Self inventory 10/09

Self inventory 10/02/09

Pros
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1. Wife and baby. You are part of a loving supportive marriage and are raising a beautiful, wonderful baby girl. For the most part you love your family, are a good dad but you are lacking in some key areas.

2. You are in the best shape of your life, and are close to your ideal weight. You have good hair and clothes but that's sort of a given.

3. You generally have a good heart, you try to treat others with honesty and respect most of the time. This is true, I think, especially in the past several years ever since you started to try to sort your life out. If you have harmed anyone it was out of immaturity, thoughtlessness - you have harmed people deliberately but not in a long time. Most of the harm you inflict in this world is actually on yourself, but you may have caused unnecessary harm to people who care about you.

4. You appreciate music and art, and are close to sharing happiness through art and music with a larger number of people. Despite the amount of time you put into this pursuit, I honestly think it may take more time and dedication, and maybe something like renting out a practice space to work on your singing without feeling so self conscious about it.

5. You try to be a reasonably informed citizen of the world, and your political views are generally in line with your version of morality.

6. Praying often seems like talking to yourself. You still pray as a habit, even if it's just thinking about things in your life when you run which is a sort of prayer. You are skeptical about your faith but you have not entirely given it up, you probably should dedicate some time to sorting out how you feel about Christianity sometime, maybe reading a few books on theology.

7. You are humble, probably to a fault. Despite how proud and egotistical you can be about certain things. Honestly I think I may be at least partly confusing humility with low self esteem.

8. Despite your insecurities, you have the intellect and energy to accomplish anything you set out to do.

Cons
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1. You have lost your way and you are unsure about what you want to be when you grow up, or where your career is headed over the next several years and the next 30 years. You need to decide this once and for all, going after multiple outcomes at once is ok, as long as they are prioritized and don't interfere with one another (ideally they should support each other).

--Ok then, 3 things for the next year at least. I figure I'll have a better idea of what I want to do after I've lived with these projects for a while, I'll reevaluate once a year or so.

A. No more advanced degrees, let's just stop at the MS CS - at least for now. Spend your spare time studying about technologies that interest you by doing personal projects - all based around a book database would be a good idea, use goodreads as a model.
B. Try to get an adjunct professor job. It's also ok to pursue professional certifications. Start getting your resume and application materials together.
C. Play guitar live, write and record original music.

2. Let's get honest and say that you still have addiction issues, and it's damaged your relationship with your wife because she has caught you lying and has lost some amount of trust in you. This problem is very small, compared to the past, but it still exists. You desire to eliminate these issues from your life permanently, but it's just a bad idea and just feeds into your low self esteem. An extended period of sobriety of at least 10 years would be ideal, this seems difficult though.

I don't know what to say about this other than I'm going to have to follow through on promises I've made to myself. My success in other areas will depend on this.

3. You are lazy sometimes, feeling sorry for yourself triggers lethargy.