nick.org

On Tuesday, I was watching a Mariner's game and Jerry happened to come sit on my
lap. He watched a bit before something caught his eye. He stared for a bit longer and
then it dawned on him - "poi!" he said. (Poi is Japanese for throw.)

Jerry had realized that the pitcher was throwing the ball to the catcher. We spent the next 10 minutes watching the game - with Jerry and I both noting when "poi" happened. Then Jerry hopped up, ran over to where my baseball mitt and ball were (on the shelf) and pointed at it - "boh boh" (ball).

Eriko handed him the baseball and soon he was making dents in the floor. It was such an exciting moment, for a multitude of reasons - to see his face and body language as he made the connection between what he did and what the players were doing, to have him understand exactly how to follow along, and for it all to be around baseball... it was very cool.

Today we spent about 30 minutes (total, morning + afternoon) throwing the baseball. Jerry has this mischevious streak in which he throws objects where you aren't and laughs, but that has been very rare with the baseball. Perhaps it is because I end up looking dissappointed and say "ball" instead of laughing along with him - and hearing me say "steeeeeerike" is so much more fun. ;P

Here's a great video of Jerry throwing an orange ball:http://photos.kirsch.org/albums/jerry16/MOV03776.mpg.

"what's the key to success?" - "two words: good decisions."
"what's the key to good decisions?" - "one word: experience."
"how do i get experience?" - "two words: bad decisions."

This has been a bad week for sleeping. Jerry had a fever last weekend, so
he didn't sleep well on Saturday night. That led to Eriko and I sleeping poorly and being a little short with each other. I had Jerry for the day, so he had lots of time to share his cold with me.

Then comes Sunday night - Jerry couldn't sleep well and neither could I. I spent most of the night holding him in one position or another and probably got about 2 hours of sleep, at best. There has only been one night this week where I had 6 hours of sleep (and they weren't interrupted, of course.) The average has probably been more like 4.

Part of this is my fault - Jerry will go to bed about 9 and I'll stay up for another 2-3 hours (as will Eriko) enjoying some time for myself. Jerry will sleep until about 1 or 2. If I'm lucky, it has only taken about an hour to get him back to sleep (via bouncing, walking, holding, etc.) One night he decided it was time to play, so it took close to 3 hours to get him back to sleep. Last night I laid with him to help him sleep (which it did) but it didn't really help me.

I don't think I've slept for 6+ hours straight in almost two years...

I find myself often engaged in thought, creating a blog entry in my head - far more often than not, that entry never sees the light of day. When I discover how to turn thoughts into actions, I will be SO much more productive...

Which brings me to another topic I've been thinking quite a bit about lately (or on and off for the last 5 years, if you check out the history...) - how to make more time for the things I consider important. As I become more aware of my own actions and how certain choices lead to others, I am starting to narrow in on the simple fact that I haven't clearly defined what is important. There is a long litany of items that I "want" to do, or "need" to do, and I end up making time for little of them and feeling frustrated by it - because there are simply too many.

For example, I downloaded 30 research papers today - why? I'm certainly not going to have time to read 30 papers - I'll be surprised if I even read one! I was also noticing today at work that I have two monitors - one of them happens to be > 30" and the other is 24". I don't need two. If I focused on one then I would become more efficient using it. I currently have three books from the library - why? I wasn't able to finish reading the last one, or 7 out of the last 10. The list goes on and on.

My desires are simply not in touch with reality, which creates more frustration and ends up with less performance instead of more. As my mentor says, "simplify, focus, and execute." Simplify means choose - choose what is important and ultimately, what isn't important. That's difficult; the choice feels like so many doors will be shut, but more likely, it will open many doors that happen to lead somewhere! Focus means being comfortable with the choices you've made; you can't revisit them at a frequent interval or no progress can be made.

I've got some choices to make. I recently was surprised when someone expressed interest in purchasing the MG. Not surprisingly, I haven't heard back - the car is simply not attractive at the moment. However, the idea of parting with it became exciting - it was one less item to worry about. I'm really torn on what my hobby will be at work, or whether I will try and stay technical at work, or whether I'll actually invest some energy in Japanese, or whether I'll prepare for the CS GRE, or ... too many choices at the moment and by focusing on "all" of them, I'm making progress on none of them.