My dad turned 70 this year and in celebration my oldest brother, Robin, had his son record this cutness filled video. 

“Do what you have to do in life, move forward and you’ll be surprised by how much these things didn’t matter.” – Modified Don Draper quote by Jeff Lail.

Love him, or hate him, James Altucher is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers that inspires me to write more open and candid about my life and learnings. Below is an excerpt from a post he wrote on advice he wants to give his daughters. I think it’s advice that everyone should subscribe to.

• Fly kites as much as possible. While they are in the air, they keep you on the ground
• Don’t read the newspaper so much. They sometimes breed the worst horror fiction.
• Never do anything you don’t want to do. Even if it seems selfish at first, life is too short.
• Diversify everything in your life, including the people you listen to for advice.
• Learn lots of games. They turn you into a killer without you ever having to hurt someone.
• This is a cliché, but never listen to anyone who says “You can’t do that”. Those are usually the people who can’t do it. Not you.
• Even though life is short, there’s also no rush. You have to put on a parachute before you jump out of a plane.
• Preparation is the key to having good luck. And lots of it.
• Every day is an adventure even though you might not realize the specifics of it until years later.

Today I was asked by someone at #ACPA11 if, “I was in the family?” Not knowing what he meant, I paused and laughed thinking he meant the mob. I then said, “What do you mean?” He responded by saying, “Oh never mind then, that means you’re not.” He went on to tell me it’s another way of asking someone if they are gay. My response was, “Ah, no sorry I’m not.” He then responded, “It’s funny people feel the need to say sorry.” I agreed. I then stupidly pointed to my wedding ring and said I’m actually married. Which really isn’t, nor should be, a fact about your sexual orientation. It just means I’ve committed my life to someone as gays are now also ‘legally’ able to as well.

I love when I have life moments where I learn something by tripping and landing in a pile of mud. Next time I walk down that path I’ll know how to better walk so not to sound as stupid. I’ll know what the question “In the Family” really means, and I’ll know not to say “sorry” as if I need to apologize for who I am, just as much as he doesn’t need to apologize to me for who he is.

For six years I worked from home and thought it was perfect to be able to stroll from the kitchen to "work" with my oatmeal in hand. For the past ten months I've been working, for the first time in my life, out of an office and now I know I'll never go back to working from home.

It's not that working from home doesn't have its positives, it's just that I didn't realize how much the negatives actually out weigh the positives until I wasn't working from home.

The biggest advantage I've discovered in "office life" is the separation of work and life. While working at home, I was never good at setting boundaries between when I was working and when I wasn't. The computer was always just an arms length away.

Now I've physically forced myself to have boundaries, and mentally I get excited for both. While eating my oatmeal in the morning, I mentally get excited for work. Like a basketball player prepping for a game. Then as my day winds down, usually around six, I mentally get excited to head home and not be working. In both situations, I'm more present than I've ever been before.

Another advantage of "office life" is in valuing my work. When I worked from home, work time was always a bit flexible. If something came up (family call, store run, mail, tv show, etc) I would easily be able to pause my work and go do it. Even more so than Annie, who also worked from home, because she had a boss she contracted for. I am my boss. Now my work hours are more defined and everyone around me treats them as such. It allows me to be more focused and present while at work.

On travel days, I tend to stay home before heading off to the airport, but I find it really hard to get into the work zone while there because I've trained myself so well over the past ten months to disassociate my home from my work.

I know some people work from home with great success, I realized I'm not one of them. All I want to do at home is spend quality time with family and friends.

Tony Judt was a remarkably insightful historian who past away a few weeks ago from a long battle with ALS. As a tribute to Tony, NPR replayed a recent interview with him for their Fresh Air program. 

Throughout the interview, Tony shares his wisdom on a plethora of topics and is worth a full listen. One section that struck me the most was his thoughts on dying, religion, and the afterlife…

"I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't believe in a single or multiple godhead. I respect people who do, but I don't believe it myself. But there's a big 'but' which enters in here. I am much more conscious than I ever was — for obvious reasons — on what it will mean to people left behind once I'm dead. It won't mean anything for me. But it will mean a lot to them. It's important to them — by which I mean my children or my wife or my very close friends — that some spirit of me is in a positive way present in their lives, in their heads, in their imaginations and so on. So [in] one curious way I've come to believe in the afterlife — as a place where I still have moral responsibilities, just as I do in this life — except that I can only exercise them before I get there. Once I get there, it will be too late. So, no God. No organized religion. But a developing sense that there's something bigger than the world we live in, including after we die, and we have responsibilities in that world."

Thinking about an afterlife scientifically leaves a dry cotton taste in my mouth knowing that my body will either be repurposed for science/medicine or decomposed back into the Earth. I want there to be more, but thinking so only invites the same rational that a Flying Spaghetti Monster rules us all. 

Tony, however, opened me to an afterlife concept that is much more appealing. My life will live on. It lives on in all the people I interact with while alive. It lives on in the ideas, relationships, emotions, connections, products, and change I bring to this world while still alive. That's an idea of an afterlife I can live…and die with.