Today I am feeling a bit lost and I realize I have lost sight of the forest through the trees of me. Too often I identify myself with the things I do, the metaphorical trees I plant. But it is all too easy to forget I am bigger than any one of these things. At various points in my life, I have been driven by different desires. Puffing up my already over inflated ego was certainly a long running theme. The ego thing still rears its ugly (but admittedly effective) head. And maybe that is healthy to a degree, in a take pride in your work kind of way. Today it is my kids more than anything else, that drive me. But I spend more time parenting employees than I do my own kids. Ultimately though, I know the hours and work I put in are for my family. My kids are my world, but I am also more than a parent. I have outside hopes and dreams, wants and desires. Like Stephanie, I have a need for creative expression. A need that sadly is rarely satisfied. My creative writing, with the exception of sporadic blog posts, has fallen away. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a poem or story.

I think for me, what drives me in large part is tied to how I define myself. I define myself as a parent first and foremost. I always knew I wanted kids, but I never knew how much it would change me. It became my center, but still not all of me. I have also always defined myself as an athlete and runner. For many years I wasn’t, but it never stopped me from thinking of myself in those terms. It was the realization that myself image was out of whack with my reality, that has pushed me to run again and consistently. I have been using Facebook and an iPhone app to help drive that change. I track all of my runs with Runmeter. Its Facebook integration helps me keep it real, so to speak. I’ve gotten to a respectable distance, now I just have to work on my speed. I want to think of myself as a runner, so by posting my running statistics in a mostly public fashion, I force myself to stick to it. Now there are plenty of other reasons I run. It is time to think, it feels great, reduces my occurrences of migraines, and it is doing wonders for my fitness. But the thing that drives me to run, is the desire for an internal and consistent self image. The goal being that eventually I will run regularly, not just because I want to think of myself as a runner, but because I truly am. I am starting to feel out of sorts when I don’t run, so hopefully I am moving in that direction.

I have thought of (and tried) ways I could do something similar with writing but I realized today, I no longer define myself as a writer. It seems odd to say out loud. I went a lot longer without running than I ever did without writing. But there it is. If I never publish “that novel”, I will be OK with that. Heck if I never write another short story or poem again, I would be OK with that as well. But if I no longer define myself as a writer, how can I address the desire for creative expression? I can’t paint or draw a straight line. I’m not much of a photographer. Yes, I could still write, and maybe someday I will take it up again, but in the mean time I have lost a large part of how I define myself in regards to creativity. But I need to remember, creativity goes beyond any single creative hobby or actions. I am creative in the ways I solve problems at work, parent my children, fix things around the house. But is that enough… I don’t know. There is something missing in regards to a creative outlet, and outside the context of writing, I’m not sure I know how to find it.

After the race another dear friend of mine asked me how it went. When I explained that I ran faster than I thought, she quipped that she would set a personal speed record just getting “the heck out” of her old high school. I have to admit, I understood the feeling. No matter where you were on the popularity spectrum, high school is painful. I think that is where most of us really learn to build walls, to varying degrees of height and depth. The walls are a survival mechanism for the countless intended and unintended hurts we all give to one another. But sometimes I wonder if those walls do more harm than good. Do we make ourselves into the proverbial bubble boy. When we do let things/people through, are we that much more raw/fresh/immune comprised….

I say high school is when we learn to build the walls but in truth it goes back much further. Partly for me, high school sticks out because I went to the same school from 5th trough 12th grade, so it is all kind of blurs together as one school/experience in my head. But I know it went back further. I have some clear memories of early childhood. One in particular I have never forgotten. I was 5 or 6 and some little kid wanted to play with a group of us. I don’t know why but I didn’t want him to play with us so I taunted this poor kid relentlessly until he went home crying. I never forgot the look on his face. I can also remember being on the other end of that type experience. Sadly, I am now starting to see it with my four year old; and it is HEARTBREAKING! Josh is a very social kid, and has a lot of friends, but even at 4 you start to see clicks form. There are two boys in particular in his class, who really don’t play with him, then a third who seems to go along with the other two when they are around. Josh must have told me 10 times last week how these three boys would not let him play Super Power Rangers with them on the playground at school. So my first thought was excellent, two of those boys aren’t particularly well behaved and well and I really don’t want you to know what Super Power Rangers are anyways, hence why the little TV we watch is PBS. Then I saw his hurt, and I just wanted to hold him and squeeze the pain way. But that hurt is nothing compared to what I have seen at Shul lately. There is this girl, she is a year older than Josh (he digs the older girls) so she is in kindergarten and is no longer in preschool with him, but he still sees her at Torah Tots on Shabbat, and Josh just LUV LUV LUVs her and she is just plain mean to him. He looks at her all googly eyes and tries to talk to her, and she just ignores him or worse, tells him to go away. IT IS PAINFUL. This is one of the most social, friendly and emotionally intelligent 4 year olds you will ever meet. I have no doubt Josh will do fine in life. He is everything I mentioned before, plus handsome, athletic, and has an amazing mind. I know in life he will have his heart broken and I have no doubt he will break his share of hearts, but it pains me to know the walls start forming so early in life.

I hand it back to him. He opens up plex, goes to the Kids TV folder and pics his show and episode. Seriously he is 2 1/2

Elijah: I watch “Super Wide”, Daddy
Me: That is “Super Why” honey
Elijah: No “Super WIDE”
Me: Its Super Why
Elijah: Super WIDE
Me: Elijah, I promise you, the name of the show is “Super Why”
Elijah: Wide, SUPER WIDE
Me: Really honey it is Super Why
Elijah: Don’t say that Daddy
Me: But
Elijah: NOOOOO SUPER WIDE.
Me: OK honey

I hope this is not a portent of things to come. Stubbornness runs on both sides of his family tree.

