Joshua Arnold

I’ve gone a while without truly sitting down to reflect. I’m a large supporter of the value found in introspection and I’ll be the first to advocate its importance – yet, somehow I still let myself go for long periods of time without doing it. I’m up nice and early on a Saturday and now I don’t really have an excuse not to take the time.

A lot has changed for me in the past couple of months or so. Two months ago I sat down and drafted a few goals that I promised myself I would make happen:

• Begin to truly define my career path
• Get into shape
• Strengthen my faith
• Strengthen my leadership skills

The past two months have been a journey of doing exactly that.

Defining my Career Path

I’m an avid supporter of Neumont (the university from which I graduated) and I began advocating to strengthen the relationship between my company and the school when I first started here. That’s not the only thing I’m constantly advocating for. Let me digress a little bit…

It’s funny. A lot of people know that I work with computers but not too many people actually know what it is that I do, ha ha. I specialize in software architecture, requirements gathering and analysis, information modeling, and software project management; just in case you were wondering .

Anyway, starting in August I began using the methodologies that I’ve seen work in all of my previous projects. I began shaping my career path and getting a good feel for where I stood within the company. I’ll tell you this much, I’ve been loving every minute of it since then.

It’s stressful at times, I won’t lie about that. One of my greatest weaknesses is that I have the tendency to make my projects my life. When you’re that adamant about the success of something, you’re bound to be ripping your hair out at some point. I began realizing that I really need something else to do with myself besides going home and working…

Getting into Shape

A little over a month ago, my roommate and I decided that we were going to get into shape. This wasn’t one of those “let’s go to the gym every once in a while” type of decisions. We showed up at a gym the next day and purchased monthly memberships and training sessions with a personal trainer. He promised us great results and assured us that we could expect to lose 8-10 lbs and 3-4% body fat every month for the next 3-4 months. I thought he was full of crap but decided that anything was better than nothing at this point.

We started with the diet. This has NOT been an easy feat, by any means. It was not your average cut in food consumption. It’s been brutal! We try our best to stick to it. We may deviate every once in a while, but we’ve been pretty good about it so far. Then there’s the workout…We’re at the gym an average of an hour and a half each day…six days a week. I went from going to the gym about twice a week for about 30 minutes each visit to THIS.

Four weeks later and our trainer was right. We’ve dropped a very significant amount of weight, we’re looking and feeling healthy, and well on our way to hit our goals by the holiday season.

Strengthening my Faith

My original goal was to strengthen my leadership skills. While I was still set on doing that, I realized that this was something I couldn’t do without first strengthening my faith. You see, my faith plays a key role in every single thing that I do – even though I may forget this fact every once in a while.

I began doing a lot of reading, the result of which can be found in one of my previous entries. I’ve read the book Blue Like Jazz at least twice now and I just cannot get enough of it. As I promised in that previous entry, I will be continuing a series of entries that explains everything more in detail.

Strengthening my faith isn’t something that comes easily for me (for anyone, really). This book addressed so many of my problems, complaints, and questions but I have to truly internalize it all before I can expect to move forward. I have changed a great deal in the past two months but I know I could be a lot farther along.

Strengthening my Leadership Skills

Like all of my other goals, this is one that I will be perpetually seeking to perfect. I’ve spent countless hours buried in reading. From re-reading Leadership and Self-Deception to re-assimilating every project-management book that I can my hands on, this is something that’s been a big priority for me.

I’ve always been pretty confident in my ability to manage a group of people and get a job done. In fact, I’ve rarely ever doubted that I could do so. Lately, however, I’ve been focusing on the process more than I have the end result. I’ve been focusing more on ensuring that I’m “out of the box,” if you will.

I’ve been busy, there’s certainly no denying that, and I’d like to think that I’ve changed a lot in the past few months. I’ve grown both intellectually and spirituality and I think I’ve matured a lot as well. I hope all is well with each of you.

Love to All,
Josh

Technorati Tags: 2008 adventures, career, growth, reflections, resolutions, self-learning

Life has been slightly unbalanced lately. Well, maybe “unbalanced” isn’t exactly the right word…perhaps consistent is the term I’m searching for. I’m desperately trying to force myself into more of a routine and I’m getting closer.

My work on the RiderRally project is becoming more intense lately as we ramp up for our next release in late October. I’m working very heavily with location-based information (hence the title of the entry) which has been pretty fun and challenging. I’ll be posting some of the specifics of this in my technical blog.

I’ve been working on several initiatives at works from Professional Development to Internal Framework Development. I’ve been pushing to incorporate training courses in a variety of technologies/skills,  more diverse standards in documentation, and reusable code-bases for the company. Somehow, in the middle of all of this, I’ve also been finding time to consult on other projects, conference calls, and to be the “go-to” guy for any technical interviews. Needless to say, it’s been a little crazy lately.

Despite the workload, my schedule tends to work itself out quite well and I have plenty of free time. I’ve been working in time to go to the gym and general down-time as well. I just need to get more of a structured routine so I can feel a little better about everything. I feel like I’m living in chaos if I don’t have at least SOME continuity in my day.

I had planned to write a little about my thoughts after reading Blue Like Jazz but I’ll save for that for my next entry. Time to watch Wicker Park and head to bed.

Love to All,
Josh

Technorati Tags: announcements, career, informative, reflection, self-learning, updates, work

All horribleness aside, I am humbled today. I’ll save a templated “here’s what happened” email to send to those who are interested as I would prefer not to discuss it in an entry.

Humbled really is the perfect word as these events have made me realize just how easy it is to make a mistake. I often forget how much ground you need to cover to make sure you never slip up. More importantly, I forget that it’s impossible. It was just a blinding realization that everything you’ve worked for can be taken from you in a matter of seconds. It’s helping me re-prioritize my life a little, to say the least.

There’s too many thoughts floating through my head to make another pseudo-coherent paragraph. I wish you well and hope that your day was better than and as enlightening as mine.

Technorati Tags: career, new year, ramblings, realizations, self-learning, weird

It’s an interesting thing to come face to face with reality. The ridiculous part about it is that you thought you were staring at it the entire time. Sometimes it’s like waking from a night of perfect sleep. Other times it’s like getting hit with a semi-truck. The situation at hand, sadly, is the latter. It’s the foundation of a suite of daydreams and the final touches on the worst nightmare you’ll have in years. Regardless of the circumstances, I believe every one of you has experienced exactly what I’m talking about. It’s the realization that your world is upside down and even though you think you saw it coming, you never knew how drastic it would be. We learn, we grow, and we adapt but it doesn’t take away from the profoundness of the moment.

It’s like I was looking in the buildings for my reflection. I was waiting for that moment where you see yourself in a whole new light and everything changes from your side. I was privileged enough to feel it from both ends this time around. I saw my reflection in the beauty of the skyline. There’s something about unplanned travel that gets me. It’s one thing to plan your getaway to some foreign land, but it can be equally as invigorating to have a day to pack before hitting the streets of NYC and finding yourself wandering Times Square.

It was the quite an experience and, even though it could have been better, it was exactly what I needed. City lights get me every time. Soon I’ll be staring at the lights of Tokyo again. Until then, however, I’m content with where I am.

Enjoy some pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/rnCodePoet/MyNewYorkAdventure

Technorati Tags: 2008 adventures, new york, random, self-learning, traveling