#365Gratitude Day 309: Pay to Play

I don't talk about my day job much in my blog, for a variety of reasons.  But today I'm grateful for it. Basically, I'm paid to play with toys for a living. 

Not these kind, though. I work in Information Technology. I've been various things over the years, a trainer, a help desk tech (absolutely the most thankless job in technology), a network administrator (second worst), a technical writer, and a developer.  

All of which essentially have this same one thing in common: I'm paid to play with toys for a living. 

I love computers.  I think they're amazing tools.  I know that the work I do with and on them isn't trivial either.  

But I will say I'm extraordinarily grateful to do this sort of work.​

​Years ago I used to work for this very slick salesman, M.  He was one of the Very Big Dogs at the consulting firm I worked for.

He told me a story about appreciating the work we do.  One wet, cold, grey, wintry day he was driving into our office.  He was driving his very expensive car, wearing a very expensive suit.  He was talking  on his car phone, complaining to another Very Big Dog about the difficult day ahead of him, filled with meetings and sales calls, and all sorts of troublesome things. 

Not that guy, but you get the idea 

He pulled up to a red light, where this utility worker in a bright colored jumpsuit, was in a hole in the road, working on some electrical something as he stood in about three feet of cold, muddy water.  

As M. sat at the light, he watched the man work. Sparks flew out of whatever he was working on. A car came from the opposite direction, splashing dirty slush all over the guy, who sighed, wiped his face with his arm, and kept working.  

After M. saw that, he said he would never complain about anything about his job ever again. 

I feel much the same. I'm not going to tell you that my job doesn't have its fair share of frustrations and annoyances. But when I get really grouchy about them I remember that story, and find myself grateful that no matter what sort of hole I'm in at work, that it's not a literal one like that guy.  

#365Gratitude Day 308: A Space Oddity

I just heard about this, because I saw my wife post about it, and I'm utterly blown away.

You know Chris Hadfield, right?  He's the Canadian astronaut who back in 2013 lived aboard the International Space Station, and did a lot of tweeting from there.  I followed him for a long while, as I'm sure many of you have.  He's a marvelous human being.

He's also, as it turns out, a really great singer.  He recorded a version of the famous David Bowie song, A Space Oddity, from the International Space Station and posted it as a YouTube video.  It's brilliant.

See for yourself.

I'm grateful to live in a world with such a remarkable person in it.

#365Gratitude Day 307: Exception Handling

In Java there's this concept called exception handling.  It's a sort of preparation one makes in code to deal with potential problems.  You mark a particular method that it's got the potential to "throw" an exception, and then you "try" to do the thing that might cause the problem, and "catch" the error that gets thrown, and deal with it somehow.

Life has this too.

Yesterday, after grappling with a code problem for a few days, I asked for help from a co-worker.  They helped me out, and together we worked through the problems I'd been having.  After they'd left my desk, I implemented the solution, finding a few more slight problems along the way, and handily dealing with them.

It's a funny thing, when you write code for a living you tend to live in this weird binary way where you either feel like you're totally on top of things and kind of godlike, or you have no clue what the hell you are doing.  

So I got the particular feature I was building all tested, and checked it in, and was feeling really pretty good about myself.  I went to lunch.

When I came back, I went looking for something new to do, and couldn't find a single thing that looked like something I had the skills or drive to do.  I sort of floundered for an hour or three.  I had that nagging feeling of being overwhelmed by the unknown.  When your job relies on you confidently using your skills, that's pretty paralyzing.

 Then I realized I could use the downtime to self-teach myself a bunch of things, and dug into that.  I made the best effort I could at the time to acquire some new skills.

At the end of the day, I was still feeling sort of "spoonless", but took myself out for a nice dinner.(Because Missy was still driving home from a long day trip.)  By the time I got home, she was home, too.

As we went to bed, I realized that my I-don't-know-what-to-do-next feeling earlier that day was a form of exception, and that I'd properly handled it.  I went to bed feeling like my day had worked out for the best after all.

My gratitude for the day then is that we have that sort of exception handling I'm talking about built into us, organically.  Sure, things come up which knock us for a loop, but eventually, we're self-correcting.  That's a good thing.

#365Gratitude Day 306: My Express Love for Yoga Pops Up

Last night I had a Skype call with my fellow planners of the Littles Express, a christmas-holiday themed train ride event for age players.  

Let me add, you should totally get a ticket and join us - it's going to be wicked fun.

Anyhow, as we were waiting for one of our fellow Christmas Caper Collaborators™, somehow our silly banter turned to music.  That was when I introduced my friends to this unusual band I like, the Yoga Pop-Ups. 

The YPU's play instrumental music, covers of all sorts of popular (and other kinds of) music that's designed to be good to listen to while you do yoga.  As a sort of weird side-effect, the music winds up being like lullabies for age players.  

I often put on their sci-fi movie music album to go to sleep to.  I also love to write code and fiction to their other albums, especially their Rush tribute, which I particularly love.  They're amazing.

I played some of their music for my friends, who loved them.  I'm grateful I got to do that, as well as sharing it with you, now too.

#365Gratitude Day 305: Wu Wei for Breakfast

Wu wei is the Taoist concept of non-action.  It's moving in an organic, non-contrived, wholly mindful way, unencumbered by either positive or negative expectations.

In a very real way, all of that, and indeed all of Taoism can be summed up in one word:  

RELAX.

Wu wei is the simple, yet challenging work of fully doing what you must do, and NOT doing what you must not. 

I know, this sort of double speak makes your head hurt. Mine too, sometimes. 

Today, I experienced it around getting ready for work.

I slept in a little. Cuddling with Missy is so very nice. The bed was warm, my overnight diaper was wet, and Missy had naturally thrown her arms around me as we slept. All of that is a formula for wanting extra time to enjoy it.  But around six, I got up, knowing I had to get going if I wanted to make my 7:00am train. 

I blew that. There were two emails that I needed to send, that took a bit longer than I thought.  

(In a related, wholly unglamorous note, I sent those emails from my phone, from the bathroom, dictating them, as I got ready. This is the sort of juggling I do, to be able to live my superhero lifestyle.) 

No problem. I mindfully adapted. I packed my gym bag with a fresh towel, and shifted my workout to after work instead of before. 

As I got dressed my cats, Yin & Yang reminded me:

- They love me.

- They weren't about to let me leave the house without bringing my daily allotment of cat hair on my clothes.

- They really wanted their breakfast.  

I checked my watch. There were two more trains this morning. There was a distinct possibility that if I stopped to give the cats breakfast, never mind make some for myself, I'd miss the 7:45. Then I ALSO remembered it was trash day, and I needed to deal with that, too. 

Well, crap.  

I had visions of screwing up my whole day, whole timetable.

Then I remembered wu wei.  What did I have to do?  The cats needed their breakfast. I needed mine. The trash needed to go out. I needed to go to work, and work out after.

The exact order, manner, and timing of these things didn't matter at all. 

I relaxed. I got the cats their breakfast, and made myself a small nice one too.  

Then I took out the trash, got on my way, and made the 7:45 train with time to spare. 

Here's the funny thing about this. When I look, contemplatively back on the brief anxiety I felt, and then the joy and ease at the relief of moving past it, I see that, at the time, that brief anxiety was exactly what I needed to be doing, so that I could witness it, and transcend it.

Now, I'm on the train, and calm, centered, relaxed. I'm looking forward to my work day and approaching it from an engaged, yet relaxed, mindful state. 

I have no idea exactly what will be required of me today. But I'll do what needs to be done.  

I'm grateful for it.