Charlie's sig kinda poked me - and reminded me that I wanted to look that up - sounded so familiar. Ahh yes. Dicky Fox. Which led me this blog - and a posting from a coder.
A bit deep perhaps - and only some will appreciate - but I hope ya'll do. I suggest your read the entire post here: http://blog.vagueware.com/2006/11/22/purpose-life-jerry-maguire-and-software-development But for those that just cant take the time to go look and read it ... here's what I pulled out of it. I'm not saying I have all the answers. I have failed as much as I have succeeded. But I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success. Here are some of those things that I think people who want to be great coders should try and remember, or at least, if somebody came to me tomorrow and asked for advice on how to enjoy this industry more, or how to start a software company, or hell, how to do any job or start any company, I expect my answers would try and include the following quotes (with my notes in square brackets): *My father once said, "Get the bad news over with first. You be the one to say the tough stuff". *"You and I are blessed, he said, "we do something that we love." [note: if you aren't loving your job, resign. Today. Life is too short] *We are pushing numbers around, doing our best, but is there any real satisfaction in success without pride? Is there any real satisfaction in a success that exists only when we push the messiness of real human contact from our lives and minds? *I have said "later" to most anything that required true sacrifice. Later I will spend a weekend reading real books, not just magazines. Later I will visit my grandmother who is 100 and unable to really know the difference. Later I will visit the clients whose careers are over, but of course I promised to stay in touch. Later later later later. It is too easy to say "later" because we all believe our work to be too important to stop, minute to minute, for something that might interfere with the restless and relentless pursuit of forward motion. Of greater success. Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of success. But tonight, I propose a better kind of success. *How can we do something surprising, and memorable with our lives? How can we turn this job, in small but important ways, into a better representation of ourselves? Most of us would easily say that we are our jobs. That's obvious from the late hours we all keep. So then, it is bigger than work, isn't it? It is about us. [There is no industry on the planet like software. Trust me. We are like a collective, a Borg species moving across Usenet, Majordomo lists and blogs, interconnecting ourselves. We work late, we start early, we live the job. I just got an MSN from a colleague at 00:12am about a DNS change. We are our jobs. Or at least, those of who love it are. We should think about that more]. *It is not easy to hide a winning formula. Take a successful t.v. show. The following season, you see twenty others just like it. Same goes for our company. But the great ones all do one thing at the time of their greatest success. They change the game. They make it harder for themselves. They raise the bar. They work not just harder, but they work smarter. That is why the great athletes, politicians, musicians, philosophers all got stronger instead of more weary. We must do the same. [How many Million Dollar Homepages have you seen in the last year? How many video clip websites? How many price comparison search engines? Copying a winning formula is easy. You might even make money. It won't last though, and it's not what you got into this business for] *Coffee tastes different at night. It tastes like college. [Any coder who doesn't know this, isn't really a coder. You code for work, not for love. Change your career, or you'll hate your life when you look back on it in forty years time] *How many rich people have said this in our presence: "I thought I would feel better when I was rich, but I don't." [Too many people get into IT because they think it is a path to riches. Right now, Computer Science and "Informatics" labs are full of kids who are hoping to get rich, and hoping to get rich quick. They will either fail in getting rich, or fail in feeling happy when they're there. Those of us in this for the job, we're here because of the game, the Zone, the challenge, we're going to win] * I am wondering what that exact moment is when we truly, truly love our jobs. Is it during the day, or at the end of the day, or is it years later looking back on all we accomplished? I think perhaps truly loving something is the ability to love it at that moment. It is an elusive ability, something I have never been able to quite accomplish. I must go home, and take my experiences like a squirrel, and consider them, before I can truly enjoy them. I must work on this. The daily journey is everything. Being able to enjoy enjoyment while it is happening. *A life is not worth living if you are sleepwalking through it. Because that is what feels like death. That is what causes athletes to, out of despair, get drunk and wrap their cars around a pole. Or lash out at someone they love It is the feeling of sleepwalking. Of others living life around you, keeping their fists tightly wound around whatever dollars they can muster, caring little more than nothing about those around you. We cannot sleepwalk. We cannot just survive, anything goes. We can take control of our lives, we can quit sleepwalking, we can say - right now, these are our lives, it is time to start living it. It is time to not second guess, to move forward, to make mistakes if we have to, but to do it with a greater good in mind. I do my damnedest and I do mean my absolute damnedest to try and live this life this way. Despite the ups and downs and the long hours and the stress - I can unequivocally say that I ADORE my job ...because if I chose to - I could take it anywhere I want and choose to take it. I can make my life as big or small as I want - despite any excuses that might pass my lips. In the end - how I choose to live my life is still my choice alone... and that is such a great free feeling. I don't want to leave this earth and look back and say "I wish." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;203748912;27390454;j Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:270583 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
