it prompted me to whip out my notebook and jot it down for later review. We’ll see if enough time has passed for me to remain relatively dispassionate as I attempt that review. Continue reading Social Justice Warrior

The Company You Keep

As a leader, I have been unbelievably lucky to be surrounded by some pretty amazing teams, and my current team is no exception. I have consistently asked a great deal of them, and they have always found a way to meet my lofty expectations; they have treated each other with respect, even when things are difficult; and they have remained reliably focused on our goals, even when the pace of a project and external forces work to bump us from our path. Nothing that I could do at work could have done a better job of making me look good than the excellence of my team.

I think, at times, it’s easy to look at your successes and assume them to be of your own making—it’s important to me to remember that most of mine relate more to the company that I keep than the actions that I take.

A Dewdrop Full of Struggle

A world of dew,
and within every dewdrop
a world of struggle
—Issa

This month marks 11 continuous years without drugs or alcohol. For the vast majority of you, this probably doesn’t seem to be an exceptionally huge feat—most people can take or leave drinking, and I’d wager that a sizable percentage of adults in this country have gone years and years without partaking in drug use. For me, however, this 11 years constitutes the longest period of sustained change I have ever managed. At this point, the length of time during which I haven’t been pissing-all-over-myself drunk or hitting-on-the-mother-of-my-date high is rapidly approaching as long as the length of time during which such events were regular occurrences. It’s a pretty heady feeling, this knowing that I am profoundly unlikely to wake up in a puddle of my own vomit next to someone I don’t especially know in a state of undress that inadequately conveys the full extent of the previous day’s adventures.

For obvious reasons, each year the approach of my anniversary comes with ponderous thoughts about the merits, features, and nature of change. Among drug addicts I first heard the phrase “nothing changes until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of changing” and never in my life has something sounded so ludicrous and so obvious at the same time. Of course we wait to change until staying the same is worse…but why would we be so short-sighted and stupid so much of the time?! Madness. Drug addicts are not known for their ability to plan for the future.

As it turns out, the same is true in most organizations—in fact, I could probably write a fairly lengthy article wherein I compare organizational behavior to that of a multi-year junkie (note to self, that sounds like a fun article)—most organizations act just as irrationally when faced with the formidable task of instituting change. Allow me to paint you a picture from my own life experience:

I was young—early twenties roughly—and had recently moved to a new town with my wife and young children. I immediately found the people who party and started spending my evenings at bars and house parties around town rather than with my newly displaced family.

Needless to say, that didn’t last long before my beleaguered wife, who undoubtedly hoped that this change in venue would result in a change in my behavior, finally had to put her foot down and threaten Very Bad Things if my behavior were to continue.

To my credit, I immediately put an utter and complete halt to my misbehavior. I quit drinking, I stopped hanging out with people after work, and I spent my nights and weekends with my family at home.

For about two weeks.

I quickly found my new life boring, and over the course of the third week, I had backslid almost completely. In fact, in many ways it was worse, because I had convinced myself that I had to lie and sneak time with friends and I would often drink a great deal at work and then drive home very, very drunk so that I could hang out with my family without hearing about my drinking.

This sort of whiplash-inducing overcorrection is something I’ve observed myriad times in countless organizations. A Thing That We Do™ is just not working—and a grand, sweeping plan is devised and put into place. It seems to largely alleviate some of the problems (in the best case scenario) or doesn’t seem to be having sufficient impact (in the more common scenarios), but in either case the strain of maintaining persistent change of such enormity—of such utter completeness—for any length of time proves too great and the members of the organization collapse back into old behaviors and patterns.

Why is this? Are they lazy? Stupid? Lacking in ambition?

Change—that is to say lasting, significant change—is methodical and slow. It’s glacially paced. It is the turtle winning the race slowly and steadily while the rabbit wears itself out with too much too fast. I’ve achieved over a decade free from actively pursuing addiction because I didn’t try to change everything at once. I triaged my life and changed the most pressing thing, and I have continued to do so iteratively for nearly 11 years now.

I do the same when helping an organization to change. Often the first thing I have to do is devote time and energy to reigning in the change enthusiasts who find themselves in a cycle of changing everything, then changing everything differently until everyone is so confused and disheartened that even modest change sounds horrifying and impossible. Only once that destructive cycle is quelled can the job of triaging and planning begin.

When you feel like change is failing you, stop for a moment and look around you. If you cannot list on one hand the individual changes that are being enacted and fingers left over, your glacier has run away and needs to be halted and adjusted.

Remember, several inches of snowfall can cover my town overnight and it is a thing of beauty; that same quantity of snow in one fell swoop would be a natural disaster. Stop making natural disasters.

2012: A Year In Review

A couple of years ago, a friend of mine started including me on an annual email blast wherein he reviewed the year and talked about the upcoming one. I loved the idea, but each time I tried to start my own—as I glanced at my blog(s) to create such a recap—I was struck by how gratuitous it would be. Back then, I was blogging and posting on social media with such ridiculous regularity that to send such an update felt like overkill.

This year, looking at how infrequently I have forced my thoughts into the unsuspecting eyeballs of others, it seems almost a necessity. Still, I struggled with the idea; as much as I enjoy getting Luke’s email, I have spent too much time telling people “if you don’t like what I have to say, don’t come and read it” to shove my writing into their inbox. So…my happy medium: I shall steal Luke’s idea for my own, but instead of email, I’ll just post it here.

I seriously overthink everything.

