Personal Development

So, my wife staged–in love--a bit of an intervention this morning.

You need to keep your hair trimmed.  You need to shave everyday.  You need to care if your clothes are wrinkled and if you have food on them.  Avoid wearing clothes that smell.

In other words, it’d be better if you acted like an adult.

So, first, she’s absolutely right.  I’ve let myself go–significantly–since I’ve moved to Texas.  When I got here, I was 240 lbs, and swimming 1/4 mile a day in the pool.  I was comfortably in XL sized clothes, without vanity sizing. I was also 37, and I had more hair and less grey hair.  I got regular haircuts and kept my buzz between 1/8" to 1/4".  You know…tidy.

Traffic in Austin seems almost reasonable during Summer.

I live in Georgetown, Texas, and I work in The Domain, just off MoPac @ Burnett Rd.  For the uninitiated, that means I have a commute of about 25 miles down one of the worst highways in America.  It costs me about $2.50 in tolls to roundtrip to work, but often the toll section of MoPac is a parking lot between 8 and 10 am, and 5-7 pm.  A full work-month means I’m putting about $70 depreciation, $100 in gas, and $50 in tolls out of my pocket.  Call it $220 all-up.

I’m scared I won’t be able to see when I’m 50.  If I make it to 50.

I’ve always had poor vision, especially in my right eye.  My misshapen head grew disproportionately on the right side, so my eye sockets elongated….blah blah blah.  I’m functionally blind without glasses.  Have been since I was 8.

I learned to deal with it.  I wore glasses reliably through all of my school (including college) and finally got a set of Toric contact lenses when I was 21, and I was had actual peripheral vision until I dispensed with the contacts around age 32.  They were just too much trouble.

Having just ended my second trip through The Five Love Languages by Dr. Chapman, there are things I really wish I could get through my thick skull.

Apropos: We just got through Valentine’s Day and the occasion seems right.

1. Being “In Love"Ends

I remember my friend Dannah my freshman year.  She was one of the strongest women I’d ever met.  She had the grit and determination of her military dad, a sharp wit, and a heart as big as Dayton, Ohio.  But there was one thing.

I’m exhausted.

Yes, I know all the motivational crap about The 40% Rule.  I can (and shall) push through this, Lord willing, creek don’t rise, coffee maker don’t fail.

Some things to highlight for future reflection:

• I’ve crested 270 pounds.  I’m nearly 90 pounds up from where I was in 2012, and 30 more than when I moved here in 2016.   I’m eating myself to death.
• My exercise routine is nonexistent.
• My sleep metrics seem good, but I get no rest.
• I don’t read regularly.
• I don’t have any effective hobbies.  I basically work, sleep, repeat.
• …and yes, I happen to be on-call for my current team this week.

I begin to wonder (far too late, I suspect) that the above is unsustainable.  Other people seem to do this life thing well, and I….don’t.  I seem to just work.

So, I’ve left Twitter and Facebook.  I had a flirtation with Blind that I’ve also given-up.

Detox has been weird.  I was used to having a hardwired line into the pulse of the internet.  Between my 4 (!) twitter lists updating constantly and watching Tweetdeck incessantly, I was a straight-up information junkie.

So….what’s the methadone for this heroin?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/devharryc/

Thus far, Instagram has a much different personality than either Twitter or Facebook.

Well, as I sit here in 2018, it seems social media is an utter failure.  Given that I’ve been on internet chatrooms since 1993, this frustrates me.

This was basically the moment I knew I needed to get off twitter

Don’t lie and say you care about the school shooting today.

It’s been 1,866 days since Sandy Hook.

Since then: 1,576 Mass Shootings, including Las Vegas.https://t.co/LCwT6fLedK

Restate: You *may* care. WE THE PEOPLE don’t.

Why is it so hard to keep perspective?

No, Ansel Adams, I’m not talking about the physical perspective you have on a landscape, but rather the dispassionate distance from a situation needed to keep you from punching the clerk at the Kwik-E-Mart when he screws up giving you change.

I certainly know what losing perspective looks like:

• You’re afraid, alot.
• Your lower-brain puts you in fight-or-flight mode at any point.
• You increasingly focus on yourself to the exclusion of the greater good, morality, or simple humanity.
• You say things you don’t mean.
• You do things you don’t really mean, either.

One thing I’ve noticed is folks in tech lose perspective faster than most.  I have some ideas on why that is.

I’m homesick.

“Home” is hard to define:

• The place where your feet are.
• The place where your wife and kids are.
• The place where you feel at…well….home.

I don’t feel at home in Austin.  All the social and physical trappings of having roots here just aren’t here yet:

• We don’t have a real house.  We have an apartment with a yard.  It’s nice enough, but nothing about it feels like ‘home’ except for the occupants.
• We don’t have a church.  Realistically, we’re not even close.  Everywhere we’ve visited, coming up on 10 churches at this point has been some combination of too.  Too loud.  Too small.  Too doctrinally unsound.  Protestantism, as ever, remains a mixed bag once you go somewhere else.
• The water here is genuinely terrible.  For one thing, tap water is hot, not cool or cold.  There seems to be mix of limestone and sulfur in that’s just hard to take.  Everything reasonably potable is filtered or bottled.
• I don’t have the friends and colleagues I left behind.  I knew this was part of the deal.  I felt called to come to Texas, but I guess I didn’t appreciate having people who really knew me.

There are positives, of course.   My wife and daughters seem to be flourishing, amid the many homeschool groups and activities of Greater Austin (Cedar Park and Round Rock, in particular).  We’re able to save for the first time in our life,.  Work couldn’t be more stimulating.

