"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.’” - Margery Williams from "The Velveteen Rabbit”

Today, I find myself reflecting on endings and beginnings. Mostly, I’m thinking about the process of wrapping up my decades-long career in IT. As I do, I think about how I am planning for what I hope will be a long and fulfilling retirement. Soon, I will begin talking more directly with retired friends and loved ones about their experiences, and my plans, and I look forward to benefiting from their perspectives.

I find myself thinking of this final year as the last lap of a race I’ve been running. It is interesting for me to notice how I feel as I pass each annual milestone one last time, wrap things up and prepare for what’s next. If I think of the “race” as one that I will win or lose, and for which there is a prize to be won at the end, the analogy isn’t very apt. Instead, I think of my friends who are runners and who enjoy the training for, and running of, their races. For them the goal is more to thrive in the process and to strive to do their best. That’s the kind of race I’ve been running and the finish line is coming into sight for me just up ahead. I don’t expect to win, and I don’t see any prize. This race has allowed me to earn the reward of a good living for my family all along the way and I will be deeply satisfied to finish it honorably.

I am in the midst now of the last summer I will spend as an IT manager for the university. I’m working for the last time to support the staff who work for me as they re-image our computer labs, make sure faculty have the technology they need, and prepare for new faculty to join us in the fall. The staff supporting the administrative divisions are managing updates to technology, and refreshing systems for some of our colleagues. Everyone seems to be part of supporting temporary moves to allow for remodeling and maintenance work in campus buildings, and adapting as we replace infrastructure and upgrade services. It’s one of the busiest of all our busy times.

In the midst of all this, we are working through our annual budget update, I am supporting what I hope will be my last audit here, managing one of the large projects, and participating in several others. We have already begun taking steps to prepare for the busiest time of all as we ready our systems, and ourselves, for the start of the fall semester. I won’t miss the stress and deadlines of these times and I think I will feel relieved to see them completed just once more. I will not miss rising early to report for work at 7 am during our summer hours. I am beginning to decline meetings being proposed for next year after my planned retirement date, and I am enjoying that!

What I will miss most is the people. I have had the great pleasure of working with a team of dedicated, hard-working, intelligent, and creative colleagues. Early on, I was a member of that team working to deliver the best IT capabilities for the university. Since I became a manager, I’ve seen my role more and more as being “a person who takes care of the people who take care of the computers.” I’m proud to part of a leadership team here where I have deep respect and admiration for every other member of that team. I know I’ve done my best for our people and I also know how much I appreciate their grace and patience when my best wasn’t all they hoped it could be. I will be ready to pass the responsibility of caring for them on to my successor when the time comes. It’s been very satisfying to be useful and make a difference here and I’m also ready to move on.

All my life, I have struggled with some amount of loneliness and some self-doubts. Much of the stress I’ve felt in my career has been the result of the gap between my own high expectations of myself and my ability to meet these. They say “it’s lonely at the top” and I imagine they’re right. I’ve never been at the top, but the closer I’ve gotten, the more conscious I’ve been of this loneliness. I am hopeful that I’ll feel more comfortable in retirement with fewer external demands from a smaller set of people! I’ve been reading Ian Brown’s “Sixty” lately and I don't think I agree with Brown that getting older is necessarily a process of getting lonelier. I think this can, and does, happen but I don't think it has to. To me it seems that the elders who work to stay engaged with family and community have less of this accumulating loneliness. I will strive to be one of these.

I do expect that one transition I will experience as I move on to the next phase of my life is that I will focus more on the spiritual in a search for inner peace. Even when I was a boy, I was interested in how various spiritual traditions and philosophies suggest we should live, and in how similar this guidance is from most of those. The common idea that we need to find a place of inner peace and proceed from there feels right to me. I’ve written about the Hindu Ashram system of life stages before and I very much like that they call this next stage in my life Vanaprastha (वनप्रस्थ) which can be translated from the Sanskrit literally as "retiring into a forest". I’ve found that meditation, mindful moments, and time in nature help a lot for me in seeking peace, as does remembering happy times, and I plan to devote more time to these activities.

Moving from a stage of life where the vast majority of my time has been focused on the needs of the university, and of the people and teams I’ve lead there, to a new stage where I can focus more time and energy on being my best self, and with the most important people in my life, my loved ones, will be wonderful.

Looking back, I’m proud of the race I’ve run, and glad that I ran it in a way that reflects who I genuinely am. I can see times of growth and joy, and times of struggle and pain. Races are like that. Looking forward I see about ten more months of running the best race I can and then embracing what is on the other side of the finish line. I may come back to do some work at the university if there is a place for me to work part time, and they see a way for me to contribute. I think doing this for the next couple of years might help me shift gears in a healthy way.

