People joined NASA in order to have the chance to storm Heaven.
- Dr. Robert Zubrin
There comes a time at any good gathering I'm attending when someone mentions my party trick. You see; I have this party trick. Whenever I do it, people get very excited. There are cheers. There is applause. You've probably seen it done on TV. You may have seen it done in person. But it's unlikely you've seen someone you know show the demo to you. Obviously: DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME.
If you can't afford to tip, then you can't afford to drink.
- Merlin Mann
Over the past few months I moved from one apartment to another. I was homeless for a bit in the middle of the moving process with no address that was technically my residence. During that time, all of my material possessions sat in half of my mother's garage.
It feels odd to me that the sum of my physical items (minus my car) fits in half of a garage. Even adding in the car all of my items fit into a full garage. That's it. I have no more objects to my name than those. The rest of the things to my name beyond that stack of stuff are numbers sitting in computers (mainframes) somewhere. They are make believe. A sign of wealth built entirely on a trust relationship. I have always shunned away from "things" wishing that I owned less, but seeing the sum total of it all sitting there before my eyes made me wonder a little about converting some of my fictional money in physical possession. I hear that land is a good investment; they aren't making any more of it.
Till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil.
- Moby Dick
Over Labor Day weekend, I went to Ms Chaos' hometown. A small little place in southern California. One of her good friends interrogated me quite well. There were a few questions I didn't have a quick answer to, that took me time to think about. I said, "I'll email you the answer." She probably thought I was joking, but that's the type of thing I follow threw on.
The question? Who are your heroes?
When writing an brief essay on my heroes, it's hard not to feel like it's a grade school assignment, and for a time as I rolled the rough drafts around in my head, I thought about the idea of actually trying to write like a fifth grader. In the end, I decided the fun of the style would take away from what I was trying to say.
These days, I have no need for a great and epic legacy in my life. There was a time when I was fast-tracking towards a profound career full of great accomplishments that my parents could brag about to their friends, but I kept feeling like I was focusing on the wrong "goal." While the laser-focus on building a career and being more successful than my peers felt rewarding as I checked off the boxes on the "how to be remember for having a successful life" roadmap, I wasn't enjoying the day-to-day. I didn't feel fulfilled even though that was the type of goal and life that felt instilled in me. What was my career? What job did I accomplish? One year ago I was managing a team of 30-people around the world, and I was excelling at my job, but I was working a 60-hour week and feeling like all the other parts of my life outside of my career were happening without me. I saw my family and my friends asking for help and I wanted to be the person to say, "yes I can help" but ended up being the person that said, "I'm sorry, I have to work that evening/weekend/etc." A funny thing with my parents is that both of them would say "you work too hard" or "I wish I had worked less", but the moment I mentioned relaxing my job and downgrading I would a response of, "now isn't the right economic time to do that." It never is.
In the past few years, I've become more focused on the "unsung" heros of the world. Not the ones who take world-changing actions and inspire a country, but the ones who take life-changing actions and inspire their friends and family. It's the grass-roots heros that I am most influenced by.
So I can tell you about two people I work with. People who are unknown outside the friends and families that they touch. They are both people who excel at their jobs; they are excellent and they are without a personal desire to advance their career for the sake of advancing their career. They broadcast the, "I will do this job with excellence; I love this job; I don't need to move on to the next job I will love less and struggle with more just feel like I am an 'advancing.'" They love what they do for their career, but they have time to focus on their family and friends and their other interests. I find that inspiring, the idea of "yes, I love the job I have, and I'm good enough that I have time for other things." Both have raised children. One is in an indy rock back, the other teaches traditional indian dance.
Based on them, over the past year, I've hired in a new boss to manage the team that lets me focus on the things I really love about my job. It's given me time to focus on my other interests; it's given my time to focus on spending more time with family and friends. Swing dancing on Fridays (rock-step-triple-step, lunge-step-triple-step). Church on Sundays. Reunion parties with my friends on a Thursday.
So my heroes? People you don't know. People who focus on their relationships with their family and the friends and excel at the job they have at hand.