A friend of mine politely reminded me recently that it has been quite a while since my last post and that was time for me to sit down and blog. The past couple of months in particular have been a rough stretch but I'm hopeful a corner is being turned and I'll be able to find more time for my blog and other hands-on type activities. The origins of this blog entry however have nothing to do with my professional life and yet in some strange ways maybe they do (more on that in a bit).
This past Sunday I took the opportunity to get away from work and enjoy some time with my family. While my wife and mother-in-law spent the day shopping I decided instead to hang out with the kids in a local park. It was one of those parks where fountains shot out of the ground at odd times allowing the kids to playfully run through and get themselves completely soaked. Watching my girls play, I was struck by how much joy could come from the simplest of devices. No money involved - not a shiny new game for the X-Box, or a trip to a movie, or an amusement park - something as simple as running through a fountain in a public park was sheer joy for them.
The afternoon concluded with my kids joining in with others in a game of tag I remember from my childhood. A tree at the center of the park served as "home base" and while the other kids scattered a few would remain behind and close their eyes, count to ten, and then try to tag the other kids who were frantically scrambling back to the tree. Again, kids laughing and playing with no money spent on equipment or organized activities. My girls just enjoyed being able to play with other kids in the neighborhood in a simple game of tag.
A few weeks back my wife made a comment that had me think back to how life as a child everything seemed much simpler. "Where have all the lightening bugs gone?" she asked. I said I don't know but do remember them from my childhood. Sunday's park experience had me thinking about this again where I was able to observe the joy my girls had with the simplest of activities. My mind drifted to my original days in computer programming and what drove me to want to do more? I remember the joy in creating my own adventure game in Basic a.l.a the Scott Adams ilk where whatever my imagination could come up with I could program.
Spin this forward to today. What drives me now as an executive who oversees software development for my company. While I'm certainly not as hands on as I once was, my joy for finding creative solutions to problems and programming a different and better reality for my customers is as real as it was when I was a young kid learning to program in Basic.
