Week 1512

This week prompted a lot of reflection. Reflection on who I am at work, who I am personally, and the value I bring. 

It also prompted me to reflect on why I always differentiate between my work life and my personal life. They are both parts of me, but I always differentiate the two and I’ve wondered for a long time if that is a good or a bad way to approach life. 

Afterall, no matter how you may try to differentiate the two, they are always going to be entwined. 

As with all things in life, I think what is right comes down to the individual. For some, their work is their world and there is no differentiation. 

To me, my world is my little family. 

As I write this, Syd is asleep. Truman and Ellie are settling in to relax after our morning trip to the Cherry Creek Off Leash Dog Area - knowing that I am likely to be at my desk for the next few hours - and Olli is sleeping on my mouse. 

Moose is MIA but that’s normal if she isn’t hungry. 

They aren’t part of my work life and matter more to me than anything in the world. My work enables me to care for all of them and myself. 

From my experiences with Hank and Truman dying far earlier than they should have, I’m too familiar with how much falls on my shoulders when it comes to keeping my pets happy and providing them with a fulfilling life. 

For a long time, I didn’t enjoy the idea of being a provider. 

Mainly, I didn’t like the idea of supplementing someone else’s lifestyle. While I can’t say that I am the sole provider for my family as Syd continues to bust her ass to make her business successful, I can say that I have enjoyed knowing that I can help her pursue that dream. 

I enjoy being able to feed my cats their raw diet. I enjoy ensuring that my dogs’ needs are met. I enjoy it when Syd asks me to make her dinner (even if it doesn’t always seem like it in the moment). 

I enjoy taking care of my family. 

So while my personal life with my little family is the most important thing in the world to me and impacts the differentiation between my work and personal life, it also provides a driver to my endless pursuit of improvement and pushes me to work harder. 

Candidly, my sights have always been set on being a decision maker and a person of impact for as long as I can remember, and knowing I have my little crew to take care of on the other side of the equation is a nice little kicker to ensure that I am taking the steps to get there. 

From my personal life and my, at times, excessive criticism of myself, it may not always seem like I am confident or actually progressing in my life. This is especially true if you read my post last week reflecting on the same issues that I’ve been discussing for over a year; but I am intentional in not sharing my work life (there are very very limited glimpses into it) and very intentional in sharing the constructive side of myself as opposed to purely the confident side. 

While sharing the overly critical side can signal a lack of confidence, it also is me sharing a side of myself that I almost never publicly share. 

I am comfortable being vulnerable and sharing sides of myself that may not cast me in the best light in individual conversations but when approaching this blog format, I find it incredibly important. 

The intention of this is to share my life and the journey to get where I am going. Some of it are memories and details I’ll surely lose along the way without documentation. A lot of it is me trying to document the behind the scenes of a “successful” individual. 

Success is ultimately individually defined and I’m not sure if my working definition of achieving my potential will always be my definition. Regardless, I know myself and I am going to push to be “successful” from external and internal measures and this is my journey to getting there. 

Spoiler alert - success isn’t a destination and I’m well aware that this will require constant work until I die but surely there will be points where others view me that way. 

Or not. 

You’ll know better than I do. 

I’ve found that the people that have achieved feats that I would like to reflect with the clarity of their current situation and the known outcome but have rarely documented their journey or their thoughts at each level along the way. I refuse to believe that I am the only one with self-doubts. The only one that is, at times, excessively critical of themselves. 

So I believe that is incredibly important to share. 

If I wanted to sound arrogant or incredibly self important - I would share a lot more about how confident I am in my ability to bring the future I want to fruition. 

That would significantly outweigh all of the posts consisting of self-doubt and criticism. (I already feel arrogant having written that and having read it back)

To put this in perspective, I am so confident in myself that I have posted over 60 times in the past year and intend on continuing to do so until I physically can't share my story. My thoughts. My experiences. 

With you. 

The only way any of this is interesting at all is if I succeed or if I fail. 

And I wouldn’t be doing this if I thought I would fail. (It didn’t hurt to write this but man was it uncomfortable reading this. I do not consider myself a vain person but it definitely reads that way and validates why I don’t write like this)

If I live an average life, this is likely only going to be interesting if the internet is around in thousands of years and a historian stumbles upon this record and wants an understanding of “modern life” for our era. 

Considering this is not a physical record and I doubt everything will stay formatted this way for that long, I find that an unrealistic outcome. 

So that is a long way of me communicating to you, dear friend, that while my content could communicate a lack of confidence, too much humility, or a debilitating degree of internal criticism, that is entirely not the case. 

I believe in my ability to learn, grow, and challenge myself and that is what makes it so easy to get annoyed at myself for not doing everything all the time. It makes slow progress irritating but also ensures that I am progressing - even if I don’t recognize it in the moment.

Now that I have proved to both of us how gross it feels to listen to someone talk about their self-importance - let’s change gears. 

This past week, I had to prioritize work due to a busy past few weeks with time off and a few other variables. You will see that very clear reflected in my Japanese numbers for the week. 

While I don’t like pushing off some of the work on my personal goals, work will always need to be a priority at this point over my hobbies as that is more or less my ticket to play in my personal life. 

While that made for a bit less eventful of a week - we had the opportunity to go to the Kangaroo Ranch in Wheat Ridge and bottle fed baby kangaroos. 

I have always wanted to do something like this and it was so interesting to be able to interact with an animal that you generally don’t interact with - especially in the United States. 

One attribute of the kangaroos I found particularly interesting was the shape of their feet. I ignorantly assumed that their feet would be the same as their… hands? But they were very different and a foot shape that I hadn’t seen before. 

I took the owner passionately pointing out their toes for me to notice this. 

While I enjoyed the animals a lot - it was so fun to see so much passion in the owner. You could tell that she could talk about kangaroos for an indefinite length of time and it was so fun to see her enthusiasm. 

I love experiencing someone’s genuine enthusiasm for their interests. Regardless of if you normally would care about the topic, there is something about that enthusiasm that is contagious and you can’t help but listen to the person. 

Syd feels that way about interior design and I think that has caused my slight shift in motivations to help her see that through. 

I also believe that helping people get closer to that sensation is part of why I like helping others so much. I love being able to experience that with others. 

That’s also part of why I have enjoyed being so intentional with the dogs. I am their ticket to exploring their instincts. Their ticket to full lives. 

Letting them explore and seeing the level of joy and excitement it brings to them fills my cup and reinforces my desire to provide more experiences for them. 

My parents loved camping and hiking growing up. Having lived in Colorado and done this most of my childhood, my desire to do this as an adult has been limited. 

But seeing Truman and Ellie absolutely lit up, loving every second of our adventures makes me want to take them to do and see more.