There are more milestones yet to pass on this last trip around the sun as a full-time employee at the university. I look forward to turning over my current role to my successor once they are hired, to the start of two more semesters, the holidays, and one more graduation. I am advised that the holidays will feel like a busier time of year, instead of a break, once I am retired! I hope I will make it to the end of my career making the right kind of difference for our team and the people I serve, and that I will walk away essentially satisfied with the contributions I’ve made.

“Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.” - William BlakeToday, I find myself thinking about work. With all the emphasis on labor-saving devices and the drive for more leisure time in the US and other industrialized countries, it would be easy to reach the conclusion that work is something to avoid when possible. In fact, I think that work can be one of the most satisfying activities in our lives.

For more than a century, especially in more prosperous areas, we’ve embraced the notion of modern conveniences that could save us time and effort. From washing machines and microwave ovens, to personal computers and the Internet. Some modern conveniences have lived up to the promise of saving us time and effort more successfully than others. Information technology is something of a paradox. It has allowed us to find, transform, and use information much more quickly. At the same time, the opportunities it creates for us to interact with data, and each other, more richly often result in us spending more of our time with our computers!

The effort over these years to allow working people more reasonable hours has resulted in innovations like the 40-hour work week, paid vacations, and sick leave for many. This kind of “leisure” has made a difference in our health, the time we have with family, our ability to travel more, and engage in our communities. For some, these important efforts to secure better working conditions may have also created the false impression that our goal should be to spend as little time at work as possible.

I spent much of my childhood with this kind of attitude. It seemed like work was necessary, but unsatisfying. It was something to be avoided or minimized. Chores? You had to do them, but who would want to? While we’d talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I thought of how this would allow me to get the things I wanted and to have a family. I didn’t have a clear understanding of how work could provide the satisfaction of earning your living, and of making a difference.

Even as I prepared for college, one of the things I looked at was a booklet that provided estimates of what I could earn from different career choices. There were definitely times as a boy and young man that I was getting the message that finding a way to minimize work, get rich quick, and have the most fun possible was the answer. I was sitting in a freshman history class and found it revolutionary when the TA argued that work itself could provide the greatest satisfaction.

He was talking about the value and meaning that work brings to life and providing a historical context that showed work in light of a time before the notions of salary and wages. Seeing work this way, as a means to create real value, and make a difference, changed my perspective. I had already chosen to major in enology, or wine making, by this point because I realized that making something tangible would be satisfying for me. Hearing this graduate student speak about the meaning of work, really brought things into focus for me.

With this different attitude towards work, I completed my university degree and began my professional career focused on seeking opportunities to work in the most meaningful way. I’d changed my major to psychology, and I ended up working in IT, so I didn’t achieve my desire to create something tangible in my professional life. Even with the fact that I’ve never much liked what I do as a manager, I’ve learned that in a broader context, I find my work rewarding and satisfying. By allowing me to care for and make a life with my wife and family, I feel that my work truly can be “love made visible”.

I’ve found so many ways to do satisfying work in my personal life. With the attitude that I want my work to express my love and make a difference, even things like housework contribute to my satisfaction. I’ve mentioned my volunteer work at SHARE and in Yosemite and these are deeply rewarding to me. I get to gratify my desire to make things tangible as we work on our home, cook, brew beer, and as I work in my woodshop. My creative work as a singer and songwriter bring me deep satisfaction and the work I do to enrich my relationships with my loved ones brings me the greatest joy of all.

I’ve realized over time that, if I were given unlimited leisure hours, I’d choose to spend a significant amount of my time on work. As I look forward to retirement, a very wise woman (my darling Sue) has told me that I’d better have a plan for my time. I know that plan will include many kinds of work. I look forward to our working together, to working alone as my creative process often requires, and to working with others in our community. Each form of work will bring it’s own satisfaction. I do look forward to more time for travel and leisure with my loved ones too, and I imagine it will be sweeter with good work for a counterbalance.

“Fun I love, but too much fun is of all things the most loathsome. Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth.” - William BlakeToday, I find myself thinking about work. With all the emphasis on labor-saving devices and the drive for more leisure time in the US and other industrialized countries, it would be easy to reach the conclusion that work is something to avoid when possible. In fact, I think that work can be one of the most satisfying activities in our lives.

For more than a century, especially in more prosperous areas, we’ve embraced the notion of modern conveniences that could save us time and effort. From washing machines and microwave ovens, to personal computers and the Internet. Some modern conveniences have lived up to the promise of saving us time and effort more successfully than others. Information technology is something of a paradox. It has allowed us to find, transform, and use information much more quickly. At the same time, the opportunities it creates for us to interact with data, and each other, more richly often result in us spending more of our time with our computers!

