I have been busy on many projects recently. What is great is I am ready to share them and the new things I’ve learned with Thesis and WordPress. My two most recent projects made me push my personal envelope of what I thought was possible within the WordPress/Thesis environment. Not that I’ve ever had any doubts, rather just plain figuring out “how the h*ll are you going to do this?“—and then doing it. So much fun.

Over the next few weeks I am going to share the projects, their scope, the questions presented, and their solutions. Not every project will go into minute detail, but I will give you enough info to maybe help you figure out how to do your own solutions to your own WordPress/Thesis challenges. I’ve noticed in the time that I’ve been using Thesis there are more and more people trying it out, and trying to do-it-yourself, which is great. I have found that its not a perfect fit for everyone but if you’re like me the fit is great and learning never ends. So stay tuned to see the projects.

Also, I’ll let the cat out of the bag and now state that I have a new website design for berchman.com coming soon (design is done and now in CSS) along with a custom portfolio solution rolled right into WordPress/Thesis. There is a fair amount of setup and labor in this process (basing things off an open-source solution), but I think the end result is clean and attractive. Thinking about doing a detailed tutorial and maybe releasing everything into the open. We’ll see what my time looks like. I’ve had very little time to write tutorials, or anything for that matter. But believe me there is lots to share and I’m hoping time will cooperate with me.

That’s it for now. Summer is here and I hope yours is going well.

In today’s information overloaded, fast paced, digital lifestyle there can be little opportunity to pause and reflect. The mindset of “just have to keep up” can dominate one’s thinking if your are not careful. Every once and a while I get present to the fact that I spend too little time “reflecting” on things be they family, work, and life in general.

I’m soaking in it.

Like the image above, (I am showing my age and if you know ‘Madge’ you are too), sometimes you may find yourself “soaking in it” and not knowing what is going on, or the benefits of what you are in the middle of doing. Being a married, father of  3 boys, self employed business owner/pixel pusher can impose virtual blinders that, if I let it, will limit what I know, see, and what is possible.

So why am I rambling on about this? Recently I became aware of just how much I am soaking in it. My ‘inner Madge‘ woke up and reminded me of what was going on. And sharing this with others might remind them to stop, look around, and take stock.

I set some measurable goals at the end of 2009. These were goals I mentally planned on completing by the end of  the first quarter of 2010. Well guess what? Today is the start of the second quarter of 2010. And those three goals? Not met. I went through piles of paperwork over the weekend and found them written down. I got them out of my head not just as ideas and things to do, but completely out of my head. I was soaking in it so completely that I lost track of these goals.

What are, or were, the goals?

• Publish new WordPress/Thesis tutorials based on recently completed projects
• Design, develop, and publish a visual overhaul to berchman.com
• Release a free Thesis portfolio theme

I had planned on these three things to be completed yesterday.

So what’s the lesson in all this?

Two things:

1. Use your systems. These three goals were never put into project tracking systems I use and broken down into smaller, manageable tasks (basic productivity, duh). I am remedying that THIS quarter.
2. Reflect more often. I failed to check in with myself on personal projects. All things in the client and family world are moving along quite well. I dropped the ball on myself.

Reflection time is over. I will now return to my regularly scheduled program.

Get back to work.

I knew about this video a while back when it was in production. I had read about it somewhere in an RSS feed, or was it Twitter?, or Facebook?, or LinkedIn?… anyhow I did know that this video was being created. Day before yesterday Seth Godin brought it to back to my attention. I took some time to watch the entire video and was really struck by these people who were handed the “pink slip” and in turn made something come of it. Each person has their own story, and you have the power to write the ending.

Watch this. If anything it will get you thinking.

May first. May Day. Today is my birthday and you can tell by the sign above that it’s a round number of some notariety. It is an age that to some is a milestone, a turning-point, for others it is a sign of dread. As for me I am actually stepping back and not assigning any meaning to it. Yes it’s a birthday, which is reason to celebrate for anyone, but the specific number to me—at least this time—is not overwhelming. Funny because every year since 35 has caused me more and more dread but now that the day has come I say “big deal.” 40 after all is just a number and the signifigance you place on it is what goes on in the gray matter between your ears.

I do have much to be thankful for at the time in my life. I have a healthy and happy family, a roof over my head, food to eat, clean water to drink, modern conveniences, I am self-employed and (knock-on-wood) have remained busy despite the present doom-and-gloom reported in the media about the US economy. All things reviewed I have it pretty damn good so really there is no “dread” for me to be the age I am. Age is just a number, and a state of mind, after all.

