Life, Work & Wonder

Author: Rob In Seattle

  • How The Passage Of Time Has Influenced My Perspective

    How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

    How The Passage Of Time Has Influenced My Perspective

    I was 43 the first time I started to relax.

    For 20 years of my adulthood I’d fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled, mostly about each of life’s milestones.

    First, it was to graduate college. I was going to university in a small town that I didn’t like very much, because being in my early 20s I didn’t want to be in a small town — I wanted to be in the city! So I wanted out of that college, and the best way to do that was to graduate, so I fretted and toiled my way toward graduation.

    Then I graduated and it was time to get my career going. Except we were in a mini-recession (early 90s) at the time and no one was hiring recent college graduates. So I worked a series of grunt jobs as a mover and a DJ and bank teller and tutor, and meanwhile went back to school to earn my teaching certification. I’d love to say those were good times, but they weren’t: it was a time of very low checking account balances  and day-to-day drudgery and all through those years I fretted and I toiled.

    Then I got out of school and got my first career job and then wanted so desperately to have a house. I felt like houses were out of my reach, and felt a lot of resentment at older generations for creating a world where I couldn’t afford a house. I spent a lot of time fretting and toiling although after a few years I was actually able to buy a house (!).

    And so it went.

    Every single step of the way, year after year of my 20s and then my 30s, I fretted and toiled. Fretted and toiled. I was pretty miserable most of the time, if I’m honest. Yes, I had my moments of joy, and on the surface everyone always commented how happy I seemed, but there was just this overwhelming sense of toiling and fretting surging through my veins like an invisible poison. I worked and worked, and when I wasn’t working I was taking care of the kids and the house and covering for an always-absent (now ex) wife, and all the time I worried and fretted about this and that, always worrying about the next milestone.

    Then there was hope!

    There was a moment — actually two — when I was 43 when I finally relaxed.

    The first moment was on an early morning bike ride. We were at our vacation home, which I loved BUT which I was forever worried about paying for, and we were at the house one summer week when I was on a dawn mountain bike ride through the forest. There was a moment along the river when suddenly I realized the early morning sun was on my face, and the birds were singing all around me, and the river was murmuring next to me, and meanwhile the sweet smell of nature was in the air. And suddenly I just stopped. I stopped, got off my bike, and just soaked in that moment for a minute, then two minutes, then 15 minutes. There literally was not another human being around me, and I suddenly wondered if I were in heaven because it was just soooooo peaceful. Up until that time, I’d never experienced a moment like that before.

    The next moment when I relaxed was THE moment when I relaxed. Age 43, and having dinner with my parents, and was making great money, and my work seemed to love me, and the kids were teens and seemed happy, and my (now ex) wife was around helping a little more often, and I was even still in my athletic prime (I’d batted .920 in and still regularly making diving catches during the recently-ended softball season), and suddenly I thought, “I’ve made it. I’m going to be okay.” I actually thought life might freeze at that very moment, where I’d be okay and age 43 forever.

    But time didn’t stop. And (thankfully) life didn’t stop.

    It kept on coming. Moment after moment, day after day, year after year.

    That was way over 10 years ago.

    In the decade since that moment at dinner with my parents, so many changes have happened in my life. I was let go for the very first time, and then for the second time. I battled a fluke lung disease (successfully, thank goodness). I got divorced and then after promising myself I’d never date again actually dated again and got remarried again (to a much more present person than my ex was). And meanwhile the years just keep on coming. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

    To me, the most shocking things aren’t the life changes I’ve undergone since I was 43 (actually, each one of them has been a blessing). It’s that each year just keeps on passing. That life just keeps on passing. One year after the other. And it makes me realize the folly of toiling and fretting about milestones, about wanting to achieve certain things on a certain timeframe in life at the expense of being in the moment. Because life is in that moment. My amazing ex-grandmother-in-law used to say, “Life is what happens while you’re making your future plans.” How true that is.

    I wish I could go back in time. And to tell myself to stop fretting. And to stop toiling. Because that stole so much happiness from me, and sucked 20 years of my life away.

    But.

    But!

    I’m here now. And presumably I still have a few decades of good life left in me. And I’ve been influenced by the passage of time in that I’ve learned to just be in the moment, to just feel joy in the here and now, and to take a moment to appreciate each and every day.

    Regret is folly. Better is to take what we’ve learned and to apply that to our present and future. Because our present and future is all we have in our life. And I’m just so grateful that time has taught me to appreciate today.

    Wishing you a great day.

    NOTES:

    • Every day WordPress offers a writing prompt. I’ve never been a writing prompt person but actually have been enjoying these prompts. This is my response to today’s prompt.

  • The Folly Of A To-Do List (AKA My Non-Existent To Do List)

    Something on your “to-do list” that never gets done.

    WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT NEVER GETS DONE ON MY TO DO LIST? Nothing. Because nothing is on my to-do list. Because the world doesn’t make time anymore for to-do lists. Explained…

    Years ago I carried around two notebooks everywhere I went.

