Follow-through

Follow-through is the word of the month. After not making much progress in our marriage after the decline this year in our overall satisfaction it has come to my attention that I have to put my money where my mouth is. I'm a big talker about change and make plans, but I don't have a strong resolve or execution to get me through the next season. It's one of my biggest flaws that I'm just coming to grips with.

I'll incorporate a change, but lose focus or endurance after a week. I get burnt out and focus on something else. So my wife has told me for us to get better, I have to work on follow-through. If I say I'm going to do something, I have to do it. I can't just keep talking and not following anything up with actions.

After a long talk about it recently why it feels like we've dissolved, I've been trying to get better at resolve. I made a reservation for a nice dinner a month ahead of time, made a party invitation and details to her upcoming Christmas themed birthday party.

I guess I've relied too heavily on others to lead the change, but this time it has to be me. I have to take initiative and sincerely care in this marriage if I want it to work and get healthier. I can go the distance if I set my mind to it. Kicking apathy to the curb.

"God provides the wind, but man must raise the sails." - St. Augustine

Recreation

Recently, I've been learning how important outlets are. Every one of us have to deal with stress on a day to day basis. Sometimes the level is low and sometimes it's extremely high. In the past I didn't really know how to deal with the stress as it was hit with a crisis that I had to deal personally with at hand. Often I feel like I would crumble, other times the crises would make me into a stronger man.

It is one thing I have learned from this troubled stress periods, is that I need an outlet to let go, laugh a little, exercise some endorphins and have fun. As I look at this past decade I realize I spent almost all my time collecting and watching anime or playing RPGs on consoles. Now that I'm married, I don't have the resources to collect it anymore. Money is tight and we have many bills to pay, flight tickets to NY, dinning out, etc. so we have to watch how we spend.

I know find I have a vast vacuum of time to fill a void and it fills awkward. My friends have mostly gone their own ways or I don't relate with them as I used to since I'm the only married guy so far in the group. I have to try harder to reconnect with them, but it's worth it to keep up a valuable long enduring friendship.

I recently started doing Monday Night Football with some football friends and I love it. It gets me out of the house so my wife can study/watch lecture for her masters program and I get to hang with friends.

I've let many of hobbies fall after I starting courting my wife, so now it's time for me to rediscover who I am and what I like to do for fun to past time. Recreation is a time of renewal, and it's no wonder why I found myself so frustrated that I take it out on my wife for no reason. I know it's not healthy to unload so much, so I'm tapping these hobbies to become interesting again.

I want to explore or get reinquinted with:

Health/diet - eating correctly, so my belly doesn't get larger

Exercising/weight lifting - putting muscle back on from what I lost

Surfing - I'd like to try to go at least once or twice in a two month period

Snowboarding - At least once a season

Hiking - Get a couple of friends to hike Cowles. Only gripe I have is that we don't have any nice peaks to hike where I live. Yosemite/Sequioa is a 5-8 hour drive.

Camping - I'd like to go more if I can now that I have all the equipment

Career - Improve with continue education and getting into web video

Piano - Learn how to play if we get a keyboard for Christmas

Legacy

Lately, I've been thinking about the word "Legacy."

From Dictionary.com:

1. Law. a gift of property, esp. personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.
2. anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome.
3. an applicant to or student at a school that was attended by his or her parent.
4. Obsolete. the office, function, or commission of a legate.

In 2009, I've felt like I've been becoming restless in my career a little. I've been out of college for almost five years now and I've been evaluating where I'm out now as oppossed to where I thought I be now originally from when I graduated in summer 2005. I feel accomplished in some areas, in others I feel like I haven't progressed much and lost my coding and style skills from college. For me it's to the effect one feels when looking into the mirror and noticing age beginning to have it's effect on the face. A few wrinkles here or loss of hair there. Same thing for me in my talent and skills for my career. I felt somewhere along the years I've lost touch with my design skills but at the same time I've sped up my management skills in handling people and projects. So I believe in this case there has been a mix of the good and the bad in my early work experience.

I hope to re-innovate this Fall with some new technology for my work's website with Flash technology and finally launch our first integrated content management system with the use of Drupal to the public. Work will be freed up from my hands in terms of publishing and contributors will be able to handle the work my mother and I have shouldered for the last decade. My boss wants to crush out our competition with innovative web presentations and I'm the man in charge for developing that platform.

When I look back another five years from now, I want to see that I had been busy in my career and that I've developed as a person. Not just a working bee, but someone who has left a mark on the web. That people have benefited in their lives from the work I've sown and planted.