Farewells

This week several friends of ours are moving. It is strange that these friends - who are unconnected to one another except that we know each of them - would be leaving at the same time.

First is my friend John, shown here on the left (also shown are Bob, Roger and I, left to right)

John is an artist and we have become friends over the past several years as part of the life drawing group at our art coop in Fort Collins. I will miss our weekly conversations over a beer at Avo's, our occasional breakfast meetings and his general presence. He is moving back to England after 30-odd years here in the U.S. I now have a close friend in England that I plan on visiting as often as I am able.


Next, the Cunningham family, who we know from our church - and whose sons (Mike and Ryan) were both in the youth group while I was the youth pastor - are moving to Florida for Mark's new job. We love this family and have really enjoyed having them as part of our lives. Again, though - we plan on visiting as often as we can.

At this stage of my life I generally don't feel the deep sadness I have in the past over departing friends. I will miss John and the Cunningham's, but with technology where it is, staying in touch is so easy and it feels like I can carry on a constant conversation with friends I have met all over the world. The trick will be actually seeing these friends - email is no substitute for a handshake and a hug.

The ongoing tyranny of self-employment

So this year marks 4 years in self-employment. To be accurate, in July I will have been employed for either myself or my company for 4 years.

I actually incorporated last summer, so I think technically I am no longer self-employed but am an employee of my corporation. I'm the CEO though, so I'll say I work for myself.

We had several large projects lined up for March. For different reasons both of these projects were put on hold by the client and we were left with little to do. I had to lay off one employee and everyone else went into really low hours mode. I shifted into full-time proposal writing and after a really slow March and April have emerged with a ton of work.

So now I'm very busy again. I am at work now (on a Sunday - just taking a break to update my blog). I've been working a lot with a very cool technology called Flex from Adobe. We had a bit of a rough go with a Flex project over the winter, but the work we are doing now is really solid and I am enjoying it a lot.

So here's the tyranny: it seems as if there is no consistent way to traffic the amount of work that comes in. We are either really slow and I am living with no paycheck so we can keep the business going, or we are buried and I am working all-nighters and Sundays to try to keep up.

Poor Nancy is very supportive but all this is really tough for her too. When I am slow she likes it because I am home and helping with the kids and working on the house, but money gets really tight.

When I am busy, we can eat out, but I am rarely around during the day and not often home to help with bed time.

I keep hoping that by investing in my employees I can create a team and a process that will somewhat insulate me from the wild swings - maybe we are still too small - but this doesn't seem to help much, or as much as I'd like.

We'll claw our way through the next several weeks and come out with some nice projects completed and some money in the bank, then we'll see what happens.

For those who know our family, we are all well. Emma is a bright, beautiful second-grader. Corben is a handsome, playful preschooler. Abby is as "two year old" as they come, but very sweet. Matthew is a very pleasant infant who makes us all smile. Nancy is working resource now (one day a week) and you can see what I'm up to.

I am still running the drawing class, and trying new media which is always fun. I've been playing a lot more guitar. I play in the church band and will be going with Sports Outreach (Kathy, Keith and hopefully Jill) back to Cabo where I will lead worship again this summer. Also this summer our whole family will be going to camp. I'll be a counsellor and photographer for the camp. Nancy will be the nurse and hopefully the kids can have a great time hanging out.

Leave a comment to say hi.

Another day of Matthew

You can look at the link in my previous post to see more photos of Matthew if you want, but here is one in case there are any problem with Facebook.

Matthew Ryan Daharsh

Nancy was scheduled to work yesterday but she was having some hard contractions the night before so she called in yesterday.

Her sister Sarah was planning on watching the kids yesterday while Nancy worked, so she came and ended up staying to help Nancy around the house a bit while I went to work.

I got a call from Sarah around 2 pm and she said that they were heading to the hospital and that I should meet them there.

I finished the call I was on when she called me, and headed to the hospital. I arrived at about 2:45.

Nancy and Sarah had arrived at the hospital at 2:36.

I walked in the room and things were in full swing. Almost right away Nancy's water broke and things went haywire.

Matthew Ryan Daharsh was born at 2:53 pm yesterday (December 12). He weighed 9 pounds exactly and was 21.25 inches long.

Here is a link to some photos.

Nancy and he are both well. The siblings have all met Matthew and I have had some good bonding time with him and Nancy.

End of November

Real fast:

• Having baby #4 in ~1 month
• Had a great Thanksgiving holiday with family
• Sold a domain for nice $$ - was fun and gave me more Christmas money than I had anticipated so I went a little nuts on family gifts on Black Friday
• Have a new camera - am very exited
• nearing completion on a large project
• am facing some staffing challenges with the business
• am anticipating stepping down from the interim youth pastor position at the end of the year, it's been nearly 2 years now since I started.
• just put up the Christmas tree today with the family
• miss friends as always

Thanks for popping in!

What the...?

Well friends, as some of you may have noticed I have been absent from blog-land for quite some time. I have been putting my thoughts into Facebook.com - I've found it very easy (particularly since I can use my cell phone and just send quick little instant messages that update my status as often as I like)

Twitter has also bee heavily utilized since it is also very quick and easy to post to.

For those who don't have me set as a friend in Facebook, I thought I should update this page so I can give people a general update.

My life has gone completely crazy, and is now on a sort of a rebound.

I incorporated my business this summer, then over the next several months moved into an office and hired several new people. I had a big project which I thought would afford me the opportunity to really develop my team and set me up as more of a manager versus the one doing all the work.

I did not time my decisions well. I ended up trying to build a team, train them to do the work I needed, while I still needed to do a majority of the heavy lifting of getting the work done. It was a very dark time for me, I had a really hard time keeping my head up and feeling as though I could get through the challenging time and move back into normalcy.

My time with my family completely disappeared, I stopped drawing, I didn't have time for anything but work and it was miserable.

In the past few weeks, though, the folks I hired this summer have really started coming together and getting stuff done. I also am now contracting a more senior-level developer, who I hope will help me with the more difficult tasks that I end up facing as a programmer.

We are in the midst of a very big project with a fast turn-around, so this will be a good test of our team. Our baby will likely be born the week before Christmas, so we only have a few weeks until things go bananas for us - and I am really shooting to have the big project done before then.

If we haven't posted this information already: we are having a boy. We are still deciding on a name - that seems to be much harder for us this time (not sure why)

I also wanted to say "thanks" to Steffen - who sent a very cool, thoughtful postcard to our family from Australia.

Post comments if you aren't on facebook and would like to see me update my blog more often.

.peace.

A very cool story

This guy is cool.