Ignoring politics, the economy, and the world at large, here is my list of what I’m thankful for [so far] this year:
- Family – I have cousins, aunt, uncles, a grandparent, parents, and a sister all alive and kicking.
- Friends – folks who’ll go out for a night on the town, or sit around and play board games, or watch a movie, or chat for hours on end, etc, etc.
- Work – what I do is more-or-less fun, pays the bills, and I get to travel; places I’ve been this year include:
- Manhattan
- St Louis
- Chicago
- Sunnyvale
- Atlanta
- London
- Health – no issues this year.
- Death – this I know is an odd one, but it’s true. My aunt died this year in August. A lot could be said, but the most important things to me are:
- I have 0 – zip, zilch, nada – bad memories in nearly 27 years of knowing her
- She’ll never again feel pain, discomfort, illness, have to take insulin, etc
- I’ll never have a chance to have a bad memory of her (not that I would’ve expected one, but now I’m assured it can’t happen)
- It really makes you refocus on what’s important: people
- Learning – both what I do for work, and what I do for fun. What I work on is big enough that I can always learn something about it. This year that mostly came in a week-long intensive “bootcamp” training session. And I research, investigate, and surf for new ideas, trends, concepts, etc just to try to keep myself occupied and my mind sharp.
- Teaching – at [almost] every customer site I go to, I get to explain to them how the toolset works, and what they can do with it. I’ve also participated in smaller forums where I’ve had the opportunity to teach a class, workshop, or tutor folks in something they were decidedly interested in – which is always better than trying to teach people something they don’t care about.
I’m sure other “major” topics could be added. And hundreds or thousands of individual instances. But these are the highlights of 2008, so far.