2012 - The Year I Re-Invent Myself

     Last year I turned forty.  That is an amazing sentence to see myself type.  I am forty years old.  I don't feel like I am forty years old.  I still playfully state that I have cat like reflexes and can easily keep up with the kids in video games.  Yet I can remember when I was young that I used to think thirty year olds were old.  I still can't believe I am forty years old!

     Depending how long I live I could be half way through my life.  In actuality I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and my life would be over.  That thought doesn't leave me with a warm fuzzy.  Not that getting hit by a bus would give anyone a warm fuzzy but what if you were at the end of your life?  Would you have any regrets?  Would you have anything that you wanted to do but kept putting off?  Or would you look back at your life and think I did everything I wanted to do?  That is what I've been thinking about a lot lately.  Introspection is a good thing as long as you see what you like.  My problem is I see many things I want to change and many things I still want to do.

     What do I want to do?  I want to start traveling the world with my beautiful wife.  There are so many places I want to see and experience with her!  I want to buy her dinner in Paris with a view of the Eiffel tower in the background.  I want to tour Australia with her by my side.  I want to stand with my wife in the middle of stonehenge and dance with her.  I want to travel to Alaska and gaze upon the northern lights with her.  I want to live long enough to see what kind of adults my kids turn out to be.  I want to help them in their major life decisions and be there for them in case they misstep.  I want to see them have their own kids.  I want to piss my kids off by showering their kids with gifts (grandparent spoiling!).  I want to see the men my daughters bring home to seek their hands in marriage.  I can't wait to show them my gun/sword/axe collection <grin>.  As you can see I have many things I want to do.

     What do I want to change?  That is a complex question and I have a complex answer.  The first thing I want to immediately change is centered around two of my children.  Sadly two of my three kids live apart from me.  So I don't feel they've had as much exposure to the values that are all things Billy.  What do I believe in?  What are my values?  These are the things you want your kids to know but how do you expose those values and beliefs to kids who don't live with you?  They have glimpses into my life when they visit but I want my legacy to be crystal clear.  That is only one element I want to change.

     Secondly I want to re-invent myself professionally this year.  Let me take a few steps back to explain that statement.  I am forty years old!  Yet when I look back at what I thought I'd be doing and what I am doing it is radically different.  The more I looked back at my career the more I saw how it was guided by others instead of Billy doing what Billy wants to do.  In my early twenties I was set out to prove someone wrong with my career.  You see I was told that I would fail in the real world because of some decisions I had made early on in life.  Boy did I prove that person wrong :).  I succeeded at EVERYTHING that I did professionally.  In my thirties I found myself guiding my career to impress someone who's opinion I valued.  Since then I've been on cruise control enjoying the spoils of my ability to succeed.  That sounds great right?  However if you take a close enough look I'm not actually doing what I want to be doing.  For most of my career I've been either trying to prove someone wrong or trying to impress others.  To address this I am going to test that ability to succeed as I re-invent myself this year.

So how do I change the things I want to change?  How do I convey my value and belief system to my children who live afar?  How am I planning on re-inventing myself professionally?  How am I going to accomplish all the things I want to do?  You'll have to wait for some follow up blog posts where I'll cover each one in the detail it deserves.  For now just know that this is the year Billy is going to re-invent himself and that more is definitely coming.