A blind leap of faith made clearer

Man, it's been a while. This last month has been hectic. I thought I'd been through a delivery crunch before, but this last one was the real deal. I was lucky enough to have two weekend vacations, one up to Seattle, the other with my college boys to the Grand Canyon and Vegas, in the middle of it all, and other than those I worked every day from July 25^th to last Friday. I know, that's kind of like saying "it was sunny every day last month except for the five days when it rained," but the point is I worked a lot over the last six weeks, and thus I haven't posted. Gah. Gotta get better at this consistency thing. Anyway, on to the meat of the post.

One of the favorite topics of discussion when my college buddies and I get together is "where do we see ourselves in the future?" Usually this is specific to our careers, though it also gets into hobbies as well as potential families. Of those three areas, I'd say the future of my career is the one that's most up in the air at this time. That may seem surprising to those who've heard me talk about my five year plan, my financial goals, the potential for starting a business of my own etc., so I'll expound a bit.

First, my hobbies. It may seem unnecessary to make plans for the futures of your hobbies, but I'm of the opinion that if you really want to make the most of what you do with your spare time you've got to plan. On a similar note, if you want to become good at something you do, you've got to plan as well. Case in point: I started playing the guitar in 9^th grade and never really got anywhere with it because I had no focus with it. My greatest improvements came during my high school and college guitar classes (which were a smaller percentage of the eight years which I played the guitar), and the rest of the time I pretty much just pretended to be Billy Corgan (high school) or Jimmy Page (college). I played for eight years, but my ability was more along the lines of one to two years of regular practice. Of course, it's worthwhile to consider the fact that while I enjoyed playing the guitar, I didn't LOVE playing the guitar. Contrastingly, I LOVE spinning. I can't get enough of it. My practice time is usually between four and ten hours each week, which is considerable given that my weekly guitar practice time was often counted in minutes, not hours. What's more, I enjoy spinning so much that (most times) I don't have to force myself to practice. I actually want to practice. That's a new thing for me. The only other hobby I can remember really wanting to practice was ultimate frisbee in high school (NOT college). This might go without saying, but it's pretty cool when you find a hobby that you can enjoy on that level. I haven't had one of those in a while. (well, some might say there was one in college, but I've pretty much put a stop to that). Even the dancing I started during senior year didn't reach that level. Yeah, I enjoyed the perks, but was largely unwilling to put up with the frustrations of practice. That's not the case with spinning, and I think that's a sign that I've stumbled upon a keeper of a hobby. Now, given how much I enjoy spinning as well as my desire to be good (and, mark my words, I'm going to be better than good. Give me a few years, and I believe I will be extraordinary. As those of us in the know understand, beliefs are empowering…), I think it's worthwhile to set goals to achieve. Without going into details I'll say that I've got the short term fairly planned out and a general idea for where I want to be going long term.
After spinning, I've got a few other hobbies that I plan on keeping up. I love exercising (mostly the looking great part of it), and I've got plans to keep that going. I kinda had plans to run the LA Marathon next year, but I'm going to put that off for a year. I know I need to get my marathon done soon as I don't know how much longer my body will be capable of completing a marathon. Back in high school I set the goal of "26.2 miles before 26.2 years," which pretty much gives me two more years and some change (yikes!), so I figure next summer I'll start seriously looking at running the 2007 LA Marathon. After exercising I've got learning to Tango (which should be greatly catalyzed by living with Tara this year), picking up ultimate again, hitting various LA clubs regularly (namely boom boxx and monday night social), and finally the generally category of continuing my education (which pretty much means keeping my mind fresh by always learning new things).
The interesting thing about hobbies as that they're paradoxically "purely in-the-moment" and "purely long term" activities at the same time, as you tend to do them to enjoy the present, yet the true benefits of hobbies are the long term gains that come from them. I'm starting to think that the true measure of a person is what they do with their "hobby time" since there are no (immediate) consequences to not being productive with your time. With work you may have to take on a crappy job just to pay your bills, and if you don't then there are definite consequences. However, once you've got your basic necessities taken care of you don't have to do anything further if you don't want to. You can sit in front of the TV for all of your remaining waking hours and seemingly suffer no consequences (well, other than brain rot, poor health, and the potential to have the great epiphany of "holy crap, I haven't done anything but watch TV for my entire life!" at the age of 40). Anyway, each person's personal time is theirs to do what they want with. I think I've got some nice things lined up for myself.

Second, my future family. This is actually an easy one. I'm a firm believer that under no circumstances should I start a family until my late 20s, preferably not until my early 30s. The age at which to start a family seems to favorite topic of debate among my friends, and I seem to hold the most absolute opinion on the matter: "Under no circumstances, even if you find the fabled 'perfect girl,' do you enter into a long-term relationship before the age of 28." In case you're wondering, this statement is specific to me, and I pick the age of 28 because it coincides closely with me completing five full years of working (or at least five full years of post-college experience). The logic behind that is simple: I believe I need at least five unfettered years to get my career going, and I believe that entering into a long term relationship can in no way net benefit my career. That's not to say it's not ok to date and keep casual relationships. However, my 20s are my years, my SINGLE years, and if I assume (which I am) that I'm going to get married and raise a family I will never again have the chance to be truly single every again. Why ditch that opportunity? It's similar to the idea that you can never be a young kid again. The harsh reality of life is that you grow up. How many of us really understood what we had when we were kids? None of us, of course, because at that age you can't possibly understand what it's NOT like to be a kid. How ironic is it that when you're a kid all you want is to be older, and then when you're old you look back on your younger days as "the golden years"? On a related note, there's gotta be an age at which your young self and old self meet and you achieve a temporary state of nirvana. My answer – your college years after you turn 21. Hell yeah. :-P Anyway, I'll concede that I pretty much have NO idea what it's like to be married, but given the percentage of husbands that refer to their spouses as "the ol' ball and chain" I'm going to step out on a limb and guess that there are a good number of aspects of single life that we won't fully appreciate until we're married and are parents. Actually, I take that back. There is at least one person who is truly enjoying the freedoms of single life: me. I'm fiercely independent, and I love that (in a sense) I can do whatever I want because I have nobody depending on me, that I'm responsible to myself and nobody else. Now, I'm not a complete loner, as my year living alone has shown me (and I'm quite happy that I'll be sharing a residence with a great friend for the next year), but I do appreciate the beauties of independence that I believe will only be available to me during the next few years of my life. So, as far as planning my family goes, that's pretty much on the back burner for now.

