"Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Abraham Lincoln
And so here I am, testing the inscrutable accuracy of Honest Abe. And the inevitable question..... where to start? How do you start writing a blog? How to write something that is interesting and might lead to people wanting to read it or, dare I say, waiting for the next entry?
So let's start at the ending, which led to this beginning.
I recently left my job at Apple, a place I had worked for nearly 7 years.... a place I still love. I will write more.... much more.... about Apple in future posts. Some things may surprise people, others won't.
My job at Apple was fantastic - during my whole time there, I worked within (Manufacturing) Operations on new (i.e. unreleased) products. Among other things, I worked on several generations of MacBooks / MacBook Pros.... the first multi-colored iPod Touch products, released in 2012..... and most recently, the Apple Watch. I was in supplier factories regularly, including final assembly factories, component supplier operations, and even factories from suppliers who make the leading-edge assembly and test equipment needed to assemble the new products.
My job was hardly boring; conversely, I was always working on something new. I had (have?) a skillset that led to my being asked to work on several special assignments over the years, leading or helping an effort which needed "fixing". Needless to say, with every product I worked on always being "new", there was always a lot of discovery. And it hardly needs to be said that there was always a lot of excitement around the actual products themselves. Apple is.... exhilarating.
And that's how I knew it was time to leave.
Simply put, I was exhausted.... perpetually.... and just not excited about what I was doing. For 8 years, I had been managing a crazy schedule which required me to travel 145 miles from my home to work very early every Monday morning, work ~50 hours in the office, countless additional hours at night doing e-mail, conference calls, or Excel / Keynote presentations..... while also figuring out how to take care of food and chores in my "second" home until I could come back to my "real" home at the end of the week. Additionally, I was mixing in 30-70 days/year of international travel, with its own rigors. No other way of saying it, but the effect of the schedule was cumulative, and my getting older didn't help. Eventually, there was simply no way that I could recover from the weekly grind - as much as Shelley tried (and she really worked to make our home a haven rather than a chore for me when I was there on weekends), I just couldn't ever catch up.
So as I sat back and said "I'm working at arguably the best company in the world..... on it's newest product line..... and it's just not 'doing it for me'....." it became obvious that it was time for a change. Time to back off. It's something I know a lot of people won't understand - how could you not be excited to be working on that?
And that was the exact point. I wasn't excited anymore. That's how tired I was. And now, as I'm enjoying "time off," I've started catching up on things. My body is starting to feel better, I'm generally sleeping better - and I'm not missing a moment of it. I miss the people and the products, but not everything else that came with it.
So what's next? I don't know. Will I go back to work at some point? Probably, though it might be quite different than anything I've done before. I won't go back to full-time work in the Bay Area, but could I see myself doing some short-term consulting projects there? Sure, when the time is right. Might I do something part-time or full-time near my home, outside of the high-tech field? Absolutely. Whatever I do will be something I enjoy doing, not because I "have to" do it. I was fortunate to be compensated very well during my entire career, and obviously have benefitted from joining Apple at a terrific point in its history from a stock value perspective. Plus, candidly, Shelley and I live more modestly than many people think, and don't have aspirations of having multiple vacation homes and massive amounts of possessions. Many of our friends have more than us and are still pushing hard for more - that's simply not us.
So what will this blog be? Simple. It'll be me, pretty much unfiltered. I enjoy writing, always have. When I mentioned that I was going to write a blog, a friend who knows me well asked "are you going to write about things other than sports?" Funny, I hadn't really thought to write about sports, despite it being a passion of mine. More realistically, I'm going to write about what comes to mind - my experiences, thoughts on current events, and the like. Hopefully I'll be clever and funny at times.... where appropriate.
I have ideas for several future topics which I will write about. Necessarily, and because I get asked a lot about it (or hear offhand comments), I'm going to write a lot about Apple. I will never deny that I'm an "Apple homer"..... and I'll explain why in future posts.
But I'll write about a lot of other stuff as well. And as I do, maybe I'll make some new friends..... but I might lose some as well. As my opinions on a couple of subjects come out, they might anger friends of mine who I know will disagree - I hope that's not the case, and that we can all respect each other's opinions.
And speaking of opinions - I want yours. As I'm getting the hang of this "blog" and "website" thing, I want to hear what you think. Give me ideas - if there are things you would like me to talk about, questions about the website, or any suggestions, please comment. I will read every comment. As a note, I will be adding a couple more sections to the website that aren't currently there now (such as a photo gallery), so what you see now is just the beginning. How it will evolve may partly be up to you.
Thanks for making it this far..... and stay tuned!