Sunday morning, I wake up at 8 AM after a busy Saturday, and the first thing I see, is a happy birthday message on IM. WTF? It’s not my birthday until December… Then I connect the dots, and I realize it’s the 1’st of June, Child’s day. In Romania, happy birthday stands for happy anniversary also, so “Happy Birthday” to all of you out there, make sure you don’t lose the kid in you. The piece of you that enjoys the sun, that enjoys a good time just sitting around with friends, the innocence of childhood. We all grow up, and become… “grown ups”, but marching through life with just that it just ain’t worthed.

Life provides tests almost at every corner, small tests, big tests, hidden tests and upfront tests. Take them as they come, one at a time, enjoy the test, as much as the result, otherwise, is like taking a gondola in Venice for he first time just to get to the other  side of the canal. Try to see the big picture, try to prioritize. Do you really need that? no, that’s not a good question, the question would be: out of 3 things, A, B and C, which one is the most important? You are doing all of them at the moment, but are you sure you are giving everything for each one of them? is it worth spending all your time on more tasks than you can fulfill, or on tasks that you can barely fulfill?

I have a programming background behind me, and I could have become a programmer. I also have a server administration background, and I became a server administrator. What made me choose that? It was a coffee break at a Microsoft conference a few years ago, when talking to one of the key speakers I asked him condescendingly: “Just now, at this conference, you’re a Microsoft evangelist, you work with Microsoft servers, but what operating system do you have on your gateway/firewall server?” It was a stupid question, and I was 80% sure of the answer, and I was right: he whispered : “Linux of course…” But I’m not trying to make a point here about the pro’s and con’s of operating systems, the ongoing flame war between Microsoft & Linux, I’m just saying that, that little stupid question, helped starting a conversation between the speaker and I, private conversation, in the lobby. He was a good speaker, a good salesman, and a brilliant tech so I enjoyed every moment, but before going back inside, he gave me something to think about. He asked me: “Do you want to be a mediocre programmer in an age filled with programmers? Or do you want to be a brilliant server administrator? Think about it, and try to choose what’s best for you…” At the moment, I’m not a brilliant server administrator, but I’m a good one, and I’m improving daily. Still, from time to time, I start working on different projects, which take me off my “path”. Let’s consider A: Server Administration, B: Social life (family, friends) and C: one of those other projects. In order to do A+B+C one needs to make sacrifices on each one, in order to fulfill them, which means, being average, being mediocre. Try to focus on what’s most important of the three, try to see the big picture. Combining two of them is the ideal situation, but we never live in an ideal situation.

In real life, we always have A, B, C, D, E, F, […], Z. Try to prioritize in order to grow efficiency in order to become a brilliant nurse, a briliant restaurant chef, a brilliant photographer or landscape architect. Make sure you don’t sacrifice too much of what you really want to do, want to become, want to have, in order to achieve something which will only matter for a few seconds after completion.

Today is a happy day, even if for me it marks 8 years since I’ve last seen and hugged my sister…