Let me begin this with the unequivocal, undeniable, and extremely accurate statement that I am not, ever have been, or ever intend to be homosexual on an either full time or part time basis. I know what I’m talking about, I’m not in denial, I’m not secretly a cross dresser or have any other strange weird habits that are best not brought up in public. I’m straight, no and’s, if’s or but’s, and no matter how many men hit on me makes me able to overcome the fact that they are bumpy in all the wrong places.

Got that? Good.

Part of the builder’s mentality is a certain can-do attitude: There’s no challenge that cannot be surmounted, no problem that cannot be solved, no issue that cannot be resolved through some creative application of talents. This is actually the easiest way to figure out if you’re talking to a Builder. If you give him a problem, the first question will be : "How do I solve it", rather than "Why should I solve that". It doesn’t matter whether it’s a good idea, whether there’s any use to it, or whether anyone wants it (which is why we have CRM’s): If you get one inspired he’ll find a solution come hell or high water, and God help you if you try to put on the brakes.

My coworker Tommy and I are builders. We go to lunch regularly and we think of neat things to do. In our conversations we talk about new tech, and since neither one of us shy’s away from learning a new language or fiddling with a new toy, the ideas of what is possible just fly. In course of this conversation we come up with some pretty viable business concepts and application ideas. We’ve imagined iPhone applications, conventions that would appeal to a specific demographic, everything from creating the Starbucks of milk bars to reasonably plausible ways of taking over the world.

Our dilemma though is this: What do you work on? There are only so many hours in the day, and the demands of everyday life continue to suck away at grand dreams and visions. Prioritization is important, but with so many interesting things to pursue it’s often hard to put an impassioned new discovery aside in favor of something previously deemed more important. Would you rather explore a new business concept, or… do laundry? A difficult decision, and one I’ve struggled with on my own on many occasions.

I tend to have a sunny disposition that frequently borders on maniacally happy, and I was recently asked the question of how I manage to stay so cheerful. The answer at the time (”Great job, good hobbies, comfortable in my life, happy where I’m going, etc etc”) was in retrospect a little trite, because it didn’t really go into any of the details that were really the meat behind it all.

As a self-described eternal optimist (Caveat: This is a dirty lie, but it’s a goal), I have to see the silver lining on pretty much every cloud, and this fundamentally is a factor of perception. If I decide to see the good things, I will, and vice versa. This perception is locked in an eternally self-perpetuating symbiotic relationship with my mood: If I’m unhappy I’ll see things in a bad light, which will make me unhappy and so on and so forth until I’m wearing black eyeliner, listening to Faith & The Muse and stapling my hand to my forehead. Alternatively, when I’m happy it causes a similar chain reaction until I’m wearing a Dirndl and singing in the Tyrolean Alps (Yes, there are pictures, and no, you can’t have them). In short, my mood is the lens through which I perceive the world. Sound familiar? Well, I can’t imagine I’m alone in this. Moving on…

This suggests that the secret to being an optimist is actually the same as keeping your mood up aka the secret to happiness, and that…. well, I’m hardly someone who’s made the effort to be an expert at a topic that so many people have tried to define. I do have quite a few books on happiness though, everything Buddhist philosophy to scientific articles about endorphins to small pamphlets handed to me by people declaring it to be my salvation, but that doesn’t make me an expert. If anything, these texts have taught me that the secret to happiness is religious in nature, and since I think that’s absolute rubbish I’m clearly not qualified to talk about it.

Thankfully, that’s not going to stop me.

There is enough snow on my 4′x4′ back door landing right now to build a snowman, and the backyard is… well, I’m stuck for the time being, though I look forward to playing in the snow this afternoon and evening. There will be snowmen, oh yes, there will be snowmen.

But for now, a sorely needed update. My life’s been busy, but there haven’t been enough spectacular highlights to really fill an entire blog post. I think I’ve got enough material now, so here goes:

Two weeks ago my mom came to visit, and from what I was told she enjoyed herself immensely, even though I myself was under a bit of stress due to our impending launch and the Flex 3/Air presentation I gave. Much like any good mom she came, she cooked, she filled my fridge with food, and she left me a few surprises around the house that were sometimes pleasant, sometimes less so. All in all, good thing, if a little stressy.

There’s something to be said for grunge.

My life is caught somewhere between a chaotic mess and a manicured ideal. On one side I’m trying to reach that movie-ideal life, filled with manicured lawns, accented living rooms and bathrooms with little baskets of shells on the toilet. On the other I avoid shaving whenever possible, prefer denim and fleece to khaki’s and polo, and seem to have a disability regarding the proper placement of dirty laundry. Even so I want to make it look like my life is far more Disney than Disorganized, and as a result I feel like I’m maintaining a carefully constructed façade.

