Been awhile

The well-intentioned but oft-neglected blog; which is just one of the items on my 'list.'

I was doing some thinking this evening - you can get up off the floor now, I'm serious - about the mass of things facing me personally and professionally. It's the ever-growing 'list' of things that I need and/or want to accomplish. I use the term list quite loosely here because there really is no list (personally), it's all just thought and talk right now, but also weighing heavier and heavier on my soul - as I sit here and stare that the new computer I recently purchased that sorely needs my attention.

As I think about this, I try to look back at my life and can't help but wonder what happened. I don't think I used spend more time thinking and worrying about what needs to get done, than actually doing it. When I bought my first house, for example, it was a fixer-upper in every possible sense of the term. I pretty much gutted the main level of the house and redid everything from flooring to trim to paint, fixtures and appliances - all within 3-4 months of closing on the house then moving in. Today, I have a house. We did get the interior painted prior to moving in, but it's not changed otherwise one iota since we moved in - and believe me, there's a LOT that needs to be done.

For cars, I used to dive in and fix anything/everything I enjoyed the sense of accomplishment derived from taking a pile cast iron, aluminum and steel parts and having a running engine at the end. I used to actually love to balance the checkbook, maintain loans, do accounting - in fact I seriously considered accounting as a career path at one point because I aced every accounting and finance class I took. But now I have several nagging things to take care of, but can't seem to find the energy, motivation, drive - whatever that 'thing' is that makes us desire to get something done.

I'm left with a depressing question: What the hell happened?

Mike somewhat amusingly calls my state 'post (former employer) management disorder.' While my time at my last employer was indeed spent in a dysfunctional and oppressive management structure, I can't just let that excuse my disappointment in my ability to do things. Something has changed, and I'm pretty sure it's a whole lot deeper than the case-study-on-poor-management that was the place I worked for. In fact as I look back, I'm pretty sure this all existing prior to working there.

Cognitively, I know how to tackle these projects, and I think I'm intelligent enough to research, learn, and apply new methods. I have a degree in project management, for crying out loud. You'd think I'd have learned *something* about taking on a gelatinous mass of confusion and massaging it enough to coalesce things into manageable tasks. For that matter, I pursued the degree because at one point in my life I though it was something I was good at. I felt at one time that understanding how things fit together on a macro scale, knowing what needed to happen to get the pieces together, and communicating those tasks was something that came naturally. I was always the one that could take a project handed to a group and divide up the work among the team. Now, I'm not at all sure that's something I should be pursuing, or is even a strength at all.

There are plenty of tools and methods out there that I can apply. I've read about many, but the same thing that's in my way has affected me actually choosing something and starting to apply it. I have the GTD book, both in ebook and audio book format - but haven't read nor listened to it. I have several bits of software tools that I could use, but don't. There's something bigger, more sinister, that's wholly a part of my make-up going on here.

I'm missing something, some key ingredient for success. And that, more than anything right now, is beating me down.

2009 - already?

Hard to believe it's been two months since I've posted. A lot has happened in the past 8 or so weeks, many of which really deserve their own posting, so I'll just lightly touch on what's been going on personally and professionally.

Tonia and I celebrated an amazing 9 years of marriage last month. I can't begin to express what that means to me in words. She's the best wife a guy could hope to have. She's put up with me, helped me grow, encouraged me, pushed me, been a great step-mom to my son, and a wonderful manager of our home. I repay her by doing stupid stuff, and for the life of me can't imagine why she chose me.

Nick continues to learn to be a teenager - and I continue to learn how to be the parent of a teenager. We're entering one of the biggest transitions in his life, and our relationship. As such, roles are changing. My job needs to change from being more the coach or manager that gives him direction and instruction, to that of the encourager and cheerleader he needs to help apply the things he's learning in his own life. It's an interesting and challenging time for certain, but a defining time as well. My son is becoming a man.

