According to my Outlook calendar tomorrow is the anniversary of my blog. Perhaps it was the realization of that anniversary or something else but today I have been thinking about what I have learned over my career. By no means do I feel that I am finished or even that I have reached my pinnacle but as I have reflected on what I feel I did right and what I have done wrong I came up with the following items that I hope everyone gets to experience.
1. A great success There are a lot of great feelings in this world like seeing your children born or when accomplishing a goal that you have set for yourself. I have also felt a great sense of satisfaction and joy when a project I have worked long and hard over has been successfully finished. It is that feeling of accomplishment that keeps me going.
2. A great failure There are many sports analogies about how you can learn more from loosing than from winning. While life shouldn't be a zero sum game where for every winner there has to be a looser, I also realize that everything will not always go our way. I think back to some of my early projects that failed and the lessons I learned. Early on in my career I learned that the people paying for my services do not want to hear about my personal problems or how I skipped class the day a concept was explained and that is why I didn't complete the work on time. I also learned that the correct solution is no good unless the people who will be using it can understand it and how it will benefit them.
3. A good mentor I don't believe that I am a good mentor. When I have been placed in situations where I should be mentoring I find that I tend to either slip into "instructor" mode where I start to tell people what to do or I get impatient when they don't know what to do like I think they should. I am working hard on this because I see this as a great way to ensure that the great failure that someone has only has to happen once, and possibly it doesn't have to be as spectacular or painful as some of mine have been.
4. The joy of learning There are so many things to learn in life that if you can cultivate a joy of learning you will never lack for something interesting to do. I am sure you have heard many people talk about the need to learn a new programming language each year. Beyond just having more skills I think it gives you a different perspective and helps you to "think outside the box". As my children have gotten older I have the chance to relearn algebra, geometry, and in the near future I will be studying trigonometry and calculus again. I find that I am enjoying them more now because I can see them as a chance to exercise my brain and not a chore that needs to be done.
5. A job that you love so much you would do it for free So much of our time is spent at work. Most of the time that work is done in teams and the makeup of the team seems to have a big influence on the way you feel about your work. Several times in my career I have told people that I don't really like what I am doing but I like the people I work with. There have been other times when the team and the work have both been interesting and everything seems to be working well. It is times like that when I think that I would do that job even if they weren't paying me.

I know this is a little off the path of technology that I normally blog about but I have been thinking a lot about this today and wanted to get it in black and white. If for no other reason than to help me when I am not in such a pensive mood. Hopefully you have experienced most of these items and if not perhaps you will some day. I promise to get back to talking about more technical topics in the future.