As some of you may remember, earlier this year I crashed my motorcycle. That wasn’t fun. It actually hurt a lot. I was extremely lucky in the result of the crash. I not only walked away from it, but I was able to ride home on the machine. It needed some work, but… it survived, and got me home.
Psychologically speaking, it was, I guess, a slap in the face? a wake up call? a bad cliche to remind me about the world? All of the above…
I didn’t have some waking moment, or a come to jesus or anything, but it did give me pause about how I pull, and don’t pull my punches, and what I was thinking at the time, or not thinking when it happened.
Life is too short to worry about it really… and that’s I guess what it was all about.
Had I been in the next corner, and had the same thing happen, I would have slid in to steel high way dividers… and let me tell you, thats not a good way to stop.
And when your life is spent acting dumb, and praying on chance to pull you through. You usually end up as a Darwin award winner.
I came back to work, and life, and decided to stop waiting for things.
I made a lot of decisions that made some differences.
I started speaking up at work, but not in ways that I think is getting me noticed differently. More action is happening when I present it now. Not more resistance to what maybe was a perception of my attitude? I’m not sure.
I made some decisions that were hard, but I know where the right ones.
Some hurt, some growth, some change. Change isn’t easy, but you need it to stay alive I think.
The last month at work, despite what I said above, regarding some of the more positive response I’ve gotten from management has also been a bear in other ways. We’re chronicly understaffed. The IT support needs out strip our ability to answer them, and a history of paranoia induced stagnation by one business group has resulted in severe lack of tools that we need to help support people. (you’d be stunned at how many people can’t remember their password). My ability to do my job has suffered horrendously the past 3 weeks because of that, combined with the medical leave of one of my office mates, which puts me in an un-enviable position of answering such questions as… “I know its not your responsibility, but… do you know why my printer is out of ink?” (dead serious, actual question).
Its hard to deploy applications and manage system upgrades when you’re busy telling someone to get off their ass and walk 10 feet to use someone else’s printer…
It makes you bitter, and cynical…
And then you’re reminded again at how small, short, and precious every moment is.
Monday morning I went with my brother to a funeral service, for someone he was close friends with in High school. He had died on Thursday, in a motor cycle accident. I don’t know the details of the accident, but I know what I saw on Monday at the service.
Almost 100 people showed up for the service, which was held in Quaker fashion. This means that instead of one or two orators who speak at length about the deceased, you have an open floor that allows anyone to say anything they want. This resulted in an hour of speaking from over a dozen people, all who had amazing things to say about this 23 year old person, taken so early from life. A life that by all accounts was lived in sheer joy, love, and excitement for every moment.
One more reminder? maybe… Sad, extremely. Life? absolutely. Perspective on how close I was? yep.
Today though, I got secret access to join my professional peers at the http://www.med.upenn.edu/uiconf/ “Higher Education Web Symposium”… I was saying earlier how stagnated and kinda squished I feel at work. I could feel the edges of a burn out. Going to this today was, even just for one day, a welcome change, and a professional sauna of sorts. There wasn’t anything highly technical. but it felt great to surround my self with people who ask the same questions I do every day, and to hear what their answers are. I’ve been struggling with how to justify some of the ideas I have, and how to present them as valid options to the questions we have internally. I got to see the same problems, and how people have faced them all day long. Even better, most of those solutions were right in line with my ideas. That’s a nice feeling 
I’m feeling a bit invigorated for tomorrow, going to work on a Thursday shouldn’t be this exciting should it?
I think I’m starting solidify ideas I have about the next few years of my life. They’re not about specific goal lines, or specific events. They’re about the place I want to be. Not where, but the … place … I want to be. Thats hard to explain. But today I feel really good about it.
Perspective on loss, love, death, work, living, want, have… they all help in this, but they don’t force it. they just kinda push at the edges. pushing me towards something else. Making sure i don’t stand still too much.
I think that’s the thing. You have to have something pushing you. not to hard, but just enough.
Pushing you towards whats next.
Eh, it was okay.