February 3, 2006
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Another one of life's little lessons
AKA: When life slaps you around for being cocky
Angel Voice
Fire Bomber (Macross Dynamite 7 OST)
mimi wo sumaseba kasuka ni kikoeru daro
hora ano koe
kotoba nanka ja tsutaerarenai nanika
itsumo kanjiru
are wa tenshi no koe
If you strain your ears, you can probably hear it
Hey That voice
I always feel something
that can't be put into words
That's an angel's voice
MERODI- wa kieru yami ni shimikomu you ni
EKO- nokoshite
shizuka ni orite'ku DI-PU BURU- no O-RORA ni
ore mo utau ze
It leaves an echo
Like a melody fading into the darkness
It quietly descends in a deep blue aurora
I also sing
shinjite-ita mono ga aru
BAKA da to iwareta keredo
kawaranakatta ano hi no yume
There's something I believe
Though I'm called a fool for it
The dream I had that day hasn't changed
ANGEL VOICE mitsuketa no sa
chiheisen no mukou ni KIRARI hikatta
omae no sugata wa yume ja nakatta
nagarete nagarete ikou
itsuka mata aou ze
hitomi tojireba
itsumo kokoro no naka ni ANGEL VOICE
ANGEL VOICE I found it
It was shining beyond the horizon
Your appearance wasn't a dream
It flows and flows on
Let's meet again
When I close my eyes
it's always in my heart, that ANGEL VOICE
kokoro wa kawaru keshiki to onaji you ni
shikata nai no sa
kami-sama nante doko ka kimagure dakara
ate ni suru na yo
The heart changes, just like the scenery
It can't be helped
"Where is God?" is a whimsical question
So don't count on getting an answer
hashiri-tsuzukete iyou ze
tachidomaru no wa mada daro
tadoritsukitai yami no mukou
Let's go on running
It's not yet time to stop
I wanna get past the dark
ANGEL VOICE kanjita no sa
haruka na mune no kodou RIZUMU awasete
yatto kono basho de futari deaeta
omae no sono sugata
kono me ni yakitsukeru
HEVI- na yoru ni mo
kitto chikara ataete kureru ANGEL VOICE
ANGEL VOICE I felt it
The distant beat of the heart joins the rhythm
At last we can meet here
Your appearance
Burns into my eyes
Even in a heavy night
It certainly gives me strength ANGEL VOICE
WOW OH OH WOW OH OH ....
WOW OH OH WOW OH OH ....
mimi wo sumaseba itsumo kikoeru darou?
hora ano koe
are wa tenshi no koe
Strain your ears, don't you hear it always?
Hey That voice
That's an angel's voice
I was watching the Macross 7 OAV earlier (and yes, I finally got all my Macross 7 collection!) and it brought back memories, more so than just the series which I finished watching a couple weeks ago. It made me realize that as good as things are right now (stress and mental exhaustion notwithstanding) I am happy where I'm at and with what I'm doing. But you're never 100% satisfied, right?
Long-term I know I want to teach 4-year college and I know what I need to do to get there but sometimes it's good to just stop for a minute/hour/day and look at where you are and how good life's been to you and how much of an ungrateful oaf you've been
The things that you learn in maturity aren't simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays in character.
You come to understand that most people are neither for you or against you; they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you -- a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.
From a speech: John W. Gardner
Yesterday was insane at work. It's been a few times that I've felt like the critiques and comments, while productive and all, were directed to me as a person and not to me as a professional. Not since my last boss that I felt so overwhelmed. I understand intellectually what happened and why things happened the way they did but it still killed my enthusiasm and energy for everything... I went home to keep working on my miniatures and all I managed was to stare at them for an hour or so before going to bed and watch Babylon 5 until I crashed and fell asleep.
Part of the speech by Steve Job made me think a lot:
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me Ð I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything Ð all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Steve Jobs Commencement Address @ Stanford -- 2005
There is a downside to being successful and happy where you are is that you grow lazy, complacement and intransigent, at least that's what happened to me. I've lost track of what and who is really important for me in my life. I've made up excuses not to do some things, I've come up with hundreds and hundreds of reasons not to do the things I know I should be doing. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything but I'm good at what I do, at least all the feedback I'm getting seems to indicate that. MY peoples' skills seem to have improved or so I've been told (the jury is out on that one though... I'm not completely sure I'm where I want to be.)
Crazy times
Jars of Clay (Much Afraid)
You’re cold that way
And that’s why you say
The things that you say
You can’t attract
The things that you lack
You’re trying in vain
Chorus:
It seems it’s always the crazy times
You find you’ll wake up and realize
It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right
You spiral down
You’ve broken your crown
You don’t feel like a queen
You’ve seen the proof
But you’re still crying wolf
You’ll never believe
[chorus]
You try to climb a broken ladder
Grip the missing rungs
And fall down, down, down
Seems sometime ago you said
This wouldn’t last
And now you sit here crying
Beside your bed
You feel left for dead
You kneel in the dark...
It takes more than your saline eyes
To make things right
[chorus]
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