Normally, especially this time of year, I would be pumping out a blog post about the latest things I’ve seen at some trade show (specifically, VMworld).  However, this year, my family gave me a great idea and instead of spending the last week of August with 20,000+ fellow virtualization nerds, my family and I took one of those “bucket list” places off our lists.  I spent the VMworld time frame in Wyoming and tooling around Yellowstone National Park.

Why am I even talking about this?  Well, the reason is that many of us in the industry sometimes get derailed from what really matters the most.  Personally, I have way too many friends, former or current, and colleagues, former or current, that spend entirely too much time worrying about their careers and less time worrying about things outside of work.

Personally, I feel as if I sacrificed by twenties for the sake of career advancement.  I traveled, as a consultant, on a pretty cool team with a major healthcare software company.  I got to see parts of the world that I figured this kid from the middle of nowhere Iowa was only ever going to read about.  However, what I also gave up was my own personal free time.  I rarely took vacations (to the point of routinely being reprimanded when my vacation time was going to well exceed maximums to carry over at the end of the calendar year).  With hindsight bias, this wasn’t probably the greatest thing I could have done.  Sure, I was seeing the world, but I was also only seeing the world from inside multiple datacenters.  For the most part, datacenters look the same, no matter what part of the world you travel to.  The only exception might be the power plug type you are plugging into a PDU.

Coming off this travel role, I started to branch out more, as I realized that I have zero social life.  Work had become my social life.  I had become a rather crusty curmudgeon and was routinely angry with way too many things.  I finally started to branch out with my elements of free time and found some rather enjoyable things to pursue in life.  I even started dating (which anyone who knows me that well knows that I’m pretty much a train wreck in that aspect of relationships).  I started down the road towards getting married and becoming a family man.

However, I still do feel the calling of the road.  As much as I try to avoid getting onto the road, this last calendar year has been a bit of a blessing and a curse.  I’m excited that I get to travel to various technical functions across the country.  I love getting out there and seeing other cities and experiencing the things they have to offer that I can’t get back in my neck of the woods.  What’s different is the guilt I feel being away from my family during that time.  We’ve had a standing agreement that I can do these things, as long as it doesn’t make the home life suffer.  Thus far, I’ve kept to this agreement and it’s been amicable.

Again, why the long-winded story?  I felt it was necessary to skip VMworld this year.  I did tell a few people that VMware technology isn’t a primary focus of my current job function right now (which is true), but that wasn’t enough to fully skip out on the conference.  Last year, my family made efforts to come along with me to VMworld.  While they enjoyed the many things external to the conference, I did not enjoy it.  Oh, I had fun with people and have a bunch of great stories with friends.  I did not enjoy having to try to balance my two worlds, public and private.  I constantly felt I was robbing time with my family there to be with business associates.

This year, my family and I decided that instead of coming back from the conference and hearing about the guilt I carried, we decided to take a vacation that was independent from any work function.  It worked out for the best.  I came back relatively refreshed and ready to tackle some challenges I’ve been avoiding at the day job.

So, as you, the reader, continue along with your career, I offer up one small piece of advice.  Find time in your busy career to enjoy the little things.  It’s ok to take a break now and then.  Use your vacation time and reestablish yourself with what’s important.  In my case, I got to spend quality time with my family, in a place where my cell phone couldn’t distract me.  Plus, how cool is it that I got to tent camp for 6 nights on a super volcano?  🙂