Kids to school, in costumes, walked the dog, talked to Ukraine team, work was moderate pace, setup for halloween and gave candy out until ~8 when Jen got home. 20-30 kids tops. Cleaned up, got stuff ready for going into work. But still hacking. It's 3 weeks now. Scary to have fluid in lungs not going away.

Watched(background) some Jaramusch – Dead Man, Coffee and Cigarettes, The Dead Won't Die. Listened To: The Sensitive Person.

Accomplishments: Walking Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

Dropped Tommy, got coffee w/Lauren, did 2x mountain drives 'n dropped her at school. Walked the dog, attended scrum, managed various needs/tasks for work. Tommy dropped late due to getting halloween costume last min, walked dog w/Jen, picked up Lauren, cleaned, cooked up some chorizo for breakfast mañana. Day flew by. Days keep flying by. Blindingly. And it feels sometimes like there's just no way I will ever accomplish all the things that matter to me, which of course keeps me wanting to focus on isolating the most important ones. That's been on my mind a great deal lately and the more I learn about other countries, foundations, initiatives to do good, ways in which those are resisted… it's all sorta overwhelming. But inspiring too. I want to spend more time really getting aware of and involved in things in 2020. I hope to wrap up some 2019 initiatives over the next few months and transition to that next.

Gratitude: I'm glad my kids are not growing up in some one the harsher places in the world today.

Goal: Make them see the opportunities and importance of avoiding materialism.

Watched "Look Who's Back" and really liked it. Read/Listened To more of "Daring to Drive" and it too is mind blowing and eye opening.

Accomplishments: Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

Managed to get up earlier than yesterday, and made the most of the morning by keeping things simple, waking slowly, and avoiding the temptation to check emails or slack until I was ready to start woking. That's a tough habit to break and almost instinctual at this point, but if I jump right into work, there's no time for me to maintain a needed balance. Work was good, lots of engagement and activity. Low key evening with Tommy being dropped while Lauren was at tech theater doing haunted house until 9.15pm. Good walk/talk w/Jen and Scottie discussing the book "Daring to Drive" and all the cultural differences that exist, as well as the assumptions each would hold as to what's "right". It's a really powerful topic and one I find fascinating. Testing out moving to the iPad Pro for writing/reading again. Always a struggle to adapt to the smaller keyboard and annoying to have f'ing things popping up due to the proximity of the keyboard to the screen. Reaching to hit delete keeps bringing up the damned editor. Oh and hey, hitting delete key also deletes emails from the inbox while writing an email. WTF.

Gratitude: A new meditation series on Calm

Goal: Keeping the focus i've been working on - that's enough for right now

Anticipation: Hopefully feeling better tomorrow

Watched/Read/Listened To: Daring to Drive

Accomplishments: Meditation Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

My plan to get up early was thwarted by a good night's sleep and the realization that I have limited opportunities to sleep in. When the kids are here there's no such option, and on days I got into the office it's not an option either. So I milked it. I also took my time waking. One of the things I'm trying to do is wake gradually when I can and go straight to meditate, grabbing a waiting cup of coffee being my only distraction. When I start the day this way, I feel sense of control over the work and personal texts and emails and other demands on my attention. I want/need to take care of what fuels me. It was a good work day but I'm still sluggish from the persistent cold. Walked the dog w/Jen at Almaden park and again in the PM. I watched the 1st episode of "Inside Bill's Brain" and found it so powerful. I'm jealous. I would love to have time, funds and influence to make the sort of things their foundation focuses on, happen. I also listened to "Daring To Drive" and I'm grateful my kids are not growing up in either environments. But sad too that as a 'world power' we certainly don't have the national and/or political focus on bringing about global changes. We spend way too much time focused on things that don't move the world forward.

Accomplishments: Meditation Walking Mindfulness Cleanup

Highlight(s): Sleepless night due to Tommy's overnight guests, my control issues, and just being 'awake' and unable to fall asleep until 4am. Felt like it did to go camping. Horrible. Worked hard in the AM to make good on the overnight issues. Got coffee, dropped kids later than usual due to custody timeline changes. Tried to get some needed rest from still being sick after 2 weeks which is also concerning. Getting old sucks. Dinner at Mark/Wendy's. Wonderful meat balls. Loved how the kids are part of the dinner table and need to practice that more myself. PM spent getting reoriented on some of my own goals and priorities going into the week.