    The first notebook were my notes. Every call, every meeting, every day, I jotted down the date and who I was talking to and then took detailed notes in real time, often writing in my notebook while keeping my eyes focused on the person in front of me (i.e. I was the master of the no-look note-taking 🙂 ).

    The second notebook was my to-do list. After every single meeting, I copied my to-do items into that list, then every single day I religiously reviewed that list to make sure I was addressing everything I needed (or promised) to take care of.

    Sometime in the early 2010s, I switched to Excel — I had a tab devoted to my to-do list, and then in 2015 I moved from Excel to One Note for keeping track of Asks. In fact, OneNote — and the tables feature in particular — was awesome!

    One of the things I’m most proud of was in 2019 when I had a critical opportunity I was working on. My larger team was struggling (way behind in its numbers) so needed the revenue from this major opportunity I was working on, and my client really needed our (or at least someone’s) SaaS solution to increase their online sales by 400%. Because it was important, the opportunity had a lot of people weighing in on it: my CEO, the client’s CEO, my client’s CFO, my client’s head of PMO, my client’s dozen mid-level people contributing to or influencing the buying process, and the Client Executive Sponsor who was funding the project, not to mention my internal sales engineers and stressed out sales manager who needed the deal to close to presumably keep his job.

    Every single day during the critical middle-few months of this opportunity several items were added to my to-do list for that opportunity, and each of them had multiple facets. In short, I had a to-do list that was scores of items long that contributed to whether or not I would win a $4.1M contract and help a client. If I’m honest, it was a daunting undertaking.

    But I’m happy to say I did it, and I did it successfully. I juggled all those items, completed them to satisfaction in that the client said my follow up is what won us the opportunity (vs the two other primary competitors), we signed the contract and basically I owe it all to my use of the tables feature in OneNote wherein one column was the to-do item, the next column was the requestor, and the third column were my running notes on where I was. First thing every single morning at 5:30am, while most of the world was still sleeping, I started running through that to-do list to make sure all my i’s were getting dotted and t’s were getting crossed and everything was moving forward schedule.

    But that was then.

    Now I don’t have a to do list.

    Why?

    Because life is too fast for a to do list.

    It’s fast and it’s too overwhelming.

    There are too many asks from too many sources and a modern-day expectation of instant turn-around times. (I remember a client asking for information in 1999 — I got it to her early the next morning and she said, “That was too fast! I thought it would take a week or so.” But in the 2020s I feel like everyone expects follow-up information not next week and not today but RIGHT FREAKIN’ NOW). So there is almost no point to a to-do list because by the time I jot the item down the requestor is already wanting it to be done.

    So, instead I take notes, bold the key items as I type them in case I need to reference them later, and then get it done as soon as I possibly can, which is usually right now. If something is worth doing, it’s generally worth doing now. And so now is generally when I try to do it. If it’s important enough, and it takes more than a few moments to complete, then I’ll remember to do it, and if it’s not important enough to do right now or to remember that I need to do it (sort of like I don’t need to put down on my to-do list to pay a bill — paying bills is important enough that I’ll remember it). then maybe it shouldn’t be on a to-do list anyway.

    It’s ironic that in an over-busy world a To-Do list has become almost outdated. Because if I take a few days to respond, then it’s probably too late, and if something has been promised and is important enough to promise, than I should do it now not tomorrow. So there just is no point to a to-do list.

    So, when I’m asked what never gets done on my to-do list, I say this: nothing. Because there is nothing on my to-do list. If I’m being honest, I wish that weren’t true — it was a friendlier and less stressful world 25 years ago, when I had a notebook filled with my to do items and a week was acceptable except in case of major fires. But it is what it is, and all I can do is adapt to what is.

    DISCLAIMER:

    • Every day wordpress issues a prompt and I’m finding myself enjoying answering that prompt. Today’s was: What is something on my to do list that never gets done.
    • No AI was used in the creation of this response. It is 100 percent organic which is why it isn’t all that great hahahah

  • A Walk In The Rain

    This morning during my early morning walk it rained.

    Typically a Seattle rain is a drizzle, but today it was actual rain, a rain that I wasn’t actually expecting (for some reason I forgot it was supposed to rain this morning) and by the end of my 35 minute tour of the neighborhood I was drenched. My jacket was wet, my sweats were wet and my shoes were drenched enough that my socks were also wet.

    In a perfect world, I would have changed clothes and had a warm cup of coffee. But I arrived home just in time to drive my daughter to class, so rather than changing into dry clothes I hopped into the car with my drenching wet clothes to battle traffic for an hour.

    It was fine. I was fine. I eventually dried and am at no risk of dying from pneumonia or anything, but it was unpleasant driving in my wet shoes and socks, especially since I kept thinking how nasty my feet were going to be by the time I got home in an hour especially since I’m a week overdue for my pedicure 🙂 (note: I get a pedicure Thursday, thank goodness).