So now we get to my career. Here's the one-sentence summary of my five year plan: "Work for NE for five years, cash in your options, and start your own business." Huh. No hand-waving there at all. First of all, the option of working with NE for five years is by no means guaranteed, as I was so coldly shown earlier this year. I'm pretty sure I've got another year guaranteed, and then we'll see what happens with our product. The options part is, again, by no means guaranteed and is pretty much in the same boat as the five year employment option. However, those two parts seem like a piece of cake compared to the last part: Start my own business. Ok, that's a nice idea. How? My current answer: I have no fucking idea. No kidding. I have no idea how that part is going to go. At this point I feel like the stereotypical guy that thinks "I want to be rich" and then can't think past that (which, actually, is essentially what I'm thinking). My own business? Based around what? What role(s) do I play? What industry? Will I know enough in five years to actually attempt such a feat? Aaahhh!!!!!

I'm going to step back in time about five months to my trip to Argentina during which Tara and I talked about pretty much everything we possibly could, so of course we talked about our futures. Tara's about to go through the grad school application process, which I don't envy at all. Even if I had her amazing qualifications I wouldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. There's a reason I jumped out of academia and got a job instead. Ok, actually two. I'd rather earn over the next four (or more) years than pay, and I don't want to leave my future in the hands of admissions officer who will receive thousands of applications and give mine maybe an hour of thought if I'm lucky. I much prefer being able to interview in-person and have a chance to demonstrate why I'm better than all of the other job applicants (which I am, but that doesn't necessarily come across on paper. Hmm, did I mention that beliefs are empowering?). Anyway, during this specific talk with Tara (which, if I remember correctly occurred during our walk to Southfest, which was the ridiculous Sasha and Digweed party that we went to) I laid out my five year plan to her, and apparently did so with massive amounts of confidence and assuredness because when I was done she made some comment like, "well, you seem to have it all figured out." What's ironic is that that couldn't be further from the truth. In truth, I actually have NONE of it figured out. Instead I have this vague idea of what I need to be doing and in many ways feel that every step forward I take is nothing more than a blind leap of faith based on said vague idea. And then, over the past two weeks, I think I figured something out.

One of my favorite theories of life is that it is impossible to make a correct decision, and that instead you can only hope to make the best decision you possibly can. For example: Last week I volunteered to pick up a friend. The friend could have easily taken the bus, but I thought the best decision was to pick that friend up. During the pick-up I was rear-ended by another driver while waiting at a stop-light. Thankfully the damage was no more than a couple of scratches on my bumper – the real cost of the accident was the hour I had to spend exchanging information and talking with my insurance company. Looking back, the correct decision would have been to not pick up the friend. However, correct decisions only exist after-the-fact, and I still believe the best decision at the time was to pick up the friend.

A second favorite theory of life is to do what you love, and do it well. This one somewhat assumes that you have an innate desire to be great. Up until the last year I pretty much assumed that at some level everybody had the desire to be great, largely because I have it and, of course, everybody is exactly like me. However, as I started to open up a bit and pay more attention to how others think I started to notice that some people had other desires (such as the desire to buy shoes (ding)) that far outweighed the desire to be great to the point that it was non-existent.

What I figured out consisted of a hybrid of the two above theories applied towards starting a business. "What do you love?" The time-tested answer to that is graphics/simulation/A.I. The other possible answer at this point is spinning, but I'm not about to bet my future on my DJing abilities, especially considering I've only been doing it for 6+ months. My interest in simulation goes back to the mid-90s when I read about physics engines being developed for 3D games for the "next generation" systems (all of which have been effectively retired now). Graphics is an obvious partner to that one. A.I. came a bit later, in college I think, as a tangent from simulation. So, given that I have the ability to "do these well," what is the correct decision(s) to make as far as working towards starting a business is concerned? Once again: no fucking idea. Now, what is the best possible decision(s) to make with regards to starting a business? Aha! I can answer that one! At a high level, the answer is to "prepare myself for when the opportunity presents itself." How do I prepare? Part 1: Learn all I can in the academic areas that I would like my future business to draw from. Part 2: Learn all I can about business, hopefully a good amount from the executives at NE. And above all of this, trust myself in knowing that if I continue to make the best possible decision, good things will happen (or, as I prefer to succinctly put it, 'trust it'), because if you KNOW that you're good, the you know that good things will happen. Did I mention that beliefs are empowering?

P.S. While I've had this topic in mind for a while now (as you can probably tell by the length of it), this post was written with a certain friend in mind who's now facing a much more immediate scary future, and whom I know, even if she doesn't (yet), is going to be just fine. :-)