On Being Useful

I've got this hang-up about being useful. Call it codependence or a need for acceptance and validation or some other psych terminology. I'm aware of it and deal with it in some good and some bad ways.

That being said, here are 2 things on being useful that came through my feed recently.

The first is from a pretty well respected blogger/author who has had a long career in software development and made the jump from programmer to technical management. That's the same basi trajectory of my career: Graduate college and get hired to write software. Lead a small team. Lead a bigger team. Run a department. VP of Engineering for a software company.... There is a prevalent concern with folks in that track that they will cease to be "productive" and, therefore, not useful. Here's what Rands says on the matter:

My deep-rooted fear of becoming irrelevant is based on decades of watching those in the tech industry around me doing just that - sitting there busily doing things they’ve convinced themselves are relevant, but are just Faux-things-to-do wrapped in a distracting sense of busy. One day, they look up from their keyboard and honestly ask, “Right, so, what’s Dropbox?”

And then I found this piece written by Oswald Chambers in the daily devotional "My Utmost for His Highest":

The issue is never of being of use to God, but of being of value to God himself. Once we are totally surrendered to God, He will work through us all the time. 

Just a few things to ponder...

Now, "On being Fat...."

Yeah, I'm in a mood today. Guess why....

240.4

That's a half pound gain for the week. And no wonder, the weekends are killing me. I gotta figure out why eating is such an overriding thought for me this time. In 2010, it just wasn't occupying so much of my thoughts but now it's on my mind all the time... Ugh.

Here's the LiveStrong data for Week 9.

Photo credit to contemplative imaging.