November Highlights:
- Lilah has fun volunteering at color run
- I see the Anthony Bordain show at the Pantages theater
- We take our first snow trip of the season to Mammoth
- We celebrate Thanksgiving
- Luke joins the Big Bear snowboard team
- I decide to make a career change
Lilah is One Confident Young Lady Who Says What She Means
Recently, I followed a link to an article that covered several different character traits associated with emotionally intelligent people. There was one point in particular that stuck with me and it was something to the effect that emotionally intelligent people are not afraid to honestly call people out when they are not honoring their commitments. Lilah has never been shy to express her feelings in this regard and this month provided her another opportunity to do so when a boy in her class wasn’t doing his part in a group project. Apparently, Lilah’s team had to produce a video based on interviews with different members of her group. Lilah said the boy in the group was giving one or two word answers which was not going to work. The other members of the team could see that the boy was not cooperating but nobody was saying anything until Lilah stepped in and said, “You know what, this is not going to work. We need more from you than one word answers.” The boy said that he did not choose to be part of the group and was being forced to do this assignment by the teacher. Lilah said, “That’s fine, we did not want you in our group either, but we need to complete this assignment.”
I don’t know what her exact words were since I was not there, but Lilah told me that her friend Morgan said that was the meanest thing she had seen her say to another person face to face. Lilah said she felt frustrated by the situation and that nobody was saying anything — so right or wrong, she expressed what she felt and the boy ended up cooperating in the end. Though I may not have told the boy “we did not want him in our group,” sometimes, in the heat of the moment, you say what you mean and deal with the consequences. All I can say is kudos to Lilah for having the courage to take a stand — something tells me that even though she may not have been diplomatic, the boy understood there was truth in what she said and that’s why he ultimately capitulated and helped his team.
Luke Joins New Snowboard Team and Sets Out to Build a Computer
For the last year now, Luke has been talking about how he wants to build his own computer for gaming and, yes, school too. From a distance, I’ve watched as he’s read up on the parts he needs, looked up do-it-yourself videos on YouTube, and become quite the expert on all the pieces he needs to build his dream machine. So you can only imagine how his eyes lit up when I told him to research the parts he wanted and then put them into a list so that we can order them and build the machine. The process took him a little over a week or so as he deliberated over different options and figured out the best deals, but the parts have now been ordered and if all goes well we will have the machine build well before Christmas. In the meantime, every day seems like Christmas around here as different components make their way to our doorstep via deliveries from UPS and the US Postal Service. The boxes are piling up and soon we will have all the parts we need to assemble Luke’s lightening fast PC.
The other thing we signed up for was the Big Bear snowboard team. The last few seasons, Luke has boarded with the Mountain High team which we both really like. What we haven’t liked about the Mountain High experience was the relatively short season. Last year, they ran out of snow by the first week of March. Big Bear tends to typically have a bit longer season so we are hoping that holds true again this year so that Luke can have a little more practice time. The only drawback to the Big Bear team is that it is about 45-50 minutes farther away from us, making one day turnaround trips a little more arduous — at least for the driver ;).
I Make a Career Change
For the past 12+ years, I’ve worked for Semtech in marketing communications. It has been a steady gig for me and pretty convenient as it’s only five minutes from home. However, for quite sometime now I’ve been thinking of changing things up. Initially, I thought I might go off and do something on my own. I actually expressed this idea to Lilah and she simply said, “That doesn’t sound very smart. Most new businesses fail.” I smiled when she gave me this answer as it’s the answer I would expect from her and I told her, “I love you Lilah, don’t ever change.”
Soon after these thoughts of going solo however, I was approached by a former colleague regarding a startup she had recently joined in Santa Barbara. In short, she told me about the place, I liked the story, I met the team and liked them, and before I knew it I accepted an offer to join them first thing in the new year. It’s a big move for sure and it’s a lot riskier than working for a public company, but there is also a lot more upside reward. In any case, I’m excited about starting something new and I’m looking forward to being the new kid at school soon.
That’s all for now…more next month…