January 06, 2008

 Sunday, January 06, 2008 1:28:35 PM 

The Matthews plan to make an offer on our house. We’ll find out Monday exactly how much the offer will be for. They said that they would keep our net about 120K. I am happy with that. The planned close date is Feb. 1st which I am also very happy with but possibly a little stressed in as much as there is not much time between now and then. I expected to have more emotion over getting an offer but I am sure quite a bit of the positive emotion is tempered by the stress of the “to do” list and a lot of the negative emotion is tempered by the excitement to move. I will say that having a big paycheck right before the end of pay checks is going to make things more comfortable. We still run out of money in a blinding hurry but at least we will be able to have a little more time to get an income flowing. I don’t have particular financial goals for 2008 yet. I know one is to be in a situation that I do not need to get a full time job and do not need to stop traveling.

Happiness is more important than wealth. I am really excited for the potential for happiness that our new endeavor brings us. I am not sure exactly how I am going to react to all of the new found freedom. It seems that I will either improve my discipline and productivity or they will slack. Really the truth is that they will likely stay about the same ebbing and flowing like they do now. I know that the motivation to stay “free” is going to help push me into getting the things done that need to be done. I catch myself often telling myself things to the effect of “What kind of person do you want to be?” or “You can succeed on your own if you can’t do X.”.

I know I will need to do a lot of uncomfortable things however in a strange way that is one of the things I am looking forward to. I guess it is a growth opportunity thing. There is a person inside of me that has not yet developed into the person I want him to be. The new flexibility will hopefully allow me to concentrate on that development without all of the distractions that are inherent to a suburban employee lifestyle. The thing that is difficult as I think I have mentioned before is finding the balance between not pushing myself hard enough and pushing myself too hard. I think what I will do is error toward pushing myself too hard and pay close attention to my health. I know when I am running I am a lot better about being able to push myself to do the little things. Like running however I need to find the pace that is challenging but not breaking.

We need to take things one day at a time. I think the first couple of weeks are going to be like the start of a race where it is tempting to sprint at full speed. I know I will get frustrated if I try to get too much done in too little time. One of the frustrations I have now is that it doesn’t seem like I am able to get anything done while I am working because work is draining me so much. I truly believe that after the drain of work leave I will be much happier with my productivity. A big challenge of course will in keeping myself productive toward things that matter.

I need to write a goodbye letter to everyone at work or at least I would like to. I have been putting it off waiting for the perfect writer mood but it isn’t coming. I’ll take a quick crack at it here just the same and as a bit of practice in pushing myself.

Dan’s letter to colleagues:

As many of you have heard I am terminating my employment with AMIS at the end of January 2008. Before I leave I would like to thank everyone for the opportunity I have had to work with you. I have learned so much from each of you.

I have decided to take a position with Mind Jump Software as owner, CEO, CFO, Lead Developer, Chief of Marketing, Secretary and Janitor. The base pay is pathetic but the company has a very generous profit sharing plan that I hope will make up for things. The company is very flexible toward accommodating my life goals and lines up well with all of my personal values at least to the extent which I understand them.

It was a very difficult decision to leave AMIS. I enjoy the work I do as a CAD engineer. I enjoy the people I work with. At this point in my life I got a very strong impression that it was time for me to reach for more and move on. If my life course leads me back toward corporate work AMIS->ON Semiconductor is where I will start my search.

Of the many fears that I have needed to work through in solidifying my decision to venture out into my own business one that I hope to be able to overcome is losing contact with all of the great people I have worked with at AMIS. If anyone finds themselves curious what I am up to they can check my blog page. It is one of my 2008 goals to keep the blog up to date and interesting.

Also for work related items even though my checks from AMIS are scheduled to stop when work stops I would not mind a few e-mails with quick questions if you believe I am holding an answer that could help. Those kind of e-mails can’t be too frequent of course but I would like to do as much as I can to minimize the impact of my loss to AMIS.

END OF LETTER

Hmmmm. I’m not quiet happy with the letter. That’s probably part of the reason that I was putting off writing it. With that said the letter is what I had in my head so maybe at least having it put down on paper will free up my mind to improve it rather that simply keep holding it.

I’m sure part of what I don’t like about the letter is that I don’t have my blog setup yet and I am not sure how to do it and also I know that I don’t have a very good track record as a blogger. In fact I don’t even remember where my blog is!. I also have trouble finding the balance between what to keep personal and what to make public. I don’t think anything I have in my journal now would necessarily be bad public but some of it is relatively private. I also think I do better writing if I am holding the belief that no one will read what I am writing. If not better at least I have more freedom in my writing which makes the function of the writing as a method to generate and understand ideas more effective. I suppose the answer is that this is one of those places where I am going to need to push myself. First write in the journal and then a rewrite out to the blog page. If I leave myself enough time to do it and keep the priority high enough on it then I will be able to do it.

*** As an after note I still haven't written a farewell e-mail to my AMIS collegues. For some reason I have had a mental block against doing it.