A few observations at this time in my life:

• Time does indeed fly. Time has the feeling of moving much faster. Days fly by and the weeks are fast now. When I was a kid an hour seemed like forever and now its a blink of an eye.
• Use it or lose it. You need to move your body and exercise. After 35 you start to feel your body in ways you never have. The solution is to use it. You want to end up in a walker? Get your ass off the couch and get in motion!
• Kids are zen. They are always living life in the moment. No worries about the past or the future. Its all about “whats happening NOW!” Being around them and their ability to stay present is a gift.
• Don’t be so hard on yourself. We all do it. We let the internal critic tell us we’re not good enough, smart enough, or that people don’t like us. That’s all bullshit. You need to get present to reality and what is really true, not what you “think” is true. Take a deep breath, let it go, and lighten up.
• Worrying solves nothing. All it does is give you gray hairs, ulcers, and wrinkles, and who wants those?
• I am grateful. The older I get the more grateful I become for everything in life.

OK, that’s enough for now. My life is calling…

My wonderful wife is a teacher at The Thacher School. One week every school year each teacher is required to take on the responsibilities of the T.O.A.D. (Teacher On Active Duty). One of the duties is to give what is called a “TOAD Talk” Monday morning to a full assembly of the school; students, faculty and staff. Her talk last Monday on stress was addressed to the lives of the students but as I listened to the talk it was apparent that she was speaking to everyone. Here is her talk. My hope is that this talk will speak to you.

Good Morning…

• Stress affects our physical and mental health
• Negative effects of stress on the cardiovascular system, the immune system, the endocrine system, and the muscular system, are measurable
• Depression, one reaction to stress, is predicted to be the leading occupational disease of the 21st century
• 54% of Americans are concerned about the level of stress in their everyday lives

During any given day at Thacher you hear people talk about how stressed they are. We are always busy and have a lot going on. As students you have tests, papers, pages and pages of reading, and little free time. There are complaints of endless work, worry about getting into college, not feeling good enough or adequate compared to your peers. Life seems too much to handle. Slowly we become conditioned to accept stress as a normal part of life. We learn to live with it but in reality it depletes us. If not dealt with in an effective manner, it literally kills us. Learn to live with it long enough and you won’t know what to do without it. We grow into adults who don’t know how to slow down and take time to enjoy life. We equate “down” time with wasted time. Of the myriad of ways there are to cope with stress, one is perspective—taking a look at the big picture—because, in reality, at Thacher, ours are the stresses of the privileged.

Don’t get me wrong. Stress is stress and very real to the person experiencing it whatever the cause. But most of the world would be pleased if a term paper was their biggest stress, or failing a class was their worst worry.

• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation
• 1 in 3 children in the developing world lack adequate shelter
• Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished
• Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes—about one child every five seconds

In comparison to what life has to offer some, the stresses of a day in the life at Thacher seem almost welcome.

Think about it the next time you complain about being stressed out or complain about your life in general. Tell it to the mother of five from a poor country who walks 40 miles with her young children to gather a gallon of water you wouldn’t give to your dog.

Again, our stress is real and has power to wreak havoc on our being, but perspective can give us a new way to look at our situation and give us a much needed reality check.

Ironically, the things we tend to stress about most often are the stuff of life that is ultimately the least important.
I promise you at your 20 year reunion, the “D” Mr. Perry gave you in English won’t matter even when in the moment it may have been the end of the world or at least your immediate future.

On your deathbed, surrounded friends and family, the fact you didn’t get into Stanford, Yale or Brown won’t matter at all as you say your goodbyes. Your salary won’t matter. The grades you earned, both good and bad, won’t matter at all.

What will matter?

It’s not about the college, the grades, the money – it’s about you and what you bring to the table. What you decide to create of yourself from your experiences.  You will be all you have in the end. It will matter that you lived examined life — one of integrity, responsibility, curiosity and passion. It will matter to be able to look back on your life having enjoyed it all –the good the bad, the highs and the lows and maybe having learned something about the complexities of the human condition.

So that D on a paper? The rejection from your first choice college? Not being as good as you would like to be at any given endeavor? Not being the best? The grade, the college, being the best is irrelevant and stressing about your situation won’t help. A good education is available to anyone willing to work for it regardless of the institution. If you enjoy doing something you will get better at it with practice and patience. There will always be those who are more accomplished than you and those less accomplished. It could be argued that there is as much to be learned, if not more, from receiving a D on a paper as there is from an A.

