Hasn't the world ended yet?

We Americans have a unique talent for narcissistic hyperbole. Every problem we face, every political statement or person we disagree with, seems to portend the end of the world, or at least the end of the American Way of Life as we know it. Regardless of color, creed, or political persuasion, this one thing unites us: I want to proudly do what I want to do without interference, but if you're allowed to do what you want, well, that's it: the world's gonna end. And I will loudly complain to anyone within earshot about your plans for world domination and/or destruction of my way of life until I run out of breath, in the hopes that they will join my revolution against the forces of darkness.

I'm tempted to say that this is a recent phenomenon brought about by the Clinton administration, but as that would just be another example of this problem, it feels a bit redundant. The fact is, we've been railing at each other since before we were a country, when the Whigs and the Tories were convinced that each was about to lead the other off a precipice and take the new world with them. If anything, we've gotten more polite about it, because no matter how much Rush Limbaugh's words may hurt, I have to think that having hot tar and chicken feathers poured over your naked body has to hurt a little bit more. I can always turn off the radio, after all.

Why do we expect the world to end whenever we don't get what we want? Are we still toddlers at heart, crying because Mommy wouldn't give us another lollipop? A quick look at history -- even recent history, if you're too lazy to scan more than a couple of decades -- shows that everything happens in cycles. Even my short lifetime has been marked by a steady pendulum of conservatism and liberalism, Republican and Democrat, for the past thirty-some years. LBJ gave way to Nixon and Ford, who gave way to Carter, who gave way to Reagan, et cetera, et cetera. Tick, tock; restrict, relax; tax, rebate; segregate, integrate. And life goes on, and the world doesn't end.

I applaud passion. I myself am passionate about many things: my family, my work, my faith. A seashore or a mountainside at sunset can bring tears to my eyes. But passion without reason is the fuel of mobs and the tool of unscrupulous demagogues. We need to look at our passions, our outrage, through the lens of history and realize three things:

1. Our problems are no bigger than anyone else's have ever been: they're just ours.
2. No one person or group has the power to irreparably break the world. It's too big and we're too small.
3. Nothing is permanent, not even [insert your favorite bad-decision-made-by-someone-else here]. All things come to an end.

As the wise man said and the mop-topped singers reiterated: to everything there is a season, and if there is one constant about seasons, it's that they change. To paraphrase Mark Twain: if you don't like the political climate, wait four years and it will change. In the meantime, could you please stop yelling?

Our lives are but a breath, and I for one choose not to waste that breath in an angry shout.

Unemployment, Interrupted

Well, there go all of my semi-retirement plans: I got a job! Now I have to put on pants and go back to the office, which really throws a wrench in my previous plans to ride my bike, walk around in shorts and sandals, and spend every morning smiling serenely over my newspaper at everyone as they rushed in and out of Starbucks. I even considered taking my laptop down there so I could pretend to be working on another book!

[Sigh], I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. After all, the job came to me before I even got around to looking for one, while other people can do nothing but look. I guess God has his first assignment ready for me already. Exploring Boulder County by bike will have to wait.

My New KPIs

Working as a financial services consultant for the last six years, I learned to love metrics. We measured everything: the site's performance, response times, down time, up time, wait times, peak times. We measured return on investment, return on capital, expenses, revenues, client satisfaction, and call volumes. If you could assign a number to it, we tracked it, and if you couldn't, we made one up (they call those "composite metrics"). But the most important numbers were the KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. If you wanted to call yourself a project manager, then you had to get yourself a set of those.

KPIs measure the success of a project. They tell you whether the last six months of meetings, late nights, arguments, and design debates were worth it. They also tell your boss (or in my case, your client) whether you're worth the money they're paying to keep you around. You watch those numbers pretty closely.

Now that I'm voluntarily unemployed and living in Greenland -- er, Boulder -- I find that the old metrics no longer apply. I need a new set of numbers to measure my job satisfaction. Allow me to present my new KPIs:

• Miles biked: 183
• Books read: 2 1/2
• Pounds lost: 4 (need to work on this one)
• # of days where I walked my kids to/from school: 9
• Mornings spent at Starbucks reading the paper while other people rushed in to get their coffee to go: 7
• Hours spent writing: 1 (definitely need to work on this one)
• Days since I saw a Dilbert cartoon that directly applied to my day: 35 (this one makes me excessively happy)

So far, I'm pleased with my performance, though I can see some room for improvement. We'll see what I can do over the coming weeks.

Into Thin Air

So this is it. We're really leaving Boston after 12 years to move to Boulder, Colorado, a place we've visited exactly once, for a long weekend. This would seem stupid if it didn't almost exactly mirror the move to Boston 12 years ago. Of course, last time it was just me and my wife, moving from a small rental house in Tacoma to an even smaller hotel room in Harvard Square. That time, we had only visited Boston once, overnight. But it felt right, and other than the bitter cold (-40 wind chill the night we arrived) and a mild case of pneumonia for the first couple of weeks we were here, it all worked out amazingly well. Who needs planning, or lists of pros and cons, or… housing?

Yeah, we're moving to Boulder without a place to live -- though I'll settle that before the family arrives -- without a job, and without really knowing anyone in the area. We're going because it feels right, like our time in Boston has come to an end and God has a new assignment for us in Boulder. We don't know what exactly that is yet, but I suspect that mine has something to do with helping young software companies grow, with making work a fun place to be, and with sharing the experience I've gained in the last 12 years with a bunch of new people who need it. I suspect that my wife's job, as usual, will be to bless the heck out of a new group of friends, to remind them that they are special, unique, and loved, and to organize some parties that make people say, "Wow, you really didn't need to do all of this for us!" Because that's what we do. It also happens to be something that we seem to be uniquely gifted to do, so we'd better do it to the best of our ability, no matter where we are.

I expect this to be an adventure. I expect to see God do amazing things for us. I suspect that it will scare the heck out of me whenever I stop to think about what we're doing over the next few weeks. But it will be the good kind of scared, the kind you feel when you look down from the top of a mountain after climbing up a narrow trail, where you see the whole world laid out before you and a voice in the back of your mind says, "Hoo, boy, if you slipped now, you wouldn't stop falling for days!" But that voice is drowned out by the sound of creation singing before you, the trees waving their arms in joy, the rocks shining with light, and the clouds dancing across the sky. It's thrilling. It's terrifying. It's life, and we're embracing it to the fullest.

Ride to Wingaersheek

Here's what I'm doing this weekend:



Gotta get my beach time in before we head to the mountains for good.

We leave for Boulder in 17 days! Woo-hoo!