Well, the goodbye echos are over, the severance check is safely in the bank, and the initial supernova of Job Hunt Hysteria has died down.

Yep, I’m just unemployed at the moment.  Nothing terribly special…just a guy looking for his next gig, like millions of others.

The first week of “not going to work” didn’t go so well.  I was completely off-schedule at home, and an person with my brain chemistry devoid of structure tends toward anxiety and acting-out.  I did act-out on Wednesday, so the road back there continues.  I have calmed down considerably, and I feel like I’m through the change curve to the point of “Yep, I don’t work at Lexmark anymore.”

So, I’ve been at Lexmark longer than:

• I’ve been married (10 years)
• I’ve had kids (10 years)
• I knew what autocross was (13 years)
• I could swim a full lap in a pool (1 year)
• I’ve known the Java Programming Language (in all its 1.1.8 glory) (15 years)
• I’ve lived in any one place continuously (13 years)

The only thing I’ve done longer than have the email address hcombs@lexmark.com and the same strangely 4-digit employee ID (they recycle them) is:

Sorry I was unable to ___ because….

• the Loyal Order of White Castle was meeting at the same time.
• I was playing ping-pong.
• I was playing XBox.
• I didn’t get to work until 11am.
• I couldn’t find the indicated conference room with a map, sextant, compass, GPS, diving rod, and several readings of appropriate entrails.
• I was busy juggling.
• I was at lunch ’til 2pm.
• I chose not to go to bed until 3am, and a nuclear explosion couldn’t wake me at 7, let alone my 20 year old Sony clock radio

I understand this is meaningless to anyone besides me, but I just wanted to jot it down.

She said, “I don’t know who it is, but it’s not you.  It used to be, and I think it’s sad that it’s not anymore.”

And you know what, she’s right.  I agree with her.  Long about July 2011, I took a left turn and lost myself a bit.  Not quite sure what to do with that.

Here’s a huge reason why I gave up my Smartphone two weeks ago:

I see this.  Everywhere.

• You’re not at the event, you’re watching it through your phone’s viewfinder.
• You’re not interacting, you’re looking at the palm of your hand.  It’s quickly becoming normal to be ‘social’ while talking over or around a screen with 10% of your brain.
• You’re not thinking, you’re regurgitating what you can find on Youtube, Imdb, Google, or Siri.  While this information may be instantly correct, it obviates the need for you.  
• You’re not driving, you’re looking for the next point where you can zone out (straight stretch of road, stop sign, line at the drive-thru) so you can carry on whatever triviality you just hit on FB, Instragram, SMS, or whatever.

So, I took a step off the running train.  Blowback has been both expected and encountered:

The other day, I found myself wallowing a tad, and I cried out to God, simply: “God, please help me.”

At the time, I was writing in my journal, some pretty negative, emotionally-charged stuff, like:

1. I feel like a failure as a husband.
2. I feel like a failure as a father.
3. My career isn’t working out the way I really would like.  I’m certainly duller than I was in 2010, and I feel overwhelmed all the time.
4. I’m not coding regularly anymore.

Writing the above, I literally stopped in mid sentence and immediately wrote these words:

I’m afraid quite a bit.  It’s getting on my nerves.

I understand I shouldn’t be afraid, both from a Biblical and a rational perspective.  I have been redeemed, and life’s never been better.  Nevertheless, that’s not really helping me at the moment.

I’m going to try and apply something I learned about grief:  You have to grieve.  You can’t avoid or deny it, or you will grieve at the most inconvenient time possible.  Likewise, fear seems something you must face and give name to, then you can move past it.  So, here goes.

“For seven years….”

“For SEVEN years….”

“FOR SEVEN years, Harold….”

Just as a child knows when his full given name comes from his flustered parent’s mouth, a husband knows when his wife starts naming the time they’ve been married, he’s in trouble.

Well, honey, for SEVEN YEARS tomorrow…

…you’ve stood by me.

…you’ve watched me break, and grow, and break again.

…you’ve watched me struggle, and doubt, and blame, and generally resist any form of responsibility or accountability.

I sat in this very seat a month ago a broken man, a failure.

I intended to send my pastor a quick note asking him to pray for me.  What actually happened was time disappeared, and what’d been pent up for months spewed out of my heart, down my touch-typing to an email that Scott said was too long to even attempt reading on his smartphone.

The subject line:  “I’m broken…”

As of June 23rd last year, I was “promoted” to the title of Architect within my organization, reporting directly to a Third line manager.  I was taken off of regular, day-to-day delivery activities and basically given freedom to involve myself wherever I thought best, or wherever my boss needed me.

At the time, I was given the following commentary and advice:

• “Welcome to being the bitch.”
• “So, are they going to let you code anymore?”
• “You’re going to have to get used to being very broad, and very shallow.  You have to know alot and have a high-level understanding of almost everything, but not get mired in the day-to-day.”
• “You’re more of an advisor than an architect.  Your job is to advise those making decisions and help do technical mediation for those teams.”

Those quotes came from the first week.  At some time or another in the past year, they’ve all been true.

So, my home sweet home is on the market.

It’s been a long road getting here.  Whitney’s been feeling the tug to get out of the house since before the housing crash (!), and she’s been a steady force there throughout financial crises.

Anyway, so it’s up.  We’re supposed to be hosting a photographer Thursday, so it’s been continuous clean/declutter/reclutter/clean/declutter since New Year’s.  I’ll give Whitney all the credit–she’s got the place looking great, especially the paint, staging, and her attention to detail.