My wife feels a lot of anxiety. Pretty much anything new will set of a series of thoughts that inevitably cause her a great deal of anxiety. In this time, she’s preoccupied and edgy. I can’t imagine it’s pleasurable. We’ve been working on breaking down the anxiety and what leads to it, but we have a ways to go.

Ultimately, what happens is that she gets hung up on the idea of failure. Instead of thinking of actual failures, she thinks of the consequences of failure. This is an important distinction.

The other day I met someone who was very, very confident. It spilled out of her without control, effusively dominating all aspects of our interaction. It was tiring. She had no value that I could perceive; certainly nothing that I value.

So I left, there was no entertaining conversation, no relevant knowledge to share. It was just a complete loss. Then I wondered if I was that way. I wondered even if I wasn’t, how can I better control and influence how other people perceive me.

My son is struggling with reading now. He just doesn’t practice. He doesn’t really want to practice but he desperately wants to read. He starts gets frustrated at the first hard word and gives up.

It’s a hard thing to explain to him about practice. Why must we practice and why we must never stop. He finally got it the other day while I was reading.

He came up to me and said, “Dad, how can you read without using your words?” I explained that with practice that happens. But more importantly, I told him that there were words I didn’t know. Words I had to look up (eschatological, as a recent example.) It wasn’t a big deal to not know a word. It’s ok to not know all the words as long as you keep practicing and know how to get answers.

I don’t watch TV. This isn’t a superiority holier-than-thou thing. I wouldn’t mind watching TV. It just gets in the way of things I want to do more. I’ll watch some things while I have mundane tasks to accomplish; movies playing in the background and I am only half-way paying attention.

The only thing on TV I’ll set aside time for is watching a nice game of soccer. I still work while I watch it. Can’t help myself.

I told my wife that I was surprised how many parents don’t sacrifice their happiness for their kids. She was surprised at what I said and we discussed it further. I had to admit that my wording was melodramatic.

My wife constantly surprises me. I always find myself learning new things. Not just about her, but about life in general. Recently, I was surprised by her reaction when I relayed a quote I saw on Twitter that amused me:

Overheard in yoga: there’s NOTHING you will ever be able to do in yoga that a young Asian girl can’t do better.

From James Altucher

Since my wife is (relatively) young, Asian, does yoga and is in shape I thought she would appreciate this. She didn’t. She immediately starting explaining why it’s so annoying.

It was a really, really bad night. The software I was writing wasn’t working. My laptop lay dead, its hard drive not working. I wanted to be done and my hard quitting time for the day was approaching rapidly. I really, really wanted to be done. I wanted it to all work. I wanted to leave victorious.

My son has been introduced to Star Wars characters very early on through toys. However, the movies were a mystery to him until recently. He doesn’t watch a lot of TV and movies, and when he does he tends to stick with Pixar style movies. I really wasn’t sure if he’d like the movies. A New Hope is filled with so much dialog, I nearly lost him entirely.

It’s been nearly 30 years since Mythical Man Month was published. Yet to this day, inept leadership throughout the world tries to do the same things studied and shown to fail from the book. I am amazed by this.

I don’t really fault Google. They need to monetize. There needs to be a push for a cohesive product offering.

Google is a company built through acquisitions, both talent and technology. It’s invariably going to be disjointed. There will be many leaders and few followers. What we’re seeing now is an inevitability.