Where do we go from here?

My last blog was called "Trivial Pursuits." haha I realize that's a kinda sad name. I could have called it "The Pursuit of That Which Doesn't Matter." But, in large part, that is the content of it. So, with this one, I think I'd like to record some things that aren't, to me, very trivial.

They probably aren't very ground breaking, and Heaven knows that I'm not one to stick with something like this for very long, but we'll see what happens. The name "Hope Hiding" comes from a Michael McLean album. Hopefully he won't beat me down.

I probably won't have a whole lot of personal thoughts up here, but will mostly collect stuff that I find interesting, inspiring, or whatever. I suppose I could have called this "Not-So-Trivial Pursuits" but... I didn't.

I've been reading "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. It's got some good stuff in there. One thing in there jumped out at me. Apparently he had a football coach that was pretty rough on him. After a particularly painful practice, an assistant coach came to him and said something that stuck with him for life. "When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you any more, that means they've given up on you." Mr. Pausch made the following remarks about it. "When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and are about you, and want to make you better."

I have friends like that. And sometimes it's bitter medicine, but I'm glad they don't give up on me.