Gratitude: i'm glad I have another day to try and make progress on the things that matter to me.

Goal: Start taking better care of myself, across the board.

Anticipation: Getting up early to focus on that goal.

Listened To: Highly Sensitive People.

Accomplishments: Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

Course Corrections

The final quarter of 2019 is well under way and my year of focus on a few key tasks has been less successful than I'd hoped. I set out in 10/2018 to journal daily and kept it up for a pretty decent time frame, until I felt the sense of obligation getting in the way of the value of content or purpose. In the mean time the efforts i've made to post more exhaustive and introspective posts waned significantly. There's a multitude of reasons surround this, but in the end, it's about my own lack of focus against my core goals, and a propensity to be sidelined by pretty much any opportunity to avoid the effort.

I've never been good about doing what i have to over doing what I want to, so making what I want something I had to do has sorta backfired.

Visited Mom w/Kids and Jen. Lindsey was there too. Tommy has 4 friends over for sleepover. Lauren did Haunted House until 10pm.

Gratitude: Jen being so accommodating

Goal: Get through the night!

Anticipation: Kids staying until 1pm due ot their mom being in Carmel with friend. Will be great to have some extended time. Will be good to have PM for work prep needs.

The cold I'm wrestling with continues to tax me. Shades of Guilamme Barre surface in my paranoia. Relatively eventless day. Scottie's bio-clock is all basaskwards – up all night, sleep all day, disrupt my own cadence along the way. Gonna try and reverse that w/some changed in daily routines and dynamics. No kids tonight. Burnt out w/the cold, passing on dinner for Matt B's birthday but hoping to crash a football afternoon Sunday instead.

Gratitude: The range of people I know like Matt, and how long we've been friends.

Goal: Pull out the stops w/work tomorrow and really nail some deliverables.

Anticipation: Hoping to get Lauren into Good Sam volunteer mtg tomorrow.

Watched/Read/Listened To: Highly Sensitive People (resonates deeply) and Ken Burns Country Music documentary.

Accomplishments: Cleanup

Highlight(s): Lauren stayed at Pano w/Lucky and Vijktoria last night and will again tonight. Moderate work load/work day… very tired. Tommy here tonight. Jen/I went to Jesus Christ Superstar - new-take on old classic. Well done but a bit out of my old-man-comfort-zone.

Gratitude: Jennifer - she's so easy to be with.

Goal: Heavy focused work engagement tomorrow.

Accomplishments: Walking Parenting

Up early and had a good start w/focused time, meditation, stretching. Walked Scottie early too. Felt great to get a good start on the day. Workday was busy and productive. Grabbed kids food at TJs at lunch and worked through the remainder of the day. BUT started to notice cold signs (scratchy throat, sneezing) and it's full blown now. I hate being sick but I've got no choice but to ride it out. Ugh. Tommy got haircut, Lauren/I grabbed Halloween decor items, and pretty much hung at home.

Gratitude: Modern medicine and comfortable surroundings.

Goal: Continue aggressive work day but if I feel bad I'll take the day off and not fudge it.

Accomplishments: Meditation Stretching Walking Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

I had the weirdest dream last night. I did not sleep well and the dream was an abstract bizarre family/friends outing to Hamilton with various people from my life, all chaotic, and the play was almost a rehearsal w/blocked views and parallel distractions. I seldom remember dreams. I think the last one was the Lisa Dunlap murder that totally freaked me out. That's a whole separate story. Anyway, lack of sleep had me off balance in the am but I got through the routines (no kids this am) and walked the dog and engaged well in work tasks and knocked off more backlog tasks from my personal list of things to manage for work. That was good. Kids came on time, had dinner. My camera adaptor for the 75-300 lens arrived and OMFG is that an awesome rig. I'm looking fwd to shooting photos tomorrow at his first Varsity game. Lauren was a delight to walk the dog with tonight as she told stories about the "Challenge Day" event and all the random fun stuff related to Tech Theater. She had an appointment today re vision and may finally press for the accommodations afford her at school. I hope she does. She's nothing to lose and she's not bothered by it any more, it seems.

Gratitude: Living with the luxuries we take for granted, like running water, weather protection, food, space, plumbing.

Goal: Onsite time in RWC tomorrow.

Anticipation: Tommy's Varsity game tomorrow PM.

