Ladies, now is not the time for timidity. Step up, take chances, push yourself beyond your comfort zone, use your powers and influence for good, and let your expertise shine. There’s plenty of room for improvement, but we’ll only get there if you do your work, do it well, and do it where others can see and appreciate your example.
Hosting for Haiti
Please join a number of great web hosting companies in supporting efforts to assist those in need in Haiti. Please visit #hostingforhaiti or donate to Doctors without Borders.
“The charity that is a trifle to us can be precious to others. ” -Homer
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Breaking down the walls
An old friend from my past called this morning to talk a little, and I have to be honest. After our discussion I am very excited. It is amazing how people who were in your “inner circle” in the past have a permanent ability to cut threw all the time and bullshit and talk to “you”.
As I’ve grown older I feel like I wear too many hats. When I was a little younger and my life was simpler I was just me. Experience made me more skilled at giving other people what they wanted and I feel like today I have multiple compartments. In my previous writings I’ve even claimed that these are just a part of who I am. Today, I’ve decided that in the coming year I want to put an end to that.
At this point in my life I feel like I am pretty fucking awesome and the few close friends that really know me seem to agree. I am a good father, a good friend, a good lover and a hell of an employee. There is no reason I should have to be one of these at a time. It is often said that we are more than the sum of our parts and while physically I have no doubt this is true, personality wise I haven’t ever thought of it that way.
Breaking down the separations I’ve built between these parts of my life will make me a better person and will make me happier. I also feel like it will make me more creative (something I really want to improve on) and more productive.
I also sincerely hope it will enable me to bring more people in to my inner circle. I don’t want to expand it endlessly, but the few people I count in that group (or have in the past) have all had such a massive effect on me that even if this entire change only nets one or two people I can add it will have been well worth my efforts. These few people are folks that I would cross space and time to help and that I have no doubt would do the same for me.
So it is time to shed some layers, show the world who I am and try to build more of these connections. Look out.
Make time to be creative
One of the major changes I want to make in the New Year is that I am committing to create more. When I get into a space where my primary job role is management rather than engineering one of the primary reasons I suspect that I start to burn out is because my natural desire to create new things is more or less building silently until it erupts and I move back to an engineering role.
The primary reason I find value in managing people is because it is a challenge for me. I love the feeling I get from overseeing successful projects and people. I enjoy helping people develop their careers and skill sets and it is some of the most rewarding work I have ever done.
I still need to express my creativity by writing, speaking, and coding when the mood strikes me. I am not the most artistic soul in the world, but I want to be better at design. Throughout my careers I’ve worked with tons of people who were better software developers than I am, but I still love to code. My writing skills are down right horrible at times, but I still need to express myself. Just because my career isn’t pointed directly at any of these efforts, it is still important to make the time.
Passion
Last night I finally finished reading “Crush It” by @garyvee (after I finished wrapping last minute Christmas presents for my son). As he said in response to my starting to read the book it does pick up at the end. I had a hard time getting started in large part because I had trouble figuring out what I felt as passionate about as the passions Gary was describing.
I’ve loved technology by whole life, since I was 3. I’ve been working in it full time (and for the most part loving it) for more than a decade at this point. Even that is not my real passion. I love making technology work for people. I’ve spent large portions of my careers automating processes to make people’s technology related jobs easier, or creating software to make creating and maintaining websites easier for people who are not as tech savvy as I am. My current professional role is managing all of our customer facing web applications and properties.
Another gentlemen who shares my name is a well respected author that writes extensively about Human Computer Interaction and other related topics. I plan to start writing actively again and focusing on good business, good software, and good customer experiences.
Lets see how this endeavor progresses.
An awesome example of customer service
sdk7327:
Gotta love those folks over at woot.com :)
b3nbrooks:
Excellent customer service.
via i.imgur.com
