life

After battling IBD complications through the summer and fall, I've come to a point where surgery is necessary. You can learn more about my health issues in my lighthearted book about Crohn's Disease, You Only Have Crohn's Once!.

The surgery (an ostomy revision) will take place tomorrow, December 2, and it'll be a pretty rough recovery, so I'm not planning on doing any substantial work until at least 2023.

It's ironic I had just given a presentation titled Just Say No: Staying sane while you maintain weeks before learning the surgery was necessary. I was planning a video on the topic (burnout, protecting your time, and open source maintainership) this year, but I guess the blog post will have to do.

I have plenty of fun tech and software I want to highlight here and on YouTube (some of it detailed in my video embedded below), but for now it's all on the shelf waiting until my strength returns:

Saying yes is easy—at first.

It makes you feel better. And it makes you feel like you can do anything! And the person you're saying yes to also gets a happy feeling because you're going to do something for them.

Saying no is hard. It's an admission you can't do something. And worse still, you're disappointing someone else who wants you to say yes.

But here's the thing: none of us is a god. We're people. We have a certain amount of mental resources.

Some people are kind of crazy and can do a lot more than you or I can, but nobody can do it all. And sometimes you can burn the midnight candle for a little while, but you're just building up debt. Every 'Yes' is a loan you have to pay off.

Between writing a book on Ansible, coaching volleyball at De Smet, preparing presentations for STL.JS and DrupalCon, and—lest I forget the most important responsibility of all—being a loving father and husband (see photo below!), I haven't had more than a minute to spare for writing for this blog, or processing some of the fun photos I've taken of ducks, deer, a fox, or feral cats running around our house!

I'm at the hospital this week, so I'll be unable to answer many emails, reply to comments, or post any new content. The spam hammer is still running, though, so you spammers out still won't get any mercy!

Please spare a prayer for me, as I still don't know what's wrong, but did get to experience some amazing new things, like using a toilet that slides out from under a sink, and curling up in a ball while someone withdrew brain juice from my spine!

Lately I've been working on finishing a few side projects – some websites, some apps, etc., and I thought I'd list off a few of the things I've done lately here for posterity:

This week I've been visiting doctors, getting checkups, getting tests, and generally being a lab rat. My health has been better, so any prayers you could spare could be appreciated... but enough about me!

Since I've been feeling not-so-good lately, and since the whole HHS mandate fiasco's been so annoying to me, I've felt relatively pessimistic in the past week.

Well, during one of the many waiting room visits (I hesitate to call them doctor visits, since I usually spend more time in the waiting room ;-), I heard a lullaby play over the hospital's PA system. Nobody seemed to notice it, but I asked one of the receptionists what the lullaby meant (I figured maybe it was employee nap time or something like that, being 3 in the afternoon...).

When she told me that a baby was just born in the labor and delivery area, a little tear caught in my eye. What a great thing to have happen while I was sitting there!

A few days later, I was back in the waiting area for a while, and just before I was called to get a test done, I heard the lullaby again (awesome!)... and about a minute later, another lullaby!

My wife and I have crossed the one-year threshold; after achieving this milestone, she told me, "Once we get past a year, we're set for life, right?"

Christmas 2011: I'm trying to look normal, I think. Didn't work.

While it's not true that strengthening the marriage bond gets easier over time (it's always a challenge—but in the best possible way!), it is true that seemingly-insignificant things (like doing the dishes, emptying the trash, and saying daily prayers) we do in our marriage help a lot.

Our faith, for instance, needs constant attention and care. We have already had periods in our married life where we've fallen short of our committment to pray the Rosary daily, or to attend daily Mass more often. We continually struggle to make faith a priority in our relationship. But we push through, and keep on getting back into good habits of prayer—together as often as possible.

Keeping up with chores is another area where routine is important, but often done haphazardly. We have a wonderful chore spreadsheet, and we often go on 'cleaning rampages' where we complete a bunch of chores in a day (well, that's more me than my wife... she usually does her chores regularly), but we also skip chores some weeks due to a busy schedule. We're not living in a dump, and nothing is unsanitary, but things tend to go downhill quickly once you let the routines slip away too far.

Routines may sound boring, but they are important for a strong relationship.

My wife came back from the grocery store today and recounted a heartwarming interaction with the bagger in the checkout line:

Wife: "I like that you're always so happy and smiling."

Bagger: "Well, I just like living, you know? Jesus is nice. Things are working out good."

I think this would be a pretty good prayer of thanksgiving during this consumeristic season.