Surprise! Even I can be liked

I had a wonderful experience this past week, one that everyone should have, and which I'm convinced everyone could have (and certainly one that everyone deserves). I announced a new job, and in the process discovered that I'm not alone. That people actually care about me.

It was exhilarating…and bewildering.

All day Friday, congratulations hit my Twitter account (mjasay). I got dozens of emails, too, and 50+ comments on my CNET blog where I announced the change. It was overwhelming, because I (perhaps like you) normally assume that no one is that interested in me.

Of perhaps greatest significance to me, my close friend and former boss, John Powell, wrote a public thank you for my service to Alfresco. It made me cry. Each time I read it. Here was a man that I love and respect dearly showing me profound respect, even as I left his company.

You can't buy friends like that. If you could, I would have tried, as I often feel alone.

Not that this is peculiar to me. I suspect that Facebook, with its 300 million members, is ample proof of this. Even as technology has made it easier to connect we're perhaps growing increasingly distant from each other.

But this isn't what we want. We want to stay in touch. We want to feel a connection to others. We don't want to be alone.

And we're not. My job change experience confirms it. If people can care about me, they can care about anyone.

Growing up, I assumed that everyone else was having fun, and didn't want to involve me. I still feel that way much of the time, which is what makes my family so comforting to me: I know that Jen, Scout, Isaac, and Greta all want to see me, and care about me.

As for Lily, well, let's just say she's willing to acknowledge that I'm her dad, but only from a distance. :-)

I keep discovering, however, that whenever I leave my shell long enough to reach out to someone else, they were waiting for someone to recognize them, too, and want to be with them. I think we're all like that: pathetically, pathologically incapable of realizing just how much we matter to other people.

Not because we're famous. Not because we're rich. Not because we're anything other than…ourselves.

Life is good, because people are good. Even me. Friday confirmed that. Thank you.

Risk and reward

I remember the first time I went skiing. It was Brighton, I was in 7th grade, and I was petrified. I didn't know how to stop and desperately, desperately wanted to.

That was my problem, in fact. I wasn't willing to let myself go because I thought something terrible would happen if I did.

Many crashes later, I realize that nothing terrible is going to happen. Not normally. The minute I realized that is the very minute skiing became a pleasure and my ability took off. It was the fear that held me back.

Once I accepted risk as an integral part of skiing, it became amazingly fun.

I've noticed the same thing at work. The more risk I've been willing to accept, the better the work. I could have stayed at Novell for a long, long time and cashed a generous paycheck. But Alfresco came along and offered something better: risk.

Risk is when you grow. It's what drives us to adapt to hard circumstances and become equal to those challenges. Relationships are a risk ("What if she leaves?"). School is a risk ("What if I fail?"). Kids are a risk ("What of I kill them? What if I don't?").

But all of these risks pay off. Even the mundane ones. Jen took a risk on getting our basement redone, and it has been well worth it (though we agonized over stretching ourselves financially).

Risk is good. It's what makes us grow.

Ex nihilo motivation

The past few months I've been thinking a lot about motivation. Since mid-October 2008 I have exercised somewhat religiously, running 40 miles (or skiing/biking the equivalent) every week. I dropped 20+ pounds and have stayed at 172-175 pounds since then.

This sounds great, and I suppose it is, but I spent a year or two before then largely languishing. I couldn't get excited about consistently exercising or, more pertinently, not consistently binging on whatever food Jen was foolish enough not to lock up.

My motivation to lose weight? A 19-year old neighbor calling me fat. That's all it took. After years of wanting to exercise and control my eating, one random comment from someone who has no conception of body fat and I was devoted to losing weight.

Why?

I wish I knew. Something in me snapped. I discovered desire.

But why then? It's not as if I didn't want to get in shape before. I did. But I lacked the inner conviction to guide my outer actions.

This time it was exercise, but I've had it in other areas of my life, too. One day something just clicks and I decide to read a book, apply to law school, or whatever. I can't figure out from where the desire comes.

This hasn't, of course, kept me from advising everyone else on how to start running, read more, eat less, ask so-and-so on a date, etc. I don't seem to have lacked for motivation in telling others to get motivated. :-)

Any ideas on how motivation is born?