Sixteen Things About Braz

Wow, thanks Tom. I think.

I don’t get this meme, but lucky for you, Dear Reader, I was tagged on a day when I’m feeling either particularly chatty or particularly like I need to just stop holding stuff in. Either way, you get to enjoy the outcome.

1. When I was in high school, before I went to Governor’s School, I was certain that my sister and I were both going to be pediatricians, and after we both finished medical school, open our own practice. Biology in Governor’s School killed that passion for me - I don’t know now if that was because of the class, the material, or if it was one of the first symptoms of the ADD. I suspect, though, that there are people who I haven’t seen in over a decade who’d be surprised I’m not a doctor.
2. In spite of being a hard-core liberal, card-carrying member of the ACLU, local NPR supporter and member of the EFF, in high school and the first semester of college, I was as equally hard-core about Rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party. Thankfully, I grew out of that.
3. Even though I wanted to shave my head for nearly ten years, it took a co-worker being diagnosed with cancer and going through chemotherapy to inspire me to actually do it. Now that I have, I can’t imagine ever growing my hair back.
4. As much of a Mac-head as I am, my first computer was an Atari 400, followed by an Atari 800XL, then the family Epson PC-clone. Even using Macs all through school whenever I could, my first Macintosh was my PowerBook (Lombard) that I bought while working at Sweet Briar.
5. I never drank coffee until Emma was born, and I needed something to keep me awake while we closed the 3GI/RSA office. I distinctly remember standing over one of the laptops I was wiping clean, full cup of coffee in my hand, and falling asleep standing up. The entire cup of coffee spilled into the guts of the then-running Dell, and it instantly zapped off. I took the thing apart entirely and let it sit and dry for a day, then put it back together. To my knowledge, that laptop worked flawlessly since.
6. I don’t think I’ve been really happy, living without fear, since high school. I’ve had moments, but they’re the exception, not the rule.
7. In a connected thread, I constantly worry that I’ll be uncovered as a hack, as someone who doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and has been pretending to be smart for years. That worry and self-doubt has held me back for years, and continues to hold me back today.
8. In AP English class, when our last exam was on Tom Sawyer, I got a 96 on the exam. I missed two of the matching questions, and my teacher gave me a really glowing set of comments on my essay. I didn’t read Tom Sawyer, and still haven’t to this day. I used to be proud of that; now, I don’t know.
9. I actually like Hannah Montana, and sometimes listen to her music even when the girls aren’t around.
10. For about the past year, I’ve wished more often than not that I hadn’t given up doing systems, and stuck with what I know best. Being outside of my comfort zone, and hitting so many roadblocks and intracable problems has really destroyed large parts of my professional self-confidence.
11. In spite of feeling defeated and blocked, I’m still as passionate about Agile and Scrum and Lean and better software development, of making a team better, and wish I could get back to the point where I had the capital to make real change happen. It’s what I want to do for the rest of my career, if I can.
12. Every Thursday, I have school pizza with Emma. It’s the best thing about my week, every week.
13. In my dream world, I’d be able to stop working and become an Agile Consultant, who had enough time to be a competitive professional golfer. Not a PGA Tour pro, but the Nationwide tour. A couple of years ago, the author of one of my favorite RSS readers gave me the opportunity to write for a new golf website. Life got crazy and I wasn’t able to devote as much time as Erik needed to the site, so I stopped. I really miss writing about golf.
14. The way my family reacted to me leaving Kristen did more damage to how I feel about them and around them than they’ll ever know, and likely more than I’ll ever tell them. Whether it was born out of concern or not, the judgemental reactions destroyed a lot of trust in me for all of them.
15. That said, I think I only have two real friends left in the world.
16. And that said, I think the one person I want most in my life is the one person I keep hurting through all this mess of getting my life back in order. Every day, I hope I’m better, and despite all the efforts to string another good day after the previous, far too often it’s a bad day that hurts her. I’ll never be able to express how disappointed I am in myself.

So, there are my sixteen things, for right now. If you’d asked some other time, you likely wouldn’t have gotten these sixteen, and probably wouldn’t have seen as much emotional crap here. But, it’s today, and this is what you get, Dear Reader.

I guess that, if I’m keeping to the meme, I need to pick sixteen people? Not sixteen, but close enough: Matt Brooks, Andrew Lee, Dave Barr, Mike Neumann, mmmqqwags, Elisabeth Hendrickson, Lisa Crispin, John Gruber, Jeff Vogel, Mohammad Haque, Greg Grunberg, Evan Dorkin, Hugh MacLeod, and Warren Ellis.

Like I said, thanks Tom. I think.