At least on some fronts I'm still considered young

I just got my renewal notice for the Opera. They have a new group, Young Professional Group. I know there are other tickets in town that have had such groups for some time, but it's funny that they feel the need to create it for the Opera. Anyways, I'll take whatever I can get - I'm still in my 30s, even if I'm on the down side of that midpoint so I better hurry up and join while I still can. Looks like a new excuse for happy hour but my social life could use a little mingling too.

Honestly, it's the positive I needed today. Took a day off, my youngest one has been sick all week and we had to take her in to make sure it's nothing more serious than a virus. More of that fun on Monday, when I take her to my holistic physician, his specialty is intravenous nutrient which is what I used following my cancer treatment. He can do some initial diagnoses and we can go from there on recommendation or if he would like to refer her to someone else. It's nice to take the day off and just spend it with her, since I don't get to do enough of that with work, and general life obligations.

I made the mistake of reading my work email today though. It frustrated me. Why can't I just be happy with the way things are - why do I always feel the need to make things better, try to really improve things? I almost miss being a programmer. You don't have to think about the bigger problem, all you have to do is code to specs. Head down, code, fix the bugs where you find them and when you are all done, you have a true sense of success or failure.

Those days are long gone for me. I look around and see so many opportunities to improve process, and how implementing and measuring those changes impacts processes downstream. The downstream stuff is where we are trying to fix things with technology. At that point it really doesn't matter, it's garbage in, garbage out.

I don't know if I'm frustrated because I'm not in a position to make the changes that will make a difference, or because I lack the ability to influence the changes as quickly as I would like. It's a day like today I would like to sit down with David Maxwell and ask him if I'm on the right track.

Yes I know when it's all over, and I'm at the end of my time I won't be measured by how successful I was in my career but one can't help (at least one that sees the world the way I do) to think that having a career full of purpose can improve quality of life not just for myself but for those that I work with as well.

There are 168 hours in a week. 29% of that time is spent resting/sleeping. That is an average, I need at least 7 hours of sleep a night. 36% of those hours are are spent working, commuting to and from work or supporting efforts to keep current on what you do for work. Now that percentage might be much more sometimes as it usually is for me. If I was to guess, mayb e 6% of that time 9-10 hours a week are spent cooking, cleaning, and keeping up on maintenance tasks. That leaves us 29% percent of our week to do the things we love, be with the people we love (if we can), and expose ourselves to new experiences.

I don't know, maybe Tom was right about me, maybe I will never be satisfied, I will always need to improve things and want for more in my life. Guess that is just the way I am wired.

Here is something to listen to:
http://www.jimcollins.com/audio/featureA001.mp3

My point to all of this, when I was younger, I thought it's ok to feel this need to want more, to not know what I could do that would make me feel fulfilled, and how I could make a living at it. As time has gone on, I feel like I'm coming up on some line in in the sand. Some invisible line that suggests, OK, you are there, you should know at this point in your life how you add value and feel confident in it. Age might bring wisdom, but it doesn't seem to bring confidence that you know you are on the right track. I don't know what that time table looks like for me.

So I will take comfort in knowing that at least in some settings I'm still considered young, so I must still have time to figure it out. Our youngest president was Theodore Roosevelt at the age of 42. Of course he was married to an extrodinary individual, which supports the ideas that those of like values attract their own. Dr. Maslow felt she had reached self-actualization, a definition I don't even think man people understand today. If I use him as my baseline, I better hurry up and get my act together. On the other end of the spectrum, Ronald Reagan was the oldest president elected at the age of 69. I personally would not call him great by any means. Ab Lincoln was 52, now that I could live with...

Maybe I should find some other meauring stick for success.