    I grew up in Seattle. Which means I went to school in Seattle. Which means I walked many many days to school in the rain, especially in grade school, since in the 1970s and 1980s kids still walked to school and NO kid back then wore rainproof clothes unless they wanted to be teased (no Seattleite wore rain gear back then. Why? I don’t know. A misguided badge of honor, maybe).

    Most rainy days in Seattle are mostly damp days, wherein it’s not dry but it’s not really rainy either. But I do remember some of the soaking rainstorms that accompanied me to school as a kid, and I do remember quite a few days arriving at grade school pretty drenched. We didn’t think too much about it I think, but now I’m realizing how unpleasant it must have been to sit in school all morning with soaking wet clothes. How does someone learn their multiplication tables and how to diagram a sentence when their clothes are wet?

    Then, after school, we often played in the rain. I remember the countless days of playing basketball where there was a puddle just underneath the hoop, and we knew to watch our dribble around that puddle since the puddle more-or-less served as an extra defender. Then, after we were done playing and soaked to the bone, we went home. And no one I knew changed their clothes when we got home — we just let them air dry as we continued on with our evening

    I think of all the distractions we had in school back then. There wasn’t really snacking back then so I remember my stomach growling in that final hour before lunch. I think of the 60 minute oneway bus rides that commenced at 6:45am because I was part of the district’s busing program during high school. How sleepy I was so often throughout the day at school after my 5am wake-up time. And I think of all the days I sat in class with soaking wet clothes and feet. How in the heck was I able to concentrate through all that?

    I’m grateful we live in a different world now. A world where I don’t think kids have to walk to school in the rain, and sit in the classroom with soaking wet clothes. A world where when we get wet, or when our kids get wet, we change into dry clothes. And I’m grateful I have a life in which a big deal is wet clothes or a long bus ride — there are people in this world who’d give anything to have a life where these are considered problems at all. I’m grateful to live in a world where my problems are first world problems.

  • Crows Are Cute In Their Own Way

    I’m in our office working, but there are about 20 crows in the trees outside going berserk (caw caw cawing away, caw caw cawing away, caw caw cawing away) which is making it kind of challenging to concentrate. This has been going on for about 10 minutes now, and when I look outside they’re all up in the trees hopping around each other and cawing like crazy. What in the heck are they up to? This is the second time in three days they’re doing this same thing. It’s bizarre.

    Crows are kind of like our cats. They just do their thing, and sometimes that thing looks pretty bizarre to me. But at the same time it’s also kind of cute. It makes me kind of appreciate them (meaning the crows, since I already appreciate our cats 🙂 ) and their strange habits in a way. In short, they’re kind of adorable.

    Happiness is an appreciation for other creatures and their habits, whatever those are. We share this grand planet and are all so vastly different from each other — why not appreciate the weird habits of other creatures (so long as it doesn’t physically hurt me or cost me a lot of money like when ants infest a kitchen).

  • PROMPT: What’s My Favorite Thing To Cook

    What’s your favorite thing to cook?

    How much I admire people who love to cook.

    Larissa enjoys cooking, especially for the people she loves. She does not mind after a busy day of work migrating to the kitchen and investing an hour surrounded with pots and pans preparing a meal. For me, that is utter hell.

    I remember when the kids were young. My ex-wife was never ever around. Ninety percent — or more — of the days she was gone early and still gone late, volunteering, on a trip somewhere, or (supposedly) working although she never seemed to bring much money home. Which meant the cooking was on me. I cooked the breakfast, and prepared the lunches for school, and then when it was evening preparing dinner was on me.

    How much I hated to cook.

    I disliked cooking before the kids were born, but that dislike became utter disdain after the years and years of drudgery in the kitchen when raising a family.

    I remember after a long day of work, and it was 5pm, and I needed to help the kids with their homework, and I needed to prepare a meal, and I didn’t know where in the heck my (now) ex-wife was other than she wouldn’t be home, and just being sooooooo worn out. I would make myself a drink, and make myself an espresso, and I would drink the drink and drink the espresso and think, “I can do this. I can do this.” And then I’d do it. I’d make tacos or burritos or chicken or quesadillas or burgers, then the kids and I would sit and eat and laugh about various things (we were always telling stories and laughing, and that memory makes me smile just typing it here). Then I’d clean up, help them with their homework, read them a story or watch a movie with them, then we’d go off to bed to start it all over again the next day.

    When I’m asked, “What’s my favorite thing to cook.” All those memories come roaring back. And I feel so much love for my kids. And resentment toward my ex-wife. And so much gratitude (and admiration) for my wife who cooks so often for us. And so much gratitude for my parents, who prepared meals for me for nearly 20 years.

    But most of all, what I think is this: my favorite meal to cook is any meal I don’t have to cook at all. 🙂

    DISCLAIMERS:

    • This was written 100% organically without the help of AI.
    • I hate to read what I’ve written, which means this was at best quickly scanned for blatant errors. I apologize for any and all typing errors.