The effort over these years to allow working people more reasonable hours has resulted in innovations like the 40-hour work week, paid vacations, and sick leave for many. This kind of “leisure” has made a difference in our health, the time we have with family, our ability to travel more, and engage in our communities. For some, these important efforts to secure better working conditions may have also created the false impression that our goal should be to spend as little time at work as possible.

I spent much of my childhood with this kind of attitude. It seemed like work was necessary, but unsatisfying. It was something to be avoided or minimized. Chores? You had to do them, but who would want to? While we’d talk about what we wanted to be when we grew up, I thought of how this would allow me to get the things I wanted and to have a family. I didn’t have a clear understanding of how work could provide the satisfaction of earning your living, and of making a difference.

Even as I prepared for college, one of the things I looked at was a booklet that provided estimates of what I could earn from different career choices. There were definitely times as a boy and young man that I was getting the message that finding a way to minimize work, get rich quick, and have the most fun possible was the answer. I was sitting in a freshman history class and found it revolutionary when the TA argued that work itself could provide the greatest satisfaction.

He was talking about the value and meaning that work brings to life and providing a historical context that showed work in light of a time before the notions of salary and wages. Seeing work this way, as a means to create real value, and make a difference, changed my perspective. I had already chosen to major in enology, or wine making, by this point because I realized that making something tangible would be satisfying for me. Hearing this graduate student speak about the meaning of work, really brought things into focus for me.

With this different attitude towards work, I completed my university degree and began my professional career focused on seeking opportunities to work in the most meaningful way. I’d changed my major to psychology, and I ended up working in IT, so I didn’t achieve my desire to create something tangible in my professional life. Even with the fact that I’ve never much liked what I do as a manager, I’ve learned that in a broader context, I find my work rewarding and satisfying. By allowing me to care for and make a life with my wife and family, I feel that my work truly can be “love made visible”.

I’ve found so many ways to do satisfying work in my personal life. With the attitude that I want my work to express my love and make a difference, even things like housework contribute to my satisfaction. I’ve mentioned my volunteer work at SHARE and in Yosemite and these are deeply rewarding to me. I get to gratify my desire to make things tangible as we work on our home, cook, brew beer, and as I work in my woodshop. My creative work as a singer and songwriter bring me deep satisfaction and the work I do to enrich my relationships with my loved ones brings me the greatest joy of all.

I’ve realized over time that, if I were given unlimited leisure hours, I’d choose to spend a significant amount of my time on work. As I look forward to retirement, a very wise woman (my darling Sue) has told me that I’d better have a plan for my time. I know that plan will include many kinds of work. I look forward to our working together, to working alone as my creative process often requires, and to working with others in our community. Each form of work will bring it’s own satisfaction. I do look forward to more time for travel and leisure with my loved ones too, and I imagine it will be sweeter with good work for a counterbalance.

"Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving until the right action arises by itself?” - Lao Tzu

Earlier this week, a colleague of mine and I were invited to spend some time with a group of staff who aspire to become managers. This has inspired me to share with you much of what I shared with them and to write about twice as much as usual this week.

Over lunch, we each shared our experiences in careers that lead us to management positions and some insights about working as managers. My colleague’s story provided an excellent example of how a person can make and follow a plan that leads them to achieve their career goals. He set out to serve in many different capacities in IT and to become a manager with a solid grounding in the work of those he would manage. I was fortunate to hire him as a member of our staff many years ago and to watch him develop into the wonderful manager he is today.

My story was a good counterpoint to my colleague's, as I never set out to work in IT or to become a manager! I can’t claim to have planned my course and I’m just grateful that I found my way to a career that has allowed me to provide a good living for my family. Where my colleague was the first in his family to graduate from college, my grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, and uncles were all college graduates. My sisters and I all graduated from college. While I had hoped for a career in music, and had even considered the ministry as a young man, I went to college with the original intention to earn a degree in enology, or wine making. While I could do the necessary chemistry, I didn’t enjoy that and I went on to change my major to psychology. I hoped to earn my doctorate, work as a clinical psychologist and do research.

I moved to a city where I could pursue my Master’s degree, but ran out of money before I could enter that program. Recently married for the first time, I needed to find a way to make more money than my job as a bank teller provided and I answered a newspaper ad that lead me to a job for county government as a computer operator on IBM 370-158 mainframes running VS-1. Working with punch cards and magnetic tape, I had started my career in IT. Within two years, I had taught myself to program in IBM assembler language and got a job as a programmer for a savings and loan data processing bureau.

