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.