World Trade Center, September 13, 2001

Its good to be reminded of this occasionally......

World Trade Center, September 13, 2001

The Destruction of the World Trade Center:

The Destruction of the World Trade Center:

The fact that this retarded website comes from my new friends of Process Theology breaks my heart. They're rabid, foaming at the mouth liberals drawn to the fringe by their inabilty to accept reality.

iuiuiu

Digital Learning Commons

I joined cosmeo, but this looks great as well, especially for older ones....

Digital Learning Commons

"imbroglio: a complicated and embarrassing state of things."

Boy, have I been involved in some imbroglio's at some time.

I don't write because I simply have no time. Three kids, looking for a house, a second car, wondering if the world is going to stay together for a while: who has the time to record it?

I'm reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
To say that I'm enjoying it doesn't quite capture it. I am in two worlds now, Phaedrus' and my own. Its a burden of joy.

Pensees:
Its quite possible that in the average man's economic position that there is only choices between two nightmares. I must hastily purchase a home, or better, indebt myself an enormous amount, or wait, save, and by the time I've scratched together

More soon.

...:::: My US of Whateva ::::...

...:::: My US of Whateva ::::...

The digg on this was that both opponents and proponents of GWB would like this. They're right.

:)

Post Mortem

I'm anxious to put the endless worry and analysis that has gone into my move to NY and back. The project manager in me wants to do a "Lessons Learned", a post mortem on this experience.

That would go something like this:

What went right?

What went wrong?

What can we learn going forward?


What went right

The Trip: The trip was fun. There can be no denying that driving around the country was an enlightening experience. I never have felt so American as I do now, having met people in South Dakota, Alabama, and Utah. I can say that the people I've met have been nice, hard working, and interesting....and I'm proud to be counted as one of them. Then there are the amazing vistas, the shockingly beautiful Rocky Mountains, the chance to co-exist with the wildlife in Yellowstone, and the important Williamsburg, VA. The meme that we will never run out of space as long as Texas is a State.

The Holidays & Vacations: There has been no fun like being with family, especially MY family, during a holiday. My sisters party like crazy. They did my birthday like I was important. I felt loved and warm during those times, and it reminded me why I did that move. And Christmas in NYC? The Met. Manhattan. Pensslyvaina – Gettysburg and Hershey Park. Dead Manhattan ( see the kids for this one  ) The Intrepid. Times Square. All the crap I wanted to do when I was a kid. Done! What sort of greatness is that?

The Career: The move to Delta Funding was a shockingly good one. I got some leadership experience that I sorely needed. It created a leader out of me, or brought it out more. There were a lot of chiefs there, and I certainly didn’t know the business well enough to move too much higher too fast, but I was on the executive path there for sure. That experience gave me the audacity to try PM somewhere else. Taking that job was a GREAT move.


What went wrong

Family Bonding: Easily my biggest disappointment is that my wife and sisters and mom didn’t bond the way I hoped. They didn’t bond at all, since whatever bond was there was destroyed by us leaving. You can lead three women to your wife, but doesn’t mean they’re going to embrace her. The biggest reason? Too busy. Even only 20 minutes away, once the novelty of our arrival wore off we were relegated to being essentially alone there. If it were not for my wife’s Herculean efforts to make friends we would have been very alone. Is this my sisters fault? No! They have a life, and Homeschooling is our life. Schooling determines what sort of social life you’re going to have. Its amazing how public school ramifies itself into every corner of our society. While one sister would go to PTA meetings, Julie would fill her days otherwise. The other sister has preschoolers all, so we could get much bonding there. It is the details that interrupted the flow. This interrupts then my primary assumption for going to NY – that with two sisters and a mom that we would have more family interaction and help, since the sisters were in that stage in life. This was deeply flawed. The analogy I draw is of computers. If you cluster computers you typically get more processing power. 3 processors are better than one, obviously. Also you can fail over – one computer dies, the other takes the load. But in this case we didn’t have that. These “processors” were already beyond peak capacity. Adding them together was meaningless, and the only true fail over is when you live within 10 minutes. We were simply too late to the game, and despite the links to my kids, I don’t think this relationship, Fecarotta-to-Wife, was strengthened in any sustainable, significant way.

Finances: Another hope was that with all of the friends and family I have in the NY region I’d be able to “cheat” the system and get some cheap housing. I was thinking someone lending me an apartment or something. I was very clear with my family that I couldn’t possibly pay rent there and EVER buy a house. They forgot that. We ended up financially worse off than when we got there. So the moment I signed a lease for 1900 bucks a month I knew my days in NY were numbered, and I assumed my family did as well I was wrong there as well, bringing us to Number Three….

Communication — I botched the communication with my family in a severe way. I never updated them, never spoke to them about the literal, specific goals I had. It should have been no surprise that I was going to leave, but it hit them like a brick. I promised my family that if at the end of two years we’re not better off, we’re out. No one listened from my family. They kicked and screamed and cried the whole time we left They were so happy to have us there, and I know its out of love that they miss us, but there are limits.

Secondly, I announced this over email. BIG mistake. I think an in person thing would have been far better. I wanted to be able to frame this thing, and think it through. I write better than I speak. This ease of writing is a double-edged sword. They also enjoyed emailing. Emailing well-thought out invectives that would make a sailor blush. Email is too easy to share. My wife ended up reading some of the responses, all of which blamed her. Overall, the ending was just a symptom of my not managing expectations. If I would have even typed up a list of expectations, I think it would have gone a long way in deflecting the nightmare that happened when we first announced our intentions to return to the Northwest.


Take away wisdom
1. Take a chance – the whole adventure has made me proud of my families and proud of myself. I found strength, touched lives, and did things that were amazing. It resolved a lot of issues around NY for me, and I’m more pleased with the Northwest than ever.
2. Manage expectations — Never assume that family members know what you’re thinking. Communicate often and as honestly as possible with them.
3. Manufacture memories — Days come and go. If you just go to the pool every weekend, you’ll never forge the memories that sustain happiness and enrich your life and your family’s. Make the plans, go to that place you’ve always heard of. Do that thing that you’ve wondered about. You’ll be stuck at home enough. Get out there. Now!
4. Climate matters – Don’t think that weather is trivial. You enocounter the weather everyday. If you don’t like real cold or real hot, S.
5. Don’t believe what they say about New Yorkers. They’re really some of the nicest people in the USA.

That’s it. I’m making a DVD of my experience there as well. Should be fun. We did so much…and we’re not done yet!

AMERICA'S GOT TALENT -Kid singer Bianca Ryan

seriously now.