I spent this last Saturday hanging out with my 1 1/2 year old niece at the Jersey shore and then at a local town fair…. two things that really aren’t on any of my fun to do lists (sand doesn’t play well with my electronic life), but I found myself having fun through her, through her first experience with going in the ocean, through her riding a baby train ride and through her pigging out on ice cream and cotton candy. Looking at my flickr photos today of the events I found myself thinking, wow, who would have thought 5 years ago I would be having fun doing this. I then realized it was because I actually wasn’t having fun, but allowing myself to live through her and the excitement of a new experience… a phenomenon that I am sure parents are familiar with.

I was able to turn something that seemed boring and a waste of time into an adventure… despite the sunburn and sand in my bathing suit.

Sitting here, getting ready to do another long nights work of coding, testing and design, I started to think… how can I translate this into my professional career? Well the answer seems pretty straight forward… I need to figure out how to see my job through new eyes. I need to find a way to take the same spark I get when I am learning somethign new or working with something cutting edge and bring it to my more mundane/repetative work.

So this is sort of my declaration of sorts of my plan to get more involved with perhaps a mentorship for design/UI and or find ways to take what I do and perhaps make more projects out of them… contribute to a framework or two.

I will keep you all updated as to how this is going and any comments/suggestions/stories are greatly appreciated!