For me, I continue to struggle to make positive change in my life (details later). It's a daily, sometimes hourly, question whether I'm up or down about life in general. My last physical had some disturbing news about the progression of diabetes. I need to make significant lifestyle changes now, or this disease will kill me sooner rather than later. So it's a constant battle internally to resign myself to the fate of the disease, or to learn how to fight harder.

Professionally, the scope of my job has changed significantly. I'm now in the systems department, focusing primarily on security and PCI/DSS compliance. I welcome the new challenge and hope this process can help our company move forward. It's an exciting time as it feels like we're on the verge of turning a corner. Several things we've been working toward are falling into place, so 2009 should be an exciting year.

The Worship Team is going pretty well. We've made significant progress in the quality of what we do. I LOVE to play, but more than that, playing with a purpose of leading our congregation's hearts and minds into the presence of the Throne is also a great responsibility. I'm honored to be able to participate at several levels from planning, to running sound, to playing instruments.

For goals this year, health has to be top priority. I'll make a detailed list of goals for my next post, I think.

Happy 2009!

Stress

Just got home from a visit with my chiropractor. She's decided that symptoms and feelings I've been having this week are all a result of stress and has ordered me to take it easy. I've heard of stress causing physical symptoms before, but this is the first time to my knowledge that I've actually experienced that.

So what do you do to destress?

Living with it.

As I've mentioned, I'm diabetic. Type II, to be specific - previously known as Adult Onset Diabetes. What it really means is that my body doesn't process sugars in my blood the way it ought to. Left unchecked, this can lead to all sorts of gory consequences and ultimately, death. With control, this can lead to all sorts of gory consequences, and ulitmately, death. The difference is the gory consequences can be prolonged or avoided altogether, and death can be staved off for awhile.

The stress of managing this can be overwhelming. There's the blood and urine tests by the lab, the home blood glucose tests, the doctor visits where you just know he's going to tell you that your foot, leg, toes, fingers are going to have to go, or that sexual function for you is now but a dream. There's the numb feet, the lack of balance, the loss of dexterity (incredibly frustrating for a guitarist). There's the worry that the disease will progress to Type I, which means all of the above plus the added fun of more closely watching the blood sugar and shooting insulin, a whole new level of managing the disease (I don't know how they do it). There's the constant worry about everything I eat - what's this going to do to me. Every single day there's something you read that makes you think you're doing it all wrong.

And that's just me whining, really. People live, and live well, with diabetes every day.

Everything I WANT TO BE says I should say 'To HELL with all that crap, fight this thing!' Yet, I seem to be unable to dredge up any enthusiasm to do just that. I was relieved when I went to the doctor this week and was told that my numbers were looking good and trending in the right direction. I was like, "great - thanks for the good news, can I go home now?" Why am I not elated? Why didn't I ask about my numb feet? My sore hands, the loss of dexterity? How can I just not care on one hand, and yet be scared to hear the answers to the questions I should ask?

After all that, there's the reality that I created this problem for myself. I'm very overweight, "morbidly obese" according the BMI scale. How's that for a motivating term? For me, it's not so much. I spent many years of my life in physically demanding jobs, then sat behind a desk for many more years. I drank gallons of soda, and ate whatever I wanted in whatever quantity I wanted. Then one day, I was fat. I ignored it then, but did pay a little close attention to what I ate, and my weight stabilized, in fact it hasn't changed but a couple of pounds for at least 5 years. For most of those years, I never saw a doctor, unless I was sick or injured, which didn't happen often. Then, when I was about to turn 40, I thought that I really ought to get a checkup. I learned then that I was diabetic and that my thyroid hormone was very low, which means lowered metabolism, complicating the weight thing.

Sometimes, I wonder if I should just stop and let the disease take its course - and hope for Jesus to come back before it gets there.

Grumpy Gus

Part of my job is being available 24/7 in case something bad happens with one of our systems. Something bad happened tonight at about 1:00AM and I'm still up nearly 2 hours later because I've not yet come down from the adrenaline rush. I'm not really happy about it.