Review

There are a few constants in my life: I am always stupidly busy, I am always just around the corner from a break, and I am always puzzled when the ‘break’ around the corner is just being more stupidly busy. Constants—a situtation or state that does not change.

Keep that in mind when I say that this year, I was STUPIDLY busy. I mean that however busy you have seen me in the past…I was definitely busier. Way, way busier. Remember the year that I helped wrestle three conventions into existence, worked two jobs, and went to school full time while being the single father to two children? Yeah…busier.

I’m pretty confident that things will be better really soon though. :)

2012 was the year of change for me. Stepping back from convention work to devote myself to other aspects of my life seemed like a huge adjustment, but it was nothing when compared to the changes that followed. It wasn’t until I had to step out of employment talks with the big G that I realized how much I missed coding on massive projects with a great team. I was provided with what appeared to be a chance to do the sort of development I want to do as a part of the exact sort of team with which I would like to be doing it—so I lept back into ‘corporate’ programming. It has been everything that I had hoped it could be so far. That change, however, precipited another change; I had to step back from school for a bit.

If going back to programming for others was the scariest change of 2012, certainly taking a break from grad school was the hardest. As it came down to mid-November, it became apparent that I was doing a disservice to family, work, AND school. For years, I knew that there was a theoretical limit to the amount of burden that I could shoulder for even brief periods of time, but that limit remained just that—theory. This year, I found that limit. So, with only one class and a mostly done project left to go, I withdrew from grad school until the summer. Instead of graduating in December of 2012, I will graduate in the summer of 2013. Hopefully.

Even though I know it is for the best, it still tastes bitterly like a form of personal failure. Failure, however, isn’t the end of the world.

Failure can actually feel pretty good. The past month I have spent more time interacting with my family in a focused, relaxing way than I have at any point in the past five years (ten years?). No more doing things in the same room with them while I work or do homework, I have spent literally HOURS of continuous time playing videogames with my wife and children. I have relaxed at a family dinner and not immediately jumped up to finish writing code. I have done absolutely nothing at all for an entire day. Nothing…at…all…

Sure, that probably doesn’t sound like much, but it’s a pretty big deal to me.

Finally, it has been a year of upheaval for family and friends. It’s no big secret that Ger has been going through a lot, but if there is a silver lining to everything that has happened, it is that we were able to find people that were selflessly there for support and love; and that our marriage has been made stronger through our dealing with difficulties both inside and outside of the family. It is true that amidst pressure and heat one finds diamonds—those of you that have been there for us just to chat, lend a hand, or to be a shoulder to cry on—you are those diamonds.

That was needlessly overwrought.

Goals

I am a creature of goals. I have a constant supply of them, both lofty and realistic, floating about in my head at all times. Some that I had for 2012 include:

  • Finish grad school
  • Transition into teaching more, consulting less
  • Do more personal programming projects
  • Spend more time with my family
  • Take on less convention responsibility
  • Write more

Clearly, I’ve had mixed success. Some goals had to be sacrificed in order to pursue others. Teaching is still something I really, really want to do…and after a break from it, the desire is no less strong…but some opportunities are of the here-and-now sort. The chance to work for one of my dream companies was one, and the opportunity I’m enjoying now is another. Neither allow for more teaching time at the moment, however.

Similarly, I have never worked LESS on personal programming projects and writing than I have this year. However, failing these goals coupled with stepping back from convention planning has meant that I have had significantly more time for family and self. I call that a win.

So this year’s goals won’t resemble the goals of the last few years very much, but insomuch as that feels like growth, I won’t lament the change too much. For 2013, my goals include:

  1. Spend hours each week exclusively with family and friends – not solely while working on any projects or half-way being there
  2. Make time for hobbies – not just programming projects, it’s time to get back into cycling, kayaking, hiking, reading, etc
  3. Two days of complete relaxation per month – no trips, no plans, nothing on the schedule…just do NOTHING at all
  4. Become a great employee – I’m really, really good at what I do (and humble)…I want to be really, really good at what my company does too
  5. Continue to learn – dig in and research new things whether they be tech related or not…I love doing it, there is ample opportunity, I need to make time for it
  6. Write – I love doing it, and I am terribly rusty…maybe stick to a blogging schedule or work on book(s)
  7. Finish grad school – at a reasonable pace, not insanely paced

Note well that the second list is ordered, because the order matters. It seems that when I simply list goals, I find it easy for the relative importance of those goals to become murky throughout the year. At year’s end, I am almost never happy with the specifics of which goals I chose to hit and which I chose to miss. Hopefully, the sequence of this list will be a reminder that the order matters, and that the hierarchy I invariably choose in the heat of the moment is always, always wrong.

If I accomplish the first several, and fail almost entirely at the last few, that is far preferable than to only succeed at two in the middle and blow numbers one and two. One goal that is not enumerated above, but stands as a constant in my life is simply keep taking chances. Nothing positive has ever happened in my life while playing it safe, so, it is important that I don’t stop taking chances now. Don’t turn down opportunities and don’t stick to the path.

If you have made it to the bottom here, well, congratulations. I owe you a coffee or something. There are a lot of words up above, and since they’re mostly about my favorite subject (me), that would be a lot to get through. Well done. Know that I love you best, and you…yes, you specifically…are my favorite.

Thank you all for being a part of my adventure this year, and I look forward to you all being even more a part of my adventures in the year to come. Here’s to a great 2013.

This was a really, really long post #2013isRuined