Watched: Monty Python's Flying Circus (background binge)

Accomplishments: Walking Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup

Missed a day or two - Marissa/Nigel visit was awesome, having Lindsey/Ryan and my mom with us was really nice and having a chance to be together is always special. Thanksgiving will be a good follow on. Sent them home with the Ocolus sets and also gave Marissa a year of CALM app too. Kids with me Sun and tonight. Have been trying to foster more focus and follow through for Tommy given the classes, time demands and level of expectations. I'm also learning though to let it go and as I told him, do all I can to enable and empower but the execution is on him. It'll be what it'll be. Lauren was at Theater Tech and it's wonderful seeing her into something so gratifying for her. Jen's been great as usual with guests, the kids and all things related to us.

Gratitude: Having such a really balanced collaborative relationship.

DMV appointment went super smooth. Impressive. Sent a compliment online once i got to work. Work was good too. Learned that options exist to transition off Blue Shield and onto Intel's plan. That'll be a big improvement in reducing medical costs. Walked the dog and did some prep for Nigel/Marissa visit tomorrow.

Anticipation: Family gathering tomorrow.

Listened To: The Highly Sensitive Person.

Accomplishments: Meditation Walking Mindfulness

Complicated day. Lauren ran late getting out on time even after a 30min, 15min and 10min warning. Pissed me off. They're 16 and it's not my job to nudge them along. Made it clear it's not to be repeated. Decent AM w/meetings and work engagement but still spend more time in response mode than closing off to-do's. Had a parent/teacher meeting w/Tommy's teachers about his performance issues. I Find it frustrating. I do all I can to give him the ability to succeed but I can not and will not force him to focus, yet the reality may well be that this is the path he'll take until something inside motivates him to do more than he's doing. If he cared as much about this as football, photography, diving, etc., he'd be doing better. But at 16 he's not unique. I'll continue trying to motivate and encourage. My PM irritation level is high. Everything's annoying the fuck out of me.

Gratitude: Jen's wonderful ability to let me be and not take my irritation personally.

Goal: Wrap up some open tasks tomorrow.

Anticipation: Getting through DMV tomorrow, hopefully quickly and without a hitch. Right.

Listened To: The Highly Sensitive Man

Accomplishments: Meditation Cleanup

Highlight(s): Both kids dropped at 7, commute to work was ~45min. RWC for all hands and annual Open Enrollment presentation. Going to review options and look at Intel coverage as well, and perhaps HSA account too. Saw that a Collings Foundation B-17 crashed in Connecticut, killing some but not all crew and passengers, likely including people that Tommy worked with during the time he was volunteering. Sobering. Attended ThesCon parent meeting and pretty much lost it afterwards when trying to discuss funding her trip w/her mom. The fact that she's unwilling to even agree to pay me back 1/2 of any costs whenever possible, including from the eventual house sale, makes me furious. Livid. I just don't understand such selfishness and such expectations that I alone be the sole contributor. So incredibly fucked up.

Gratitude: Time hanging with Tommy, briefly, looking at the camera he bought and the fact that he's so excited is infectious.

Goal: Continue good work focus tomorrow.

Listened To: The Highly Sensitive Man - really hitting some chords for me.

Accomplishments: Meditation Walking Mindfulness Parenting

Resisted the temptation to sleep in… applied the "3,2,1" technique to get me up and moving and it was great. Coffee was ready, avoided tech and went straight into a brief meditation. After that I focused on a few work task kick-offs and coordinations and my bi-weekly AM sync w/Ukraine recruiting team. Discussed some candidates and options. Even though he'd been walked by Jen, Scottie was flipping and jumping for attention so I walked him during the scrum and subsequent engArch meeting. Ran a few errands at lunch including dropping some gear for Tommy at Leigh. Worked well throughout the day… in the zone… got many things done. Wrapped it up in time to get kids, then pickup Jen after dropping her car for service. Grocery shopped, household stuff [laundry, pickup] and showered for work in advance, since I'll be taking kids in early before heading to RWC for monthly all-hands.

Gratitude: Listening to "Lesson's from Lucy" made me remember the Guiliamme Barre again and had I not gotten the help I did, my circumstances could be much worse. Although I don't have the numbness and 'sand in my toes' as prominently as I'd wanted, it's still there and I'm becoming conscious of it again. That's good.

Goal: Focused work day tomorrow - stay on this path.

Anticipation: Jen's WFH which will be nice for Scottie and my once I get back from RWC.

Accomplishments: Meditation Walking Mindfulness Parenting Cleanup