Deciding What's Important in Life

I’ve made a horrible mistake…

Making more money, getting a better job, proving I’m more successful than average from where I came from. Release more software, follow more people on Twitter, start more businesses.

That’s what I used to think was important.

Recently, I’ve had a pretty decent health scare and it’s had me realize I need to make some changes in life. I’ve pushed and pushed and pushed to attain all the business-related success - but I’ve lost so much while I was doing that.

I’ve lost a lot of good friends and relationships, I’ve gained a tremendous amount of weight (I weigh 375lbs), I’ve had to rush to the ER and to the doctors in the past few days. Sadly, as a lot of programmers have done, I’ve eaten like garbage, not exercised, and heavily abused alcohol. All of this to try to obtain a level, a measure of success, a solitary goal neglecting all else.

And it’s made me broken.

Not just physically, but mentally as well. I need to reset, I need to live a life - I need to take my own advice that sometimes being great at what you do is good enough.

I’m taking leave.

I’m taking leave from a lot of things, working on resetting my health, working on resetting my relationships. I know I will struggle with feeling less-than, or a hypocrite (I tell people to push the envelope, blog more, write more software, etc) - but I need to do what is best for me now. If I don’t, I quite might literally die.

Analytics would tell me that I don’t have that many regular readers, and I’m fine with that - but I did want anyone to know that does follow this blog that I’ll be taking time off from this, too. We all need to take care of our physical and mental health - and I need to set the example I wish to follow.

Thanks for reading all of these entries, all of these years. I’m sure this isn’t the end forever, but it has to be for now.