So six days ago I decided that I was going to go offline. Went on a personal trip and left the laptop at home. I had my smart phone but did not really use it beyond coordinating movements with the folks I has hanging out with. Being offline created quite a bit of free time. So what did I do with it?
I engaged. With the people I was with face to face. Instead of checking messages in the lift line or on the chair or in the bar I had great conversations with family and good friends.
I read. Two books over the past six days which is about two more than I have read in the past six months. I read 127 Hours: Between a Rock and a Hard Place, Aron Ralston's autobiography. Ralston is forced to amputate his own arm with a cheap multi-tool knife in order to free himself after becoming trapped by a boulder in a slot canyon. Gruesome and intriguing. I also read Jane Smiley's latest The Man Who Invented the Computer. This is the biography of John Atanasoff, an Iowa State University professor that Smiley claims to have built the first computer prototype. While many of the reviews question the historical accuracy of the book it is a fascinating read.
I relaxed. Really. Did not think of work related stuff much at all and when someone asked Abby steered the conversation away.
It was a great six days.
And then I returned. I returned to 662 new emails that I have reduced to just 10 in the past 24 hours. Many of them were duplicate requests or notes notifying me that the issue had already been resolved. Lesson, time takes care of a lot of urgent email requests.
Nine LinkedIn requests. Lesson, people that don't know you very well try to connect all the time.
Six new ATDC companies that I had to manually process. Lesson, automate.
Put on one committee. Lesson, other people commit you to work regardless of if you agree to it or not.
The real lesson, leave your laptop at home when you go away.
Not like I really need it after a three day snowcation but I am heading out to Utah for a real vacation. As I mentioned in my time off the grid post, I am leaving the laptop at home. The first trip I have taken in over eight years without one. I am taking my iPhone, loaded up with Iron Man 2 for the flight out. But I am turning off the mail accounts. I would not take it at all but my kids need a way to reach me. If anyone has a solution for that other than a separate bat phone I would love to hear it.
I am going to be offline for six days. I expect to come back more refreshed than if I stayed connected. We will see.
It just seems to never end. Emails, IMs, DMs, status updates, checking in. Even voice mail my god. The stream of stuff coming at you just never seems to end. And the attention that we give to all this electronic stuff seems to be increasing at an ever increasing rate. I am willing to bet that since the summer of 2002, when I was on a bunch of little islands that did not even have dial up, the max amount of time that I have been disconnected from the Internet is less than 48 hours. There is not enough time to think and spend quality time with real people.
So inspired by Brad Feld's off the grid algorithm and aided by Georgia Tech's winter break shut down, I decided to spend the time between December 24 and January 3 offline. Granted I cheated a little. I had my iPhone in my pocket. But I pretty much kept my laptop closed. The only exception was a small window on the morning of January 30 when I had to setup some product requirements and a use test for an application that I am working on. But beyond that my laptop was turned off. I sent a total of 16 emails during those 10 days. One status update. Zero blog posts.
And you know what. It's was all good. Great even. Almost excellent. Despite all the pressures to the contrary it is not necessary to be connected all the time. It's refreshing to shut it all off. To forget about some things and focus on others for a few days.
Perhaps I should have gone completely cold turkey, but that seemed too daunting at the time. I do know that when I go on a ski trip in a few weeks I am taking it one step further. I am leaving the laptop at home.
Today is my 50th birthday. It even sounds old to me. But I am not old. Seriously.
The first thing that pops out of people's mouth when I tell them my age is "you look ten years younger." Which I may. Or they may are just being nice. I certainly don't act old. I'll never forget walking into the house with a new Cake CD a few years back and Abby asked "are you 14?" In some ways yes. Or more like 28.
For some reason though 50 seems to be a pretty significant birthday. In the past it was the sevens that caused me great reflection. 27, 37. Those years made me realize that I was moving into the next life stage. The five oh. Tick tock baby. By all reckoning my life is half over. It's enough to make a guy want to go out and buy a Porsche. Not me.
I am pretty darn satisfied with the direction my life has taken. I have:
A great wife;
Two super kids;
Health and fitness (taking a little knee injury out of the equation);
Time with energetic, smart, and young people;
The choice to work on things that I find interesting;
Love for the industry I am in;
Atlanta, a great place to live.
At the risk of a trademark infringement suit, life is good.
Old? No. Hell no even. I don't feel that way. I attribute this to a few things. Two of my stated life goals certainly have an impact.
Continue to learn. Read regularly and pick up new crafts, sports, or topics. Seek out new adventures in life.
Exercise regularly at least three times per week. Keep fit and at my appropriate body weight.
These things keep my body and mind engaged.
And over the past four years I have also been able to spend some time on broarder generativity. Which basically puts me around a lot of young smart energetic people. That stuff rubs off. It stems from and builds my sense of optimism in humanity. I am pretty sure I am heading toward ego integrity.
But the clock is ticking. On my 50th birthday, more than anything else I feel a sense of urgency. A sense of urgency to do more, to do better, to do good.
And I will get to all that. But for the moment I am going to celebrate. Abby threw one killer surprise party for me when I turned 40. Maybe 100 people. A big shocker when turning on the lights in the house after a long cross country flight on a Friday night. She asked me what I wanted to do this time around. I told her I wanted to have parties like a ten year old, lots of them with lots of family and friends and cakes and presents.
It's Thanksgiving and I have a lot of reasons to be grateful.
A loving wife. Great kids. Good friends. My health. An industry that I am passionate about. The ability to help others move their careers along and their companies forwards. A great professional network. The community at FoG.
