Category: Life

I thought I’d take a stab at reviewing this year using my project post mortem template.

• Was the objective clear?

In retrospect it was pretty clear. I had ended last year contemplating a potential shift to going into client side work, which eventually happened. As for the year itself, my two goals were to read more books and get a handle on the paperwork. I think I did a reasonable job of the former and essentially failed on the latter.

• What went wrong, how can we fix this?

I think the biggest issue is time wasted on Social Media. It is the only optional item in my life that I can easily trade out for better work, but I still haven’t been able to kick the habit. I don’t know if I’ll ever delete my accounts, but not drastically nuking my accounts might be like smoking one cigarette a day – a rough week and it’s right back to a pack a day.

• What went well, how can we improve?

With the new job, I think my reading interests have been focused. There are a lot of soft skills to be learned, so I’ve been able to indulge my guilty pleasure of reading business self help books. But it’s also a case where when I’m so fried after a hard day, I’ve felt the need to pull out some of my old favorites to read. I think I’ve maintained a good balance. And then this blog has been the surprise hobby of the year. I’ve taken up Seth Godin on his daily blog challenge, and so far, I can’t complain. It eats up a chunk of my morning, and I’m sure it makes me think more clearly, but I think it’s worth another year.

• What opportunities did we miss or overlook?

I’m not sure, this post seems to keep coming back to the idea of tradeoffs. The trope is that you need to say “no” to enough things in order to have room to say yes. Unfortunately, I’m already good at saying “no”, so there isn’t really any fat I can easily cut out. The real problem is “what good things are in the way of doing great?”… and I’m not seeing what good items I should be amputating out of my life.

• What are the next steps?

I think my goals next year are pretty straightforward. I want to give this blog another year’s run. And I need to make time to exercise, since my blood pressure is now borderline high. Beyond continuing / creating these two daily habits, I’d like to keep reading, clear up our housing situation, and clear through (or delete through) a pile of little things to do items that have been sitting on my list for quite some time now. I’m still getting acclimated to the new job, and I suspect that will take quite a bit of mental drag over this new year, so this is plenty.

There seems to be a paradox in life where the harder you grasp, the more likely it will slip through your hands. We wish everything would be solid with a nice rubber grip. But relationships tend to be like sand, you can hold so much in the palm of your hand but when you close the fist it slips out betweens the fingers.

Or at least that’s how the literary trope goes. I’m not completely sure how often it is actually true, but it is certainly truthy.

As I was waking up this morning anticipating about the joy of watching my daughter unwrap her presents, a slightly morbid thought popped into my head.

If I’m average, I’ve got forty of these left in my future.

The days and thus the years are flying by. When I was younger, (as in any time before 6:21 am this morning) life and thus Christmases felt limitless.

However 40 is an easily digestible number, the clock is ticking. While it’s not unreasonable to expect forty more of these fine mornings, it seems to be a foolish presumption.

So merry christmas y’all! Please make it count.

When I got this new gig, I took some time to say hello to my old employers, coworkers, consultants, and teachers as I stepped away from being a proper architect.

Not surprisingly, I was was the one who benefited the most from such an exercise.

It was certainly nice to mentally relive the nostalgic past, now distant from the stresses of actual practice. And it was good to reconnect with people I had not contacted in years, if not decades.

But the most interesting thing I learned was from a one email that I got from an old professor, who said he took an idea from one of my projects which eventually became part of a class that he taught.

I knew he liked my project because he had used it in one of his books, but to think it actually spun him in a new direction….wow! You never know what you’ll find out when you touch base with old friends!

This morning, I noticed a rabbit and a bear sitting on a chair, slipped in underneath the dining table. 

I wondered what they were doing there.

Or more specifically what my daughter was thinking when she put them there.

Were they having a conversation? 

Did that have a secret meeting away from the other stuffed animals?

Or was the seat just a convenient horizontal surface that wasn’t the floor?

It is rare when those of us who check our phones before leaving bed intersect with those who live on the streets, aside from the occasional beggar at the red light.

I tried to explain the concept of homelessness to my daughter yesterday.  I don’t think she could really wrap her head around such a foreign concept.  It was a reminder I need to be more thankful for the plenty we have.

As I listen to the rare Vegas rain outside this morning, it seems that even the sky is whispering, don’t take this for granted.

Is a good slogan for eating delicacies, but with two kids in the house is not a particularly effective way to start the morning.

Knowing that, the question then becomes what do I need to do at night so I have the time to a little work in the morning before the little ones get ramped up?

Also, what do I currently in the early morning that should be pushed back to be done later in the short choppy moments of the ragged day.

When we went to Laughlin, we crossed the border into Bullhead City, Arizona and picked up some lottery tickets.  As its turned out, we gamble way less now that we’ve moved into Nevada from Texas.

We just don’t enjoy gambling at a casino. The idea of handing someone a dollar to get ninety five cents back doesn’t do it for us.  We’d rather throw away a few bucks occasionaly for a the one in a trillion chance to win a million bucks.

Thanksgiving heralds the start of the holiday season.

I find it a very odd time of celebration and of reassessment. 

It is a lovely time, and yet a reminder that the time flies so quick. 

Use it well.

All the best!

I am not shy of quitting a hobby when I lose interest, but sometimes it pays to persist and look for new perspectives to forge a new path forward within the practice.  Sometimes you need to abandon the playing field, but sometimes you just need to tweak the game to your liking.

About a decade ago, I had a gotten jammed up in my appreciation of art. Viewed cynically, art is merely a tool of the rich and powerful to showcase themselves. I have no doubt that artists themselves are genuinely sincere in their passion, but the industry is merely one of status enhancement, for the patrons, the critics, and the artists themselves.

While I still hold that these facts are an accurate a reflection of reality in the gallery, I had an epiphany when a professor pointed out “Yes, but don’t you see that the act of viewing art is creative in itself?” After pondering the comment for a few weeks, I went to art museum and saw a Rotko on the wall. While I stood there, I focused on the border between white and brown and saw an stormy arctic snow scene complete with a igloo and campfire.

In that moment I smiled. I knew that such simplistic representational interpretation of this work would have been repugnant to Mr. Rothko and any other respectable student of art, but fuckall the academy, I had become a participant in the painting as a viewer. My crisis of faith was answered, I had found a new way back into the game.