We use a monitoring software system called Nagios that keeps an eye on critical services and servers, and then lets us know via email and text message if something breaks. I have my phone set to a really loud and annoying ring tone to ensure I wake up if there's a problem. This also means my wife, dog, and cat are on call with me as they wake up when the blasted thing goes off, too. Sometimes, my wife is never able to go back to sleep. She doesn't say anything, but she does let me know when she can't go back to sleep.

I'm pretty grumpy about the whole thing tonight. Got paged, got up and went to the bathroom and while I was in there, the phone kept going off. Turned out our sysadmin happened to be up and tried to rectify the problem, but our datacenter vendor didn't have him as 'authorized', so he was sending more messages trying to get me up.

When I realized he was sending the messages, I bit his head off.

Not good.

I was able to get tonight's problem taken care of, but at what expense? I've potentially alienated an employee, my wife is annoyed and up, and here I sit almost 2 hours later - still wired from the event. With my poor health, this kind of emotional stress and lack of sleep is quite literally killing me.

My boss has titled his blog "Life and Liveliness" with this description:

Life and Liveliness is a concept taken from Scott Peck's book 'People of the Lie'. The basic idea is that everything we do, say or take part in either adds life and liveliness or takes it away. A life that is enjoyed, is full of liveliness. It's just a question of choosing to get there.

I can't say that these experiences add life and liveliness - in fact I can say without question that they take it away.

It's time to choose correctly for a change.

Got Service?

A friend on the Christian Musician Forum posted this vid tonight. I'll add no commentary except to say that I'm that guy. (Well, except for the good looks, the suit, and the Buick....)

Getting Things Done

Fernando posted recently about concepts from a book called Getting Things Done that have helped him organize his life. Reading through his post, I realize I'm suffering from a couple of key points: First, the capacity to deal with and prioritize many incomplete projects, and secondly, procrastination.

My company always has many projects happening. I'm feeling overwhelmed almost to that point of not knowing what to do next. Couple the massive amounts of project work we have to do with maintaining daily operations and then reacting to problems as they arise, and I don't feel like I'm moving projects along as efficiently as they should be.

It's an eye-opener to me that procrastination can be attributed to not clearly seeing the the very next thing that must be done to keep a project moving. That fits in nicely with one of my current goals as a manager: provide clarity. One of my boss's key tenets of management is that it is management's responsibility to provide clarity so people can do their jobs. This concept pulls that all together for me. I need to learn how to break down tasks into smaller detailed tasks - quickly.

I've ordered the book.

Why I run a Mac

I haven't yet posted about work. Currently, I'm Director of Customer Services for a small Software as a Service (SaaS) company. Our services are designed to facilitate fundraising and relationship building for ministries. We support our product on three major platforms: Mac, Linux, and for those unfortunate souls still stuck with it, Windows.

Our company is part of a growing breed of organizations who've realized that walls, bricks, mortar, and especially cubicles, can get in the way of productivity and bringing life and liveliness to their staff. Sometimes this is termed as working in a virtual office, telecommuting, or working from a Small Office/Home Office (SOHO). Whatever you call it, though, I think it's wonderful. Myself or anyone in our company can be productive virtually anywhere there's internet and cell coverage available. That means I can live and be anywhere that brings me life - and still do the work I need to do to contribute to society and tend to my family's material needs and wants.

And with a single Mac computer I can develop, test, demonstrate, and use our products in the environments our clients will.

Why Mac computers? Well, other than the fact that Macs work better for most people than other computers out there, Macs offer one thing that no other computer does. The ability to run Mac OS, Linux, and Windows. Simultaneously. Virtualization products from Parallels and VMWare make this possible. For a company like ours that believes you ought to be able to live and work in ways that suit you, as well as add value to an organization, offering our product in this way only makes sense.

So that in addition to all the other great stuff you've heard about Macs (they just work, they're more secure, they last longer, they're easier to use...) makes it the only computer I'll buy, or recommend.