Within a year, I was the senior programmer in my group as there were significant opportunities for advancement with this company and also some turnover as colleagues pursued new positions. This job gave me such wonderful opportunities to learn new skills and make a difference. I can remember making changes in a general ledger program that improved I/O efficiency to reduce the run time from 6 hours to less than an hour and working on conversions that saw me working straight through from 10 pm Friday to 6 am on Monday. This privately-held company was the only place I’ve worked where there was a technical career path that would allow technicians to reach a position with the company similar to that of a vice president.

After several years, my first mentor approached me about coming to work for him as a systems programmer on IBM mainframes for the company and I was excited to pursue this new opportunity. I started my work focusing on storage and migrating data from 3330 disk packs to the newer 3350 disk drives. I went on to work on many aspects of the MVS environment and this may be the best job I can remember having in my career.

After 8 ⅕ years with the company, I took a job at a local university that was migrating to a new IBM mainframe from their current Cyber environment. This gave me the opportunity to work with many additional mainframe technologies including OS/390, zOS, CICS, VTAM, VM, AIX, and VSE. I interviewed, and was hired, as a senior technician, but one week later I was asked to take on the role of supervisor for the group. While I had never had an interest in managing others, this turned out to be the first step toward my career as a manager that would start 11 years later.

After I spent time supervising mainframe systems programmers, and AIX, Solaris, and Windows server systems administrators, the Director of our department approached me to ask if I would join the management team. While I never aspired, or planned, to be a manager, this opportunity less than two years after my second marriage gave me the chance to help make a better life for my family and I gratefully accepted. Looking back, I find it interesting that every time I applied for a more responsible position in management, I failed. Every time I advanced in my career as a manager, it was because I was asked by senior leaders to take on a more responsible role! While I never wanted to be a manager, and it is not my calling, it has provided a very good living for our family.

Another key part of my development as a manager was my work with SHARE (www.share.org). This oldest of computer users groups, founded in 1955, provided me with wonderful opportunities to learn about managing people, budgets, and projects, working collaboratively with others, communicating effectively, and making well considered decisions. While my work with the data processing bureau was my favorite job, my work with colleagues as a SHARE volunteer has been the one most rewarding and satisfying part of my career in IT. My wife and I found cherished life-long friends there, too, and we’ll always be grateful for all SHARE has done for us.

After sharing the story of my career, I shared with our colleagues four of the most important lessons from my time as a manger. First, I talked with them about the importance of learning from others and of finding mentors to help us grow. I’ve had several wonderful mentors and I still think of my first mentor, Gary, often and ask myself what he would do in challenging situations.  I told them the story of my becoming a “real systems programmer”. Called in late one night to respond to a system problem, I found issues with our catalogs and worked my way through to a solution. After several steps that appeared to make things worse, I made a change that resulted in an improvement. From there, each step lead me closer to restoring normal service and I ultimately had the system running normally in time for our clients on the east coast to begin the business day.

I wrote up my incident report and walked it to the boss's office to leave for him before going home to get some sleep. Gary often arrived early, so I wasn’t very surprised to see him sitting at his desk. I handed him my report and waited as he read it over. He was a kind, very intelligent, but taciturn Minnesotan and I was surprised when he set the report down after reading it, stood and reached out to shake my hand. He looked me in the eye and said, “Congratulations. Now you are a systems programmer.” He explained that he’d hired me knowing I had a lot to learn and that a person isn’t really a systems programmer until they’ve “brought the system to it’s knees and gotten it running again.”

Gary taught me that it is OK to hire someone expecting them to grow into the job. To be ready to see potential and to have faith in people. Gary was the one who first sent me to SHARE knowing that it would help me grow. He also taught me that one very powerful decision-making tool is working to understand what is right and then choosing the option that comes closest to that. After sharing this story, I also shared Roy Disney’s wonderful words "It's not hard to make decisions once you know what your values are."

The second important lesson I shared is the very real value and power of diversity. I've worked for women, and people of different national and ethnic backgrounds. I've worked for bosses older and younger than I am, and for gay and lesbian leaders. I’ve lead teams including many different kinds of people and I’ve learned how very valuable it is to have, and listen to, the different perspectives, ideas, and experiences they have to offer.

I told the group about my opportunity to work with an executive who had been difficult for many others to work for because she demanded the best from people and expected good data and clearly developed proposals. Ultimately, we learned from each other. I learned about many aspects of management much as we elevate our chess or tennis games when we play against a more skilled player. I think she learned from me that she could safely show her deep compassion more often and more fully. I can’t imagine how hard she had to work, and the obstacles she faced as a woman and a Latina, to reach the senior position she held when we worked together. Appearing “soft” may have been a luxury she couldn’t afford at first. I know that I saw her express her innate kindness to others more often over the years I worked for her.

