I have to admit, I had high expectations. Jerry had been singing the “Jack-O-Lattern” song as we played together over the weekend - and I knew how much he enjoyed the ending (Boo!)

Eriko and I showed up just on time (3:45), sat in our little chairs, and waited for the children to come out. The first four filed out one after another and sat in their places.

Then came Jerry. He sauntered in, tried to give me a hug, and eventually (after some coaxing by the teachers) sat near the others - but immediately it was obvious that his body language was quite different. To be fair, he did yawn - so he may be tired - but all of the other children are engaged, focused on the teacher, participating. Jerry is none of these things.

I'm still slowly breaking out of my "I must do it all" model and finding out what is out there.

Look at my information flow:

I’m just getting started!

OK, my blog is in desperate need of a rework and between family and work I have approximately 10 minutes of free time a week - in which I’m either trying to learn more about twitter or reading Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Lives of Boys.

That said, I have had some things published into the giant information space in the cloud:

• A talk I gave at Intel's booth at VMworld: Isilon Systems, Scale-Out Storage for Large Scale Server Virtualization
• An article I wrote for Virtualization Journal: Understanding the Role Storage Plays in Virtual Environments

Since these are both techno wonkish and probably not interesting to most, the true nature of this post is to add new content to my blog and to self-promote. Mission accomplished.

Last night was tough. Not only was Eriko completely drained by the time I arrived home, which thankfully, was earlier than usual, but Jerry had a poor night sleeping.

He woke up once, was upset, couldn’t talk about it, and it eventually escalated to me removing him from the bedroom. This turned into a full blown tantrum, kicking, screaming, hitting, throwing, spitting… you name it. I sat on the couch and was minimally engaged - I would put him back on the floor if he ran over and tried to hit me and I talked to him - I kept explaining that he needed to talk about what he wanted.

Let’s not mince words - Jerry is what (and who) I get excited about most. Yet, when we play I am often distracted and find it difficult to let go of things outside my control (at least for the moment).

Those things?

Work. As confused as I am about whether I’m doing the right thing, I spend a lot of energy on work.

Money. This never used to be an obsession. Unfortunately, seeing stock at 27 a share gave me hope that I could somehow “get rich quick.” I haven’t shaken that. Last year’s market crash and my alternative investments have made me that much more obsessed. I read hundreds of blogs and news articles a week - but these people are no different - the future is still unknown.

I have lost my way. While my current position is fun (at times) and is providing me with new experiences, I don’t feel as if I’m moving towards anything.

Why am I still at work?

Good salary. Convenient. Comfortable. Big investment. Lack of alternatives.

I work hard, long and most days I am excited to head into the office.

Honestly, I seem to be operating off of hope more than reality - most of what I do I tend to feel unsatisfied with.