The Family - January, 2010

So now that things have transitioned it’s been balls to the wall for me.  I work for a cable company and one of the subject areas in our business pertains to work orders.  I’m currently revamping the work order data mart within our warehouse; adding some additional fact tables, modifying some existing fact and dimension tables, rewriting a large portion of the ETL, and updating all the ERD models.  I might even find myself in the Business Objects universe layer before it’s all done.  My deadline for all this stuff is the end of November so time is running out.

As a result, I’ve spent virtually no time writing anything.  I’ve played guitar a bit and I’ve spent time with Traci and the kids, but my personal time is all but none.  At least I’m caught up on Quicken!  My weekly writing journal has been moved to at least monthly, maybe more often if I have time.  I hope to have time after this is done to update the site with not only more writing, but also with some anecdotes from this whole work order redesign in the warehouse.  There were some judgment calls to be made and sharing that insight could prove valuable.

The enemies of this process-at least for me-are lack of time and distraction.  The real conundrum though is when the lack of time and the distractions are spawned of one’s own choosing.  For instance, my lack of time and my distractions come from my work and my family, primarily.  In the case of my family I chose that, I continue to choose it, and have no regrets about choosing this distraction.  They force me to interact with other humans, they keep me from becoming a recluse or a digitized version of a real person.  They provide me with real life, with experience, and with feelings I’ve never had before.

In other words, in so many ways they’re actually my muse.

So it’s a bit ironic that they happen to be one of the biggest time vampires I have.  But couldn’t I say that about sleep?  I spend vast amounts of time asleep (well, maybe not vast but normally four to six hours a day) but I need that sleep to survive.  I spend at least a couple hours preparing meals and eating because I need food to survive.  Work takes up ten hours out of my day, once you include preparation time and drive time.  That doesn’t include overtime.  I also waste excessive amounts of time on drivel, on useless consumption of nonsense that allows me to turn my higher brain off for a bit and “zone out”, for lack of a better term.

The reason I singled out my family is because it’s a relatively new thing for me.  As I’ve grown up my responsibilities have increased because I’ve chose to accept more of them.  The kids have only been around for four years or so and they take up a lot of time.  As a result they hog the spotlight because I’m so used to my old distractions that I hardly consider them anymore.

The point of all this is time management.  I’m admittedly terrible at time management.  My wife, on the other hand, is unbelievably proficient at managing her time, as well as everyone else’s.  I think instead of focusing on a particular distraction or maybe the latest distraction it’s more beneficial to step back and look at all the distractions, even the old ones.  Once one objectively examines these things the wasted time should jump out.  The hours spent surfing the web for meaningless drivel, watching television you really don’t care about it, or just plain “zoning out”, will be apparent.  Not that any of this is in and of itself bad, it’s just that as a writer, as a creator, as someone who is driven to take the time to make something that didn’t exist before, those things have to be managed so as to not excessively impede the creative process.  That’s assuming, of course, that the creative process has value.

So as my estranged writer’s mindset and I become reacquainted, we’ve found ourselves in difference circumstances than we parted on ten years ago.  Work is harder and more time consuming, and the family is the focus of my life.  That doesn’t mean we can’t still have a relationship, it just means we need to budget the time better.

This site needed a new purpose.

I write so I want to write and write about writing.

I played guitar in a band called Flood a number of years ago.  I’m proud of that.  That stuff will make it back into the site in due time.  I play guitar still (sometimes) and want to start another band eventually.  I might like to write about that process.

I’m a programmer and I want to write about what I’m working on.

I’ve got two awesome kids and a great wife.  I want to write about them.  I also want to do things with them worth writing about.

Starting over can be scary.  It can also be liberating.  Right now the canvas is blank and I’m anxious to see where things go.

I did archive all the old stuff.  If you really want to read it contact me and I’ll send you the link.  I don’t foresee too many requests though.  Some of the better stuff is on it’s way back.

It’s now an open road ahead…

Traci and the boys at Tower Grove Park

Sometimes I can feel a moment so clearly it’s like I’m even aware of my movement forward in time.

Sometimes all the variables are right, everything is just so, and a surreal awareness washes over me for a minute or two.

I was at Tower Grove Park today with Traci and the kids.  At first it was pretty normal, hanging out on a playground with way too many people around.  Then we walked behind the pavilion and I was greeted with a huge field, peppered with large trees.  It was strange because the park is right in the middle of South City so it almost doesn’t seem real.  The air was cool in the shade of the trees and I watched as Traci walked out onto the field, followed by Orson and Trent.

As I walked that feeling washed over me.  I became aware of the wind, the feeling of air on my skin.  I noticed the coolness of the air under the shade of the trees; it was perfect.  If magic was real this would be magical.  The sun was bright but spots of shade covered the ground.  I watched the three of them walk through it; Traci walking confidently and parental, Orson running and Trent walking as  best as a 1 1/2 year old can.  Orson’s feet are huge, his body so skinny, his skin so pale.  Trent looked so much shorter than Orson, plodding along the grass, falling down on his butt as he tried to pick up every leaf on the ground.

I watched them as they walked away from me, toward the open expanse of the field, and I realized I’d never be here again, in the same place, at this same time.  My linear progression through time is irreversible and involuntary; I’m moving all the time and will continue to move even after I’m dead, until all traces of my existence in this universe are gone.  I’ll be a footnote in a history no one or no thing will ever remember, but I’ll have lived and died nonetheless.  That same linear progression through time , that inability to go backward, ensures that I’ll always be a part of the past-even if no one remembers it.

I saw the boys as they were-nearly five years and two years of age-a snapshot in time.  I saw them too as they would never be again.  They would never trod the same ground in the same way on the same day again.  I saw two brothers, I saw memories being made.  Trent wouldn’t remember but Orson might.  I know I’ll remember, as long as I’m physically able.  I might not even remember this event, this strong and bold vision of my family, my chosen life, my replacements in this world after I die, but I’ll remember that they were once young, that they were once carefree, that they once were at the beginning of their lives.  That so many possibilities lay ahead for them filled me with joy; that we’d only be able to do this thing together once filled me with both joy and sadness.  The sadness was there, the sense of loss as I watched the moment slip away right before my eyes, but the fact that we were even able to do it at all made me so happy.

And I’d prefer to feel that happiness over the sadness.

As the moment passed, maybe a minute or so later, I was back in reality.  The strangeness, the sweetness, and the sadness still linger.  I’m also glad for that.