I talked with the group about the importance of equality and equity, and the great value of diverse ideas, opinions, perspectives. I also emphasized that, while we have important work to do to ensure equality and equity, the real value of diversity will not be found in sameness. We want to level the playing field, but we need to retain and honor the rich diversity of the players.

The third lesson I shared is the deep importance of work/life balance. To be our best at work, we need to be whole, well-balanced people. Having learned the hard way by losing months of my life to a stress-related illness, I guess this may have been a case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” I encouraged them to try to learn this lesson sooner and better than I did! I used the story of sending a highly-skilled technician home one Thursday afternoon with instructions not to log in to work on our systems until he returned to work on Tuesday. He was taken aback and I reassured him that his work was excellent, he would be paid, and that he was a highly-valued member of our team. My concern was that he had been working long hours six and seven days a week and I feared he’d burn out. His wife had only recently had their first child and I thought it was important that he go home and have some time to reconnect with them. When we talked the next week, he thanked me and said the long weekend had really helped him get his priorities in order.

We are more than our work and I shared a favorite story of Bill Russell responding to a reporter who asked what it was like to be Bill Russell the basketball player. He said "I’m not Bill Russell the basketball player. I am Bill Russell. A man who plays basketball". This subtle, and crucial, distinction is at the heart of the lesson that having a good balance means having stronger relationships, including with yourself, and that will enrich your life more than work every will.  Also, when it is time for the hard work, your loved ones can help you through in ways that no one else can.

I finally encouraged these aspiring managers to learn how important it is to build bridges and relationships. Ultimately, work is about what we can accomplish together and professional development takes place in relationship with our colleagues. These relationships aren’t always easy, but I’ve found that it is almost always worth the effort. I shared a story about a colleague I struggled with for many years and who I have finally found a good relationship with for which I am grateful. I also shared Abraham Lincoln’s wise words "I do not like that man. I must get to know him better"

After sharing a few thoughts about what is next for me as I look forward to retirement, and answering some questions, I encouraged my colleagues to care for each other, and to help each other find what’s right, and do that. I left them with a quote from the wonderful Canadian singer-songwriter, Harry Manx, "Wisdom follows kindness and we know that for sure."

"Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” - Hans Christian Andersen"

As today is a holiday, this is not one of my Last 100 Mondays, and I’ll be writing a bit less this Independence Day. I am grateful for the freedom we enjoy and for the efforts of all those who have fought, protested, worked, and died to gain, protect and enhance our freedom. I read the Declaration of Independence again today and I imagine Thomas Jefferson would be glad that we continue to challenge inequality.

When he wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” I believe he meant “men” in the universal sense of all human beings. At times I’ve substituted “people” and I like a friend’s suggestion that this can simply be read as “all are created equal”.

Clearly, we have a lot of work still to do to realize these truths in the day-to-day lives of people in our nation. While created equal, not everyone is treated equally. The work to secure equal rights for women, all races and ethnicities, spiritual beliefs, gender orientations, abilities, ages, etc must go on.

We also have a lot of work to do to ensure that immigrants and refugees are treated as equal. Among the issues that Jefferson raises in the declaration with regard to the actions of King George are that “He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.” While times have changed and the need to populate the US has passed, there are still many who would treat immigrants and refugees as less deserving of freedom as others.

When Abraham Lincoln addressed the people at Gettysburg in November of 1863, he spoke of the need to work for “a new birth of freedom - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Some four years earlier, in a letter to Henry L. Pierce, Lincoln, declining an invitation to speak at an event in Boston to honor Jefferson’s birthday, wrote that "Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves” and that Jefferson had defined in the Declaration of Independence, “an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.” We must continue the work to honor this truth today and every day.

As we celebrate this 4th of July, let us celebrate our diversity and the freedom we have to remain ourselves as we come together to create this rich and vibrant nation. When we take a coin, or a dollar bill, with its image of the Great Seal of the United States, from our pockets, we are handling something that should remind us of a de facto motto of our nation. E Pluribus Unum - Out of many, one. So, while we celebrate our freedom today, let's remember to keep working to make sure we share it equally with everyone!

I’ll end my reflections today with a quote from John Muir’s “My First Summer in the Sierra” that describes one of my own favorite ways to enjoy our freedom. "Another glorious Sierra day in which one seems to be dissolved and absorbed and sent pulsing onward we know not where. Life seems neither long nor short, and we take no more heed to save time or make haste than do the trees and stars. This is true freedom, a good practical sort of immortality.”