A taste of development

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Yesterday my coworkers redecorated my office.  Pictures
in this blog entry are photos of their work.  Strangely enough, I found myself
quite appreciative of their act of vandalism. 

Today is my 40^th birthday.  Like most other days,
I started by walking the dog and making a To-Do list.  However, today’s list
has a special item:

• Decide whether to have a mid-life crisis or not.

I’ll confess I am not entirely thrilled about being 40.  It
doesn’t seem that long ago that 40 seemed far away.  Now that it’s here, I
realize that it’s not what I expected.  I thought my life at 40 would be
different.

Many who know me would assert that I have nothing to
complain about.  And they would be correct.  My life has been filled with
blessings of all kinds, for which I am truly thankful.  I am a published
author.  Most would consider me financially successful.  I am in a career where
I enjoy my work.

But still…

As the old saying goes, nobody lies on their deathbed
wishing they had spent more time at the office.

Like most everybody else, when I was 30 I looked ahead ten
years and formed a picture in my mind.  My life today doesn’t match that
picture very well.  Examples:

• I thought by now I would be more solid in the quality of
  my relationships with my loved ones and in the practice of my faith.

• I thought by now I would be a better guitar player.
• There’s a messy pile in my study that has been there for
  ten years.  (Yes, we moved six years ago.  The heap moved too.)  I thought
  it would be cleaned up by now.

• I always assumed that by 40 I would have learned to
  exercise regularly and stop eating junk food.

I go could on.  And on.  But you get the idea.

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I am tempted to think about my regrets, the places where I
took a wrong turn, the places where I would have made a smarter choice if I
knew then what I know now.

But this whole line of thinking doesn’t seem at all
conducive to good mental health, so today I will choose to focus on two things
which seem more constructive:

1.  Tapestry

One of my favorite Star Trek episodes is called Tapestry. 
It is the story of someone given a chance to re-live a pivotal moment in his
youth so that he can avoid making the unwise choice he made the first time. 
But it turns out that his reckless moment was a critical ingredient in his
later successes.

Today I remind myself that there are no do-overs, and I’m
not sure I would want one anyway.  For every mistake I have made, there were negative
consequences and positive lessons.  I can’t expect to avoid the former and keep
the latter.  They come together as an inseparable package.

2.  Life Calculus.

Back in 2003 I wrote an article called Career Calculus.  In a
nutshell, it says that at any given moment in your career, what you know is far
less important than whether you are learning.

Today I remind myself that the same principle applies in
life.  I am confident in my first derivative.  Whatever I am today, I think I
will be a better person tomorrow.

So if I’m still blogging when I’m 50, I expect I will be
able to report progress on some of the items mentioned above.

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And just to be clear, if that heap of junk on the floor of
my study is still there, it will be larger than it is now, and I plan to report
that as progress. 

http://software.ericsink.com/entries/Life_Calculus.html