When it comes time for you to graduate, your Thacher diploma shouldn’t be emblematic of the college you got into, your grades or your prowess on the athletic field – if that is the case we haven’t done our job.

Your diploma should represent friends made over your years here that will be some of the dearest of your life. It should represent hard work doing things you enjoyed and even those things you didn’t enjoy doing. It should hold the memories of having met challenges that would have never been asked of you anywhere else – walking long miles with a heavy pack at high altitudes, a stubborn horse that frustrates you daily, teachers that expected your best work day in and day out. It should represent your intellectual and personal growth as a human being.

So while some amount of stress in life is inevitable and maybe even needed at times, don’t let it control you or become a way of being. Stop and try to get perspective on your life. It is yours alone to design and develop.

As Anna Quindlen wisely said:

“Whether you are sixteen or sixty, begin today to say no to the Greek chorus that thinks it knows the parameters of a happy life when all it knows is the homogenization of human experience.”

I have been in a slump as of late.

I have been busy and working (thank goodness in light of economic uncertainties). However, I have not taken time off in what is approaching a year. Feeling the burnout? Mmm… yeah maybe a touch. I have been here in this space before—to pre-burnout, then burnout and back that is—a few times. Sometimes I drive myself mad with the incessant desire to keep going, do a little bit more, forgo taking care of myself, and for what? Some imaginary idyllic computing nirvana where all my random downloads are in the trash, my email in-box is empty, and there is not an errant file sitting on my desktop? Did I just hear someone say “pipe dream?”

This ‘nirvana’ may be possible. But to think turning into ‘Jabba the Hut’ eating crap food and sitting in front of the keyboard for endless hours trying to achieve it? For what? I’m the only person that sees what is on my desktop. What kind of satisfaction do I think, that by doing this, it will somehow massage my pineal gland and make me feel complete? I enjoy working on the computer, but at what cost?

Sir? “Put down the mouse and step away from the computer.”

In this era of information overload, rss feeds, social media, email, it is easy to get sucked in if your job is to sit in front of a computer doing any type of job. What is worse is if you have a propensity to be a work-a-holic (ahem), and your career as a digital gun-for-hire also happens to be your hobby as well.

I’ve been reminded of late that at the end of my life I will not want more time on the computer. I will not think about how “I wish I had cleaned my desktop of all those files…” Or will I think “Gee, if I only got that email inbox to zero…” I will think of the people that mean the most to me, of the places I have travelled to and the things that I have seen. I highly doubt I will think of a YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or Flickr (unless its pictures of my kids

So this is a little “note to self” posted on the Interwebz…

Put down the mouse, turn off the monitor, get up, go outside, and do something with other people. Do something other than compute.

OK, that was a bit theraputic. Now back to my email…

I have a new headset (thanks Kristin!).  And I finally took some time to recite the hours of text into NaturallySpeaking.  So that I can sit with my headset, and now type out what I’m saying is I’m doing right now.  The beauty of this is that there are small typos and errors in the text.  This is not to to my mispronunciation, but rather to the misinterpretation via the software.

So, I have not posted to the blog in a while.  I’ve been a bit busy as of late.  I am starting a new enterprise with a like-minded businessman, and that has kept me pretty busy.  I also have continuing work with my web communications firm.  And most importantly, my family is the busiest thing in my life.   Life is very busy right now, plenty of work and projects and family activities.  I really would have it no other way.  And in light of the current economic climate in the United States and the world at large I am a lucky guy.

So it’s kind of cool now, to be able to sit here and speak and have the words show up on the screen so that I don’t have to type.  As is said, the hand is quicker than the eye, but the hand is not quicker than your mouth. who knows.  I’ve actually might be able to post more frequently as, and on more topics.  Now that I have the ability just to talk and have word show up on the screen.  I do have to work on the accuracy of some of the words ‘has’ and ‘is’ sometimes swapped out for each other. 

So I will be posting shortly about official announcement regarding the new business venture that looks quite promising. We are not reinventing the wheel, rather we are using current best practices and best technologies in a way that makes them affordable to people that want to tap in to their power. 2009 looks to be a busy working here, but the fruits of all labor should pan out in the years to come.

That’s enough rambling for now.  Time to turn the headset off and get back to work.