Dri­ving home from work yes­ter­day I decided to cut through the high school park­ing lot. The high school is located behind where we live, so tak­ing this short cut saves time on not hav­ing to sit through 2 or 3 traf­fic lights. Almost adja­cent to the soft­ball field is the Police sta­tion, an ideal loca­tion for the cops to keep a watch­ful eye on the teens. It also means that if you go over the 15 MPH speed limit you’re an easy target.

As I made my way through the park­ing lot I noticed a rain­bow peak­ing out of one cor­ner of the sky. Most of the time, espe­cially dur­ing the end of rainy weather, I’ll see a par­tial rain­bow. In my life­time I have never seen a whole rain­bow, from begin­ning to end. Yes­ter­day, how­ever, the rain­bow wasn’t par­tially cov­ered by drift­ing clouds, it was in full view. I was in awe of its beauty, so much in fact that when I finally got home I took a few pic­tures with my dig­i­tal camera.

Look­ing through the viewfinder of my cam­era I was reminded of a lyric in ‘The Rain­bow Con­nec­tion’, as sung by Ker­mit the Frog;

“Rain­bows are visions,
but only illu­sions,
and rain­bows have noth­ing to hide.

What’s so amaz­ing that keeps us stargaz­ing?
And what do we think we might see?
Some­day we’ll find it, the rain­bow con­nec­tion; the lovers, the dream­ers and me.” 

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you feel unproductive?

This week I’ve been feel­ing that way and while I typ­i­cally love web devel­op­ment and graphic design, for the past few days I haven’t felt that vibe that keeps me moti­vated. It’s not my job, I love my job, in fact I received great news that the com­pany I’ve been sub­con­tract­ing for the past year and a half wants to put me on their per­ma­nent staff.

Start­ing June 1^st, I will be part of the offi­cial machine, instead of feel­ing like a con­tribut­ing out­sider. I’m excited and at the same time a bit fear­ful con­sid­er­ing I haven’t offi­cially worked for a com­pany for almost 2 years.

My work evi­dently has impressed those around me and the deci­sion to put me on their per­me­nant pay­roll has long been in the works, and I’m excited for what the future brings. In regards to my unmo­ti­va­tion, I sup­pose we all have these feel­ings every once in a great while.

I just need to sit back and pon­der all of the won­der­ful things that have hap­pened to me in the past cou­ple of years, like for instance;

• Get­ting mar­ried to my wife; my sec­ond half, my life.
• The birth of my beau­ti­ful daugh­ter, Zoe Elizabeth.
• Work­ing for a top-notch tech com­pany doing what I love best.
• Strength­en­ing my rela­tion­ship with my father.
• Being proud of my lit­tle brother who joined the Navy and is pro­tect­ing our Country.
• Learn­ing more about myself since my move from Cal­i­for­nia to New York.

Some­times, espe­cially dur­ing unmo­ti­vated or over­whelm­ing points in our lives, we all need to just step back and breath in the won­der­ful things that have hap­pened to us. We tend to, as humans, take things for granted. Real­iz­ing our strengths and appre­ci­at­ing those around us, espe­cially the good aspects of our lives makes us fur­ther appre­ci­ate our exis­tence and as a whole makes us bet­ter peo­ple and, more impor­tantly a bet­ter world. 

In the past few days we’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing tor­ren­tial down­pour here in the East. When I woke up this morn­ing and looked out the win­dow I thought I had woken up to that part in the Wiz­ard of Oz when the tor­nado wrecks havoc on Dorothy’s farm.

I also kept think­ing of a line in For­rest Gump, when Tom Hanks as For­rest is trudg­ing through the Viet­nam land­scape, and men­tions in one his let­ters that there was;

Lit­tle bitty stin­gin’ rain… and big ol’ fat rain. Rain that flew in side­ways. And some­times rain even seemed to come straight up from underneath.

Due to the sever­ity of the weather I decided to take the streets instead of the high­way and hydroplaned through sev­eral pud­dles almost tak­ing out a ser­vice­man on the side of the road. At this same point in time I glanced back in my rearview mir­ror and noticed the cher­ries blaz­ing in the dis­tance. At first I thought I had been speed­ing, but dis­counted that fear when I real­ized I was dri­ving just a smidge over 20 MPH.

Then the cop, who was going faster than a speed­ing bul­let, almost side­swiped that same ser­vice­man who I nearly decom­mis­sioned. Not that it was par­tic­u­lar funny or any­thing, but I was reminded of an 80’s movie where the dis­grun­tled city worker shakes his fist at the pass­ing cars as Talk­ing Heads’ Burn­ing Down the House plays in the background. 

What kind of world do we live in where an indi­vid­ual with a qual­i­fied Mas­ters degree ends up work­ing at a low-paying job with sub-standard ben­e­fits, as opposed to some­one with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tions ends up mak­ing $80 to 90-thousand dol­lars a year with solid ben­e­fits? It seems to me that cer­tain aspects of cul­ture can incur back­wards results.

This thought spurred from con­ver­sa­tions I’ve had with peo­ple who’ve earned their degrees and yet either haven’t applied them­selves, or their luck hasn’t struck a suc­cess­ful chord. It’s an inter­est­ing conun­drum and cer­tainly mer­its an expla­na­tion. As I’ve got­ten older and wiser I’m begin­ning to notice the whole pic­ture (or the whole enchi­lada), details start to emerge and expla­na­tions for cer­tain unex­plain­able events surface.

In this instance it seems that for most of the pop­u­la­tion “suc­cess” is mea­sured by who you know. More­over the con­nec­tions you form and how they work for you in the busi­ness world, which as a result can lead you to a high pay­ing posi­tion, if that’s what you’re look­ing for that is. For some, suc­cess might have dif­fer­ent cono­ta­tions and while hav­ing a high-paying cor­po­rate job is the ideal dream, for many hav­ing a degree (be it an Asso­ciates, Bach­e­lors, Mas­ters, etc.) doesn’t nec­es­sar­ily pave the way for your success.

Get­ting the degree is the first step, apply­ing your skills and your­self is the most impor­tant in this process. From those I’ve talked to, this can be dif­fi­cult and because of age restraints in the busi­ness world, you’re guar­an­teed to lose a lucra­tive posi­tion to a younger per­son who equals your qual­i­fi­ca­tions. It’s a sad fact but it is real­ity, and many times as I’ve men­tioned, it’s who you know and not just what you know.

There are no magic beans. You can’t always expect a beanstalk to grow and lead you to higher ground. How­ever, what you can do is believe in your­self and improve your skills on a daily basis — refrain from becom­ing stale — and watch as new oppor­tu­ni­ties lay them­selves before you. Just remem­ber one thing; do this for yourself.

As Bill Cosby once said:

I don’t know the keys to suc­cess, but the first step to fail­ure is try­ing to please everyone.