Category: Personal Reflections

My friend Bill forwarded me a great piece from siliconvalley.com discussing the ways that layoffs have been impacting people’s family lives. My layoff has affected me far more deeply than I would’ve expected. Fortunately, on the whole, I’d say the experience has been positive. This interim gives me much more time with my son, which I take with relish. The tension that I have felt with my wife has been externally focused. The feeling is as the two of us facing out, backs together. For such, I’m quite grateful. The opposite would be an aggravation beyond pale.

I have focused on growth and understanding during this time. Watching the news, it’s easy to see the greater state of the economy. It’s easy for me to not take the quiet after the hundreds of resumes personally. I quite expect that this economic mess will take years to fully recover from.

Many years ago I decided my life would not be about wealth or power, but about service and impact. And about living my family life with quality. One of the people quoted said to his wife, “I don’t care if we lose everything, as long as I have you”. I couldn’t agree more. As I’ve often hear said, “no one has wished, on their death-bed, that they’d worked more.

Perhaps you’ve noticed, about one half the way down the page, that there’s a graphic for IP2Location.com. It’s really a delight to see all the different locales represented in my readership. Though it is a humble wee blog, I have readers all over.

Just listened to Cat’s In the Cradle by Harry Chapin. Funny, really, how a song that I’ve listened to my whole life can be so profoundly impactful. The narrator’s connection with his family, the sorrow he feels from his disconnect with his son is something that I have committed myself to avoiding. I try to be present each and every day in my son’s life. Perhaps I’ve had to sacrifice for this, giving up opportunities to advance, to grow more mighty in some enterprise. However, those opportunities seem so empty. I’ve always preferred to be at home then in some office. The promise of greater salary, power, or prestige has not held a strong enough attraction (that’s not to say that there hasn’t been any attractiveness to these choices – just not enough). Perhaps it’s the power of this song, or, more likely, having watched too many people die too young, I realize what is truly precious in this life.

One thing I let slip over the past few years is learning. I was studying, mostly with a future focus. However, I grudgingly did so, and it was somewhat painful. I need to actively learn from this point on. For instance, I used Excel quite extensively in my last few roles. However, there were several tools built in that could have made my work easier and more effective if I had taken the time to continue exploring. I generally only explored Excel when I needed to come up with something new. That generally only gave me the most basic of results. Now I will budget time for in-depth study and learning. Proactivity must be my new mantra.

Via BlackBerry

My e-chum, Veronica, recently returned from a trip to the Phllippines. This picture is part of her trip, and just made me howl.

Another piece of the Free Roxana campaign.

A nice piece of work by James Buck.

I had a lovely interview this afternoon and feel good about how it went. However, this is balanced with the knowledge that many others have also been interviewed. Though it is for a position that I would be excited to get, I’m not all angsty. I’m just not too worried about the whole unemployed thing right now. However, that’s due to luck, and some skill (I guess). Savings will hold out for a bit yet, and my wife works…and it’s quite unlikely she’ll loose her job (she teaches junior high special ed…I shudder at the thought). Our worst case scenario is a radical lifestyle shift. Perhaps losing one of the cars (and it’s payment), and dropping such things as cable (the horror!). And I’m not so hell-bent on working. Work, for me, is more about contributing and making an impact. That, truly, is a luxury.

Reminds me of my grandfather. He was “retired” (acted upon him, not of his choice) when I was about 12. His life was wrapped up in his job. He was in the same role for 30+ years, and was devastated when it ended. I learned, way back then, that I would never fully roll my identity into my job/career.

However, there is something that’s giving me chills right now: the Swine Flu outbreak. Job loss sucks; bankruptcy sucks, too. But neither one of them will kill you, or worse, someone you love. Fortunately, here in the States, that’s less of a worry since we have some of the best medical care on the globe. Still, the severity of this helps keep all the other problems in perspective.

Ah, this fits me sometimes.

from xkcd

Update: This clip was pulled due to terms of use violation. Thus, I’ve pulled the link