Know Your Ship

and sail it to it’s fullest potential…..

I attended my first ever retirement roast today, and of course no one else in the room had actually attended a retirement roast, or party, or anything ever! Kind of odd that no one actually retires anymore. Damn stock options and layoffs get the best of everyone….

It was a lot of fun though (despite being dragged 3k miles for it). I had fun, learned a lot about where consistency technology came from (who knew I was telling the father of federated database consistency he didn’t know what he was talking about only a few months ago)! Well in a short amount of time I learned a lot from Ron Haupert, turns out he knew what he was talking about and wasn’t afraid to teach me where I had gone wrong. Luckily I am not afraid of being wrong either so it worked out for the better. Also lucky for me I got to sit in on the insight that everyone had to Ron’s contributions to EMC and database management systems overall. Of course in the few hours of listening to the roast, I too got a great message about how sailing immitates life (good thing I got the kids in sailing camp early!). Now despite being a power boat guy myself…. who wants to wait for the freakin wind? Especially on the Puget Sound where it can go weeks before a good blow? ….. I’ll pass along the lesson…

There are many factors to consider when sailing:

1. Know your ship
2. Understand how to read the wind, the waves, and the current
3. Don’t hesitate
4. Race your own race

All these came from some early sailing experiences of Ron’s; however, they had been vetted for 20-30 years in the database industry. They applied just as well to racing sailboats as they do to life and your career…. and this is true for any profession and any stage of life. I would recomend you think about it too. I know I’ve been thinking about it all night…. damn old guys with their insight…. I guess we should all take our lives/careers where we want to go and not follow the pack or the money… but the hapiness. We should do this with care and exploit our own talents along the way. In the end this would bring more hapiness and satisfaction. Unfortunately most of us don’t do it this way (I know, I read the Q&A on LinkedIn and EVERYONE had drastically different career ambitions then what they were doing)… but perhaps we should.

Then again… I think I’ve heard this lesson before….when I was a kid…. It was a little different then though….

It went more like…..

“Ride it like you stole it, and don’t look back!”

I guess that’s the difference between the young guys and the old retiring guys…..