#365Gratitude Day 18: The Passion of the Missy

So my wife Missy kinda likes the Seahawks...​

No, that's an outright lie.  She adores them.  She's mad for them.  She thinks they're amazing, and loves being a 12th man, a Seahawks fan. 

I'm not a big sports fan myself.  Honestly, sometimes I struggle to even understand the rules of football. 

But I will tell you what I am  a big fan of - my wife's passion.  She's a quiet, introverted person.  It takes something special to fire her up, but when she's in, she is in, baby! 

i just spent the past 40 minutes or so watching her engage in friendly smack-talk with my sister-in-law, and being mostly a little blue that her Hawks didn't seem like they were going to make it.   

Literally in the last 5 minutes of the game, the team turned it around.  And Missy, she was on her feet, jumping in the air, whooping and hooting and cheering.   

I love when this happens, because I'm my wife's biggest fan.

#365Gratitude Day 17: New & Old

Missy and I are visiting my ex, Kacie, her husband Kevin, and their ridiculously adorable newborn baby.  

It's been good to see them, and a bit mind-bending too.  They have both been a part of my life for a very long time, in various ways.  Spending time with them is a fascinating mix of new and old.  There are tons of in-jokes and memories we all share, and we have a deep knowledge of one another.

Yet at the same time, it's almost like they're entirely different people.  They're in this new, exciting phase of their life, now that they're parents.  They've been through many other changes too, as have Missy and I, certainly.

As we've visited, I'll catch myself looking at an old photograph on the walls, or something laying around their house, and remember my own involvement in whatever that thing or memory is.  It's occasionally just a tad bittersweet.  

That's entirely balanced out though by getting to know and experience the new, present, current incarnations of them, as the new, current, incarnation of myself.  They adore their kid.  They're super happy with each other.  

I often say that life is like this super complex math problem.  Over on one side of the equation you've got X, which is who you are now, and on the other side, all this complex gibberish that evaluates to it.  It includes everything that's ever happened to you, everyone you've ever known, and all your experiences.  Somehow these things all blend together to make the you, that you are now.

All of this was rolling around in my head yesterday when we all went out for a nice walk.  Along the path I saw this awesome thing, a sort of community do-it-yourself-library-cabinet.  You can leave a book there, or take one.

It struck me as particular relevant to the stuff on my mind.  Experiences are kind of like this too.  As we change, we share experiences with others for a time, then shelve them.  Others use them too.  Those past experiences never go away, but our relationship to them changes over time.  We write new stories.  Sometimes, they have some of the same characters.  Sometimes those characters change.  

I'm glad I get to read and write all this stuff.

#365Gratitude Day 16: Local boy does good

I rely on technology a lot.  I have almost no sense of direction, so I frequently use a GPS to find my way.  I also a a big fan of electronic books, and using personal electronics to augment my own skills or deficiencies.  I jot down reminders in my phone, look up technical things on the web, all sorts of things like that.

​In my day job I'm a programmer - and one big way I use tech to facilitate that is through taking training.  I love udemy.com's stuff.  Watching streaming videos over a cellular connection can be an expensive proposition though.  

This morning, before I got going, I had the forethought to download the rest of the Twitter Bootstrap videos from the class I'm taking, right onto my tablet. 

This means I can watch them any place, regardless of whether I have an internet connection or not.   

The same thing's true of technical e-books I have downloaded into the reading app on my tablet, too.   

I remember some years ago, when I was first learning some new skills, I bought these absolutely enormous tech books.  They cost me about $45 a pop, each weighed upwards of 2 pounds, too.  I was commuting to a project that was about 2 hours by car from my house.  I used to keep these books in a box in the trunk of my car.  I would pop outside to my "mobile library" to get a book or two, and bring them back into the office. 

What a pain in the ass.  Plus, there were all these practical limitations to it.  There were only so many books I could keep with me, and keep track of.  They were pricey, and I couldn't always get my company to pay for them.  More than one of these books wound up getting "borrowed" by co-workers too, only for me to never see them again. 

E-books, and video courses like the ones I use now are fairly inexpensive.  I don't need to ask my company to buy them for me, I just buy them myself, and write them off.  

It amazes me how much raw material I can keep with me, and how easily, now.  I can teach myself ANYTHING, and I can have access to pretty much all of the materials I need to do so.  With just a little advance planning, even connectivity issues are irrelevant.

I'm so grateful I have these powerful tools available to me, to help me better myself.

365 Miles: 11 miles

Another good swim this morning, and numbers I like. 

#365Gratitude Day 15: Jam & a bathing suit

My day is jam packed. My backpack on the other hand is bathing suit packed. 

When I'm well rested I try to fill my days with attention to many things. 

Today I've already taken out the trash, made breakfast, made an early train, studied a tech class on the train, too. ​

When I get off the train, I'll go swimming before work.  Then there's a full work day, including lunch with my friend Tasha, followed by a train ride home.  

I might do some writing on the ride home, or for an hour when I get there. 

I know that all sounds sort of exhausting, but I actually find it mostly exhilarating. 

I like to be ambitious, to challenge myself to learn, do, and grow more.   

I don't always have the energy to push myself like that, but I'm really grateful when I do.