From Grumpy's Garage

I'm sometimes afraid to be seen online. "Why," you ask, "would Brian fear being seen?" Because I'm an imposter. I'm not really who I pretend to be. And I want to keep people from finding that out. I've recently begun to ask myself where this fear came from. When did it start? What were the circumstances? It began in late 2006 when I started working at Google. I had been a techno-geek for over a decade. As a consulting engineer in the '90s and '00s, I thought I knew a lot about this new-fangled internet thing. I enjoyed helping small businesses stake their claim to a piece of virtual real estate. I'd help them select and register a domain name, set up their DNS, email, and web servers, and build a functional website (though it would be considered crude by today's design standards). I built firewalls and kludged together programs (sometimes written from scratch) to make computers play nice together. I was hot stuff. In the area of how t...

Sunrise over Lake Union  I enjoy hearing my own thoughts. I know that sounds self-centered. Well, it is. It seems that many people can’t just be with themselves in silence. They must have news or music playing in the background. (Or what passes for news or music these days.) I start most days in contemplation: five minutes of Positive Intelligence (three minutes of the day’s focus, then two minutes of “PQ” reps, which grow the “self-command muscle”), then 20 minutes of silent meditation. It feels like ballast in my sailboat that helps me stay upright even in a blow. I used to practice guided meditation, but I soon found that I like just focusing on my breathing. Sometimes I’ll meditate about something on my mind, but I try not to get sucked into a spiral of angst, frustration, and anger. If I can imagine a solution and implement it myself, great, but there’s no reason to get worked up about something I can’t change. I love early morning walks. They let me get ready for a busy day. ...