Saturday, April 21, 2007

Thoroughly Fed Up

This post was originally going to be about global warming and the US government's continued lack of action. Then I had an epiphany – or maybe it was more of a collision between several trains of thought. Whatever.
In one such train, I realized that one more blog post on the subject wasn't going to convince the bone heads in power that are resisting change. These idiots still think the sun revolves around the Earth, and I'm no Galileo. What I can do, and what I should be doing, is changing those things I actually have control over.
At the same time, I was attending a national conference. Over the course of several presentations and conversation with other attendees, I realized "these are some pretty smart people!" Which inevitably lead to the question, "Are they smarter than me?" Did it matter?
Now, I'm damn good at my profession, but at the end of the day – or more importantly, life – how important will that be? Is the world as a whole going to be any different because of the quality of the software I produce? Quite frankly, no. And what good is it to be in the top of my profession if the rest of my life is solidly middle-of-the-road?
And that's when the real epiphany occurred. I need to change the way I'm living my life, so that it visibly reflects what I value. If you asked someone who casually knew me what I felt was important, would they be able to tell? Definitely not at this point in time, but I'm committed to changing that. Not everything at once; that would be doomed to failure. A solid, certain and deliberate change.
The first change I'm making – which I started last week – is to stop being a fat tub o' lard. I'm not counting calories, just cutting back on how much I eat and eliminating all of the junk. Trust me, there was a lot of junk; I've dropped 6 pounds in the past 6 days. Spring's here, so I won't have trouble increasing my activity level (lots of yard work to be done), but I also want to start doing more outdoor activities with my kids.
And that's the second set of changes I've started making. I am not proud of who I am as a father and husband. I'm not horrible, mind you, but I'm no where near where I want to be.
You see, that's where the real difference comes in. I'm going to be thinking a lot more about my life and how I'm running it. Does that mean that I'll be using less of my brain power for issues at work? Probably. But you know what? Fuck work. That's not the end all of who I want to be.

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