2008 Redux

2008 was easily the most challenging and difficult year I’ve had in my life. That’s not to say that there weren’t high points but overall the bad seemed to outweigh the good.

Things that I learned over the course of the year:

• You can do everything perfectly and still lose
• Who you choose to be is infinitely better than trying to be someone else’s definition of right
• Constant and never-ending improvement may not be enough to fix a bad situation
• It’s OK to leave a bad situation
• Leaving doesn’t mean you’ve failed
• Sometimes dreams are best lived in your head
• There is no excuse to do something hurtful
• Family holds you together when everything else falls
• Trust is something earned
• Things you never thought you’d be able to do, you are when its right
• There is no limit to what the universe feels you are capable of handling
• You can’t be friends with your subordinates at work
• Betrayal cuts deep
• Doing what your boss tells you is right, isn’t always right

Each one of these things has a story to tell but I don’t believe telling the story is going to make the outcome any different or the lessons I learned more important.

The year started off on a high note and then crept very slowly down to the depths of low. It oscillated between high and low throughout the year, making the year feel manic depressive.

It was in October that things went truly sideways. I had major surgery (which, believe it or not, was a high point) and returned to work and was told that the position I’d held before was no longer available to me. My entire team had been moved to other teams and I would just have to deal with it. Three weeks after returning to work I was laid off.

The upside of being laid off is that I have the opportunity to find a new place, a happier place. I have some time now to continue recovering from surgery and figure out what I want to do with my life.

I can’t begrudge them for letting me go. I was pretty miserable there and it was in all honesty, a pretty miserable place to work (at least in the past year). But at the same time, it’s difficult not to feel that all my hard work did nothing for me in the end (except how it made ME feel).

I’ve had lessons aplenty and now it’s time to put them into action and continue to learn and grow.

Book Reading

I have come across several posts that discuss the author's favorite books or recommended reading. The books are usually fiction - though one list is non-fiction.

I must admit that I haven't read many of them (I'll post the links below). In some ways I feel the urge to run out and get all the books and read them, a compulsion if you must.

I admire those who read passionately of the classics and modern fiction. It amazes me when people say they've read The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye and found them to be life altering. Frankly they bored me and I didn't get it. Maybe I was too young, maybe I didn't read into it enough, or maybe it just didn't "work" for me. I tend to question myself and think it's an inadequacy on my part when I don't get the same thing that others have gotten. Books are an eternal failing of mine it seems.

I have much more affinity for non-fiction books than fiction. Perhaps it's because I prefer dealing in the details and straight-forwardness of real things, versus imaginary places.

Oddly enough, I want to be a Librarian and I write fiction. Go figure.

On to the lists ...

50 Amazing and Essential Novels to Enrich Your Life
20 Amazing and Essential Non-fiction Books to Enrich Your Library
100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library
30 Books Everyone Should Read Before Their 30th Birthday
TIME magazine’s All-Time Greatest 100 Novel


These lists are largely repeats of each other. Everyone has to wax poetic in their own way about how these books changed their life.

I just may have to post a list of books that may not have changed my life but were influential to me or at least memorable (the good kind of memories).