I hope to do a more comprehensiveness review later. I have been playing with the beta for a while and am mostly pleased with the direction of OS X. Not surprisingly given the success of Apple’s mobile platform, they have taken quite a few elements from iOS and moved them to the desktop. There are new Multi-touch gestures and scroll works like the iPad/iPhone. There is a clear push to full-screen apps, creating a more immersive experience, similar to iOS. And of course, the auto resume/save function which also echos the iOS task management system is a welcome change.

I will say, right now this is more of an evolutionary update than revolutionary. But at $30, it is priced right. That said, come Fall, once iOS 5 and iCloud (underpinnings for which are built into Lion, and won’t likely be available to snow leopard) are released, Lion will be a must have if you are an iPad/iPhone user.

No, I won’t be switching to the Verizon iPhone 4, and it has nothing to do with the fact my wife would kill me. Essentially it is the same phone I have now, but crippled. Honestly even if I was upgrading from an older generation iPhone I would stick with AT&T. Basically you are trading the ability simultaneously use data and voice for Verizon’s bigger and arguably (depending on your area) more reliable network. I can’t tell you how often I use this feature – I’m on call and I need to look something up, check an email, get directions, forward a contact, the list goes on an on.

It’s not a trade-off I’m willing to make, at least not from the comfort of AT&T’s DC metro area coverage. If I lived in an area where AT&T was as painful as their reputation (and I have certainly traveled to a few of those places), I would probably have a different perspective. But here in DC… AT&T, you get to keep my business. Now if Verizon beats you to an LTE iPhone – well, all bets are off.*

* No dear, I will not buy another iPhone without your approval.

Today my oldest turns 4. I don’t really have the time to organize and post my thoughts but I figure while I eat lunch I will ramble on for a few minutes and hope they come together in a semi-coherent manner.

We didn’t do a kids party this year, and I’m feeling a little guilty. It is not that we didn’t celebrate. On Saturday we sponsored the kids Kiddish for Torah Tots at Beth Sholom and everyone sang him happy birthday in Hebrew. On Sunday we had a small family celebration. He got to open presents, blow out a birthday candle,and run around with his cousins. And on Friday Melissa and I are bringing in doughnuts and juice to school for a third celebration. But last year we had a real party for him with all of his friends. We had it at a kids gym, and it was incredible; everyone had so much fun. It was also expensive and more money that we wanted to spend this year, especially since Joshua wanted a new iPod. I broke his old one (Yes, the 30 something year old broke it, not the three year old. ), and it really is an amazing learning tool. I had an old iPhone 3G I was planing on ebaying, so we gave Joshua a choice between a new (to him) iPhone and a big birthday party. Not surprisingly my child picked the iPhone, so I jailbroke it, popped out the sim card and voila.

For the record I know this child is not deprived. He has more toys than 10 kids could play with, and gets three opportunities to be celebrated and have his birthday acknowledged this year. More importantly he is in a loving, happy and healthy family. While I don’t normally feel a need to keep up with the Jones, a part of me still feels a bit guilty that I know most of his friends with have big birthday celebrations.

Even though the recurring alarm bug has been resolved, I kept using it. Basically I preffered waking up to the sound of the ocean to the stock IOS alarm sounds. But to get the nice sounds, you have to leave the app open before you go to bed. It does have the option of a background alarm that runs even if the app is closed, but I don’t like its default sounds and I hadn’t enabled it.

Last night I forgot to open the program, so instead of waking up to the sound of crashing waves this morning I got Joshua telling me he needed to go potty. Now on the one hand that was awesome (I won’t bore you with the trials and tribulations of our potty training…), on the other, I missed my morning workout. Now I did get to spend some extra time with Melissa and the boys and I got to drink my morning coffee in bed instead of on the treadmill. But I really love the routine of my morning workouts and I can’t make it up tonight due to other commitments.

Anyway on to the heart break. Normally when Joshua gets out of bed, I’m well into my workout, unless its a weekend. Needless to say, he was a little confused, he even asked me if it was Saturday or Sunday and if he could spend the whole day with me. Of course my heart melted into a sad, warm and toasty buttery goo. I told him I would love to spend the day with him but I had to go to work today, but I am off tomorrow, and of course we will have lots of time together this weekend. He just looked at me and said, I want to spend the whole day with you because we don’t spend enough time together. Ouch!

AniMatch – .99 in the App Store

AniMatch is one of Joshua’s favorites iPhone games. He has been playing it since before his first birthday. Considering he is almost 4, it was a dollar well spent. It’s your classic Concentration game meets the iPhone with big buttons, cute animals and sounds. Each time you click on a blank square  an animal flips up and makes the appropriate animal sound. This game is the Cats Meow! Bad pun fully intended!

When you find a match, you get a pleasant beep, the two squares jiggle, briefly flash gold, and the animals stay uncovered. As with Concentration, the game “ends” when you turn over/match all of the animals. Each game has 10 different animals, randomly selected from 31.

This is an early educational game done right. Easy to use, develops memory and cognitive abilities, and of course is super fun. For the record, I don’t just mean fun for little ones. I have been know to sit down and play a round two.

If you are interested in this app and the link isn’t working, (might have some thing to with Apples Back to the Mac event)  you can pull it up in the App store through iTunes or the iPhone.