I am thankful for all of you that read FoG and participate in this community. When I wrote my first blog post I never imagined that it would be what it is today. Thanks.
Today my mother turns 75. Over 20 years ago when I was applying to graduate school I described the impact she had on my life in one of the admission essays. I am publishing it below. Happy Birthday Mom. Thanks for everything you did and do for me.
Describe the specific experience in your life which contributed to your personal growth.
Do normal people really live like those families on television? This was a question that I was constantly pondering during the years of my youth. My family life during this time could not be considered typical.
When I was seven years old my parents were divorced. It was a nasty affair with my father going off to live with another woman and my mother admitting herself to a mental institution due to the inability to cope with her shattered life. When she released herself the police were with her to pick up my brother, sister, and me from my grandparents. They did not feel like my mother was fit to raise us. Even today, 18 years later, the whole ordeal is just a blur in my memory. What an experience.
Things eventually settled down and returned to some semblance of normalcy. Mom was working forty hours a week and carrying a full load in college. She wasn't around much. There was no one there to tell about the school day or to fix a hot dinner. Mom's not to blame, she just wanted a better life for all of us.
All the hard work Mom was doing eventually paid off. She now has her master's degree and is one of the most respected professionals involved with drug counseling in this community. She had to make a lot of sacrifices to get what she wanted and so desperately needed. Mom had a great drive to make something out of her life. The living example she provided instilled me with a desire for success with a never say die attitude.
How did all of this contribute to my personal growth? While I was learning from my mother's example I was also dealing with the difficulties of growing up on my own. I figured out how to deal with day to day problems on my own. I made choices concerning my future on my own. I was forced to look at options and weigh the consequences of my own actions. My friends had their parents telling them what to do. It didn't seem fair. In retrospect, this responsibility made me the independent person that I am today. I am not afraid to accept new challenges. I am confident I will make the right decisions.
I no longer ask myself if life is like television. America is not Hollywood and I am glad. I would like to think that my tumultuous youth worked in my favor and made me a better person in the real world in which we live.
Unlike past years the numbers presented above are not cumulative. Doing so makes it easier to understand what is transpiring. I also added a row showing the number of posts and used this info to calculate a Don Dodge version of a conversational index.
The number of posts written on FoG has fallen. Part of this, I am sure, is that I manage multiple blogs these days. Another big part was I took a spring break from writing last year to gain a little perspective. When I cranked things back up in the summer I had made the conscious decision that I was not going to write to build traffic, I was going to write to build community as well as devote more of my free time to other endeavors.
Traffic continues to grow, albeit at a decreasing rate. More important to me is the fact that the conversational index is a healthy and a good indicator of the community here.
The Technorati rank also has taken quite a jump, driven by the number of inbound links currently pointing to FoG. I also ran FoG through Blog Grader and it emerged with a grade of 95.8 and a rank of 10,442 which put FoG in the 94% percentile.
The other day while perusing Twitter I came across Typealyzer. Typealyzer is an application that looks at the content of a blog to determine its personality within the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) framework. Merely type in the URL of the blog and voila.
Who can resist, so I typed blog.weatherby.net into the input box.
The output, claimed FoG was an INTJ or “Scientist.”
Over the years I have taken a few MBTIs. The results have been mixed, ENTJ, ISTJ, ESTJ, and ENTJ. I believe I am a border line INTJ/ENTJ. Here are some characteristics of ENTJs, "The Executives."
Direct and assertive
Attuned to the big picture and how to get things done.
Likes making bold and sweeping changes in complex situations.
Outspoken and will not hesitate to speak of their plans for improvement
Seem like the behavior you have been seeing on FoG over the past week or so? It does to me.
It being Festivus it seems quite appropriate to air a grievance during an otherwise perfect holiday season.
My grievance is with American Express. I am deeply disappointed with them.
I had an AMEX charge card before I had a credit card. It was the first card I owned and used. Honestly was surprised that they give me one, but my first boss out of college told me to apply, and sure enough it was granted. I was a member. Have been a member since 84.
Over the years my AMEX use has grown. It is the primary card we use for household expenses. Used AMEX to buy laptops for new employees at MindSpring. Continued to use it during periods when I was traveling extensively on business, often racking up bills in excess of $10,000 per month. I think I was over $20,000 a few times. Even tried to buy my car with it though the dealer refused (I really like the Rewards Plus program and have taken many free trips to the Caribbean and mountains). I have 334,000 points in my Membership Rewards account. I easily have charged more than $1 million on my AMEX cards over the year, maybe more than $2 million. With the exception of current balances, which are not extraordinary, I have paid my bills.
I now have five AMEX accounts with nine cards outstanding. Many of these cards are used just to help with internal family accounting. Three of the accounts are used for businesses in which I am an officer. The Enfuse Group, Skribit, and another startup. Like my personal accounts these accounts are current.
So I have yet another startup, I need another AMEX account. I called up AMEX. Asked for another OPEN account. They would not even take the application. Said it would be rejected. I had too many accounts or something to that effect.
Excuse me. Here I am a long-term loyal customer with a FICO score above 800 and a life-time customer value that has to be off the charts and they are telling me they don't want any more of my business.
OPEN my derrière. AMEX you stink. I'll use that Citi card to finish up my Christmas shopping.
This is the second in a series pulling content off my first web presence. A personal list from 1999. Can not believe The Lord of the Rings did not make the cut. It bumps nine or ten off the list today. Will have to gave that some thought.
Force of Good is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You are free to share, remix, and share alike with attribution.
DISCLAIMER
The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone (with the exception of comments by others of course). They do not represent the opinion or position of any other person or entity. All postings adhere to my personal values.