This is starting to annoy me.

I like honesty, I like plain talk. It gives me a good sense of where I stand and how I can relate to something, yet these days it seems that I can’t find this honesty anywhere anymore. Not in politics, not in the news, not even in myself. Everything has a spin, everything has a marketing message, and everything is trying to convince me in some way to want something I don’t, to be something I’m not, to put forward someone who only exists in my imagination.

A few random things going on in my life: Apartment & Junk I always thought that getting a bigger apartment would give me more freedom, however as it turns out it’s greatly reduced what I do with it. There are small, predefined areas where I spend most of my time- my desk, the couch [...]

When I was puttering around my kitchen this morning I realized that… well, it did seem to be a little chilly on the tiles. Under ordinary circumstances this wouldn’t have bothered me- I keep my apartment around 55 degrees at night, no higher than 62 while I’m around (programmable thermostats FTW), but now that this mornings’ chilliness was on my mind I realized that I hadn’t heard the comforting hum of the heater yet. No problem: I can check the thermostat after my shower, yet then I had to get dressed and check email and whatnot, and by the time I remembered I was dressed and ready to go out the door.

46 degrees Fahrenheit.

The complete failure of my apartment’s heating aside (turns out the heater’s fine, it’s the fan that’s not cooperating), this made me think a little bit about energy conservation and the adaptability of the human race. We evolved all over this happy little planet, shown by settlements ranging from Scandinavia all the way to Sub-Saharan Africa, and climate control has only been around since the discovery of fire. So why has it become such a necessity?

This is, without a doubt, the best week I’ve had so far this year. Somewhere between the muscle soreness, the celebrations, the accomplishments and the random positive things sliding across my desk it all just glommed into one big ball of slightly manic awesomeness, and now as I sit here at the end of it I’m allowing myself a well-deserved pint to toast a life well lived.

“Life well lived”… that really is the goal, isn’t it. It’s all well and good to accomplish goals and acquire assets that match with some socially acceptable norm, but when in the end you look back and realize you were miserable trying to achieve all that you can’t exactly say it’s time well spent, can you? No, this week has been proof positive that for me I not only love reaching my destination, but that the journey on the way there is taken in a way that makes it all worthwhile. The goal is merely the capstone to an amazing experience, and while I do work hard I do so because I want to, rather than a misplaced sense of martyrdom.

So lets recap, shall we?

I ran five miles yesterday. This is taking some time to sink in, and I still don’t quite believe it myself. It’s certainly an accomplishment for someone who came from the world of morbid obesity, and I am having a hard time not being smug at everyone I know.

Of course there are some caveats- I scaled my speed down to a 10 minute mile with ten second negative splits on the mile, so other than the distance increase I wasn’t really pushing myself. Even so it feels like a significant accomplishment not only because it’s the longest I’ve ever run in my entire life, but because I’ve also managed to break past the 3.1 mile mental barrier that comes with training for a much shorter race.

What really struck me about the whole experience is how easy it was to go the extra mile(s). Once I’d gotten up to speed and convinced my body it wasn’t stopping anytime soon, it was just a matter of keeping my mind occupied while my feet did all the work. My iPod really helped with that, but I’m told the bigger races don’t allow headphones. I can already imagining myself stopping after the 3rd mile because I got bored and saw something shiny lying in the road.

Last year, as many of you know, wasn’t the best for me. After graduation my relationship with the CEO gradually degenerated, and though my job hunt was incredibly successful on many different levels, the subsequent crappy situation when the mortgage market evaporated and took my new job with it left me in a precarious situation. Even so, life continued to be good and the lessons I learned from independence were invaluable, and eventually I managed to settle in a phenomenal job that I would have never considered under more secure conditions. Hindsight? Everything happens for a reason, and right now I am in a really good place professionally. The name of 2007 shall therefore be the “Year of unexpected awesomeness”, because every single moment of suck has turned into such an excellent thing for me that I can’t attribute it to my own general sense of optimism. Yet even though I am surrounded by opportunity- I still have to grab it.

I am now in a new city, with (as mentioned) fantastic opportunities, and though in the long run I’m not certain I’ll stay here in Columbus, I am nevertheless going to make sure I take full advantage of everything it has to offer. Thus my resolutions this year will be all about that, what I want to accomplish for myself, and the bright and shiny future that I am building for myself. Except… well, last years’ resolutions I completed in less than 6 months, so this year I’m going to put a slightly different twist on it, one garnered from the ranking systems that make console gaming so much fun. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this year my resolutions will have Bronze, Silver, and Gold levels of accomplishment.