I’m taking a short break from most of the web and social media from February 13 – 23. I plan to share stuff, but I’ll be treating most websites as write-only. I’ll be working on Yeti at work (writing a lot of unit tests) and video editing at home (lots of Final Cut Pro projects), so I’ll continue to be quite busy. Email and bug reports are always open.

While I didn’t decide to do this myself, it’s timely. I’m distracted and controlled by an insatiable interest in what other folks create. I don’t use a feed reader and rarely find myself saving to Instapaper. My attention is divided between what I find important and Hacker News, The Verge, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and so on. It has grown to become taxing.

The habits are hard to change, but I’m not doing it alone. My pastor, Jay Kim, has suggested spending a part of lent by taking a break from media, or a media fast.

Fasting reveals what controls us. Far too often, we self-medicate with movies, television, music, social media, etc. We spend too little time alone and unplugged.

I’ll still be busy, but I’ll be spending more time unplugged and undistracted by the noise of the web for a little bit. I hope to return better focused on what I find important. If you’re feeling the same way, consider taking the next week or so off media with me. You can email me if you don’t want to do it alone. Here’s to more time spent offline.

When I travel home to Illinois, I frequently will work on Yeti for a few days and meetup with Dav. On this trip I’ve