Allow Myself to Introduce Myself

So I have taken the plunge into the world of blogging.  A bit nervous?  Perhaps.  A salute to Austin Powers shall be my salutation.  Humor to defang the beast which would otherwise stop all forward progress.

About me.  Not much to tell really.  Normal person.  Normal life.  Kids and a wife.  One dog recently returned to the household, after failing the please-go-stay-with-grandpa test.  Two cars but only one holds the kids, so basically, one car and a little something to park out front, insure, smog annually and move when I mow the lawn.

I’ve read a lot of advice about what to publish in a blog.  Pretty much, everyone says the same thing.  Pick a topic.  Stick with it.  Develop a readership.  Be disciplined.  Etc.

But, what if I don’t have just one topic about which to write?  I’m one of those people who likes to read and think and write about a lot of things.  Politics, philosophy, the nature of technology, the being of a dad, just to name a few.  Well, I suppose I shall find out through the use of this lovely free technology (nod to WordPress.com) just how interesting my varied tastes are to the average blog surfer, and perhaps then I shall pick a topic and stick to it.  In the meantime, let’s meander.

Professional interests.  Let’s start there.  Project management is a reasonable place to begin.  I do that.  I’m even certified in it if that means anything.  It certainly means I can study for a test and answer structured questions with a modicum of intelligence.  Yes, let’s spend some time here.  It feels fruitful.

So, to start with I should say that I do believe in the principles of project management.  To loosely borrow a phrase from someone (I don’t have any idea whom), “If you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will get you there.”  This is pretty much the antithesis of project management.  To wit, you must decide where you’re going before you leave.

Once you’ve settled upon a basic notion of where you’re headed, project management holds that you might want to think about how to get there.

Let’s digress for a moment.  The idea of getting from here to there is an interesting one.  It presupposes some sense of travel, travel in time in this case.

There are philosophies which hold that only the present moment is in existence, and concentrating overly much on the past or the future makes the present inaccessible.  What about that?  Does project management’s base premise (in this case, “plan the journey”) fly in the face of this philosophy?

Perhaps we should simply head down the road before us and not worry too much about where we’re headed, as doing so might mean that we risk missing that which is with us in the moment.

Reasonable supposition if you enjoy abstract thinking as much as I do.  However, that approach is unlikely to endear you to your benefactors, who, if you’re in project management, are paying your upkeep.  Most paying clients don’t readily buy into the, “Don’t worry, we’ll know when we get there,” approach to project management.  To be fair, they’re probably right.

Let’s think about time and entropy for a moment.  I read something fascinating recently, on the nature of time and entropy.  I wish I could point you to it, but I don’t know how to find it anymore.  It was one of those links that show up in the fark part of the world, and once you’ve read it, it sticks with you.  However, it’s truly inaccessible to me today, and therefore to you, at least via this blog.

So – time and entropy.  What this author was saying on the topic amounted to this:  you know you’re in a system where time moves inevitably forward, and entropy always increases, because you can’t unfry an egg, turn ashes back into wood nor unmix cream from coffee (at least spontaneously – I do understand the potential application of centrifuges to this example).

Perhaps project management is akin to these examples.  Failure to identify an objective, as well as a plan for getting there, greatly increases the odds that you will accidentally fry the egg it turns out you were going to need for baking.

Hmmm.  A reasonable beginning I think.  More next time.

From the land of my mind, this is Alex Chompff signing off.

Thanks for joining me on this journey, and I hope it turns out well for all of us.