Here's to Something

In that odd, misplaced moment in time between digesting an obscene amount of food at a family cookout on Memorial Day weekend and hearing the same story about that time your brother threw a handful of rocks that sent your other, skateboarding brother hurtling through the air -- always faster, farther, and more painful at every telling -- I reach for my phone to eradicate those ever important, never ending emails.

As the story reaches its climax, I'm deep in my phone looking for something -- anything -- to fast forward time to get to the next story, all the while burying the regret of indulging in so much comforting, home cooked food. I'm not ashamed to admit that I was actually reading some promotional marketing materials: ads. One, in particular, caught my eye: a Groupon for 70% off a Spartan Race six months from now.

I've always wanted to do something like that, I thought. I used to be pretty athletic, playing all kinds of sports when I was younger. Surely I can do this. My fingers fired off a few texts, got some commitments back from a few like-minded friends, and hit that ubiquitous purchase button. 21st century instant gratification fulfilled. I felt great... until I didn't.

Treat these next few words like a glorious, 1980's style, Rocky training montage: I walked into the gym, grabbed some weights, sweated a lot, ran even more, ate healthy food, went to sleep, and did it again the next day. I sort of knew what I was doing, but I researched training techniques and iterated on my plan -- tweaked some things here and there -- and my process (hint: cookies do not make for good pre-run fuel) until race day came. Don't worry, that story will be the subject of another blog entry.

After that montage, I had the chance to put all of that preparation to the test and, you know what, it wasn't too bad. We were successful. We met our individual and team goals through collaboration and working together. We didn't get it right the first, second, fifth, or tenth time; but, somewhere down the line, we settled into something after all of those failures and turned that into success.

It all started with a commitment, putting together a plan, and doing something -- anything -- to get started so that we could evaluate our progress and make adjustments -- keenly listening to that feedback loop -- until we felt we had a good rhythm and failed a little less each time.

In short, that story can be distilled down to a single sentence:

Deciding to commit to something is great, but the doing has to start with something.

In a professional sense, this blog is another something of mine. You can read more about me if you like, but it's pretty simple: I love developing great software. As I've matured as a professional, I've grown just as fond as putting my fingers to the keyboard as I do helping others do the same thing.

As with most somethings, sometimes you fail and have to change. Learning from that failure, embracing the feedback loop, and applying that knowledge to future somethings is how you improve. Fail better until you figure out the right something that works for you.

Since this -- putting my thoughts and purpose, you know, "out there" -- is a new endeavor for me, I'll be as transparent with you as I am with myself: I have expectations for where I think this blog will go, but that's going to change over time as I fail a little less and get better at this. So consider this an open invitation to provide any and all kinds of feedback (although that should go without saying since this is the internet, right?).

You can expect the following type of content to be posted on a semi-regular basis:

• Discussions about technology that I have worked with in the past or am working with currently. I like to tinker with things.
• The challenges and opportunities that I see within organizations to help them develop great software.
• A few things here and there about other things that interest me: fitness, sportsball, and the like.
• Commentary about random things related to my life, technology, business, or what I had for breakfast (kidding: that's what Instagram is for). These may contain NSFW language, but that will be clearly identified up front.

I've almost hit my word count goal for a first post.

Potato. Roof. Alcove.

Made it. ;)