Aaaaaaaand, we’re back!
The last time I posted here was the last day of school, and prior to that I had decided that I was going to take the summer off from writing. There was just a lot going on in my life, and I needed a break.
Amongst other stresses, I was struggling with parenting. As my kids have gotten older (they’re 8 and 11, now) they’ve become more independent and assertive, naturally, and let’s just say that I was not endowed by my creator with an endless fountain of patience. About 97% of parenting is modeling, and frequently I don’t model very well. I’m trying hard to be more patient and let them make their own decisions and mistakes.
Nevertheless, my older son is extremely enthusiastic about technology, and this summer he set a goal of building and shipping an iOS app to the App Store before he went back to school. He worked very hard, and it was an amazing experience. I gave him a few pointers here and there when he got stuck, but honest to goodness, 99% of the work he did on his own and met his goal!
As an extremely proud father, I present to you Kinoki. It’s a math puzzle game which he wrote entirely himself in Objective-C. (Not only would he appreciate your shares, he’d be thrilled to tears if you downloaded the app, left a 5-star review on the app store, and sent him some feedback through the app.)
Then, as the summer wore on, I was deeply reminded of my own mortality. I had a close friend pass away after a year long fight with cancer. I am lucky to have two grandparents still alive, both in their 90′s, but less and less able to care for themselves, so I spent a lot of time caring for them. And, finally, I turned 40 and visited my doctor for a check-up because it had been years; he gave me a very stern talking to: eat right and exercise or you’re going to die young.
“How you take care of yourself for next 10 years of your life will determine whether or not you’re dancing at your kids weddings”, he said.
So, yeah, mortality was on my mind this summer.
And, then, when I wanted to get back to writing I had genuine writers block. I told myself that I’d start writing again when school started. But, I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, I didn’t know what to say. The topics I’d written about previously…mostly work stuff…didn’t seem all that relevant given where my head was at this summer.
Plus, there were some new things going on that were taking my time. In addition to my day job at Rover.com, I was working on a side project in the local Seattle music, arts and entertainment scene which I’ve only started to pull the covers back on in the last week. (Shameless plug: we’re hiring! Check out http://spazindustries.com.)
And, I’ve started to take on some new responsibilities at Rover by taking a more formal role leading our demand generation and marketing activities—which is both exciting and scary, and something I’m sure to be writing about more soon.
So, that’s what’s up and where I’ve been. I’m glad to be back and hope to be more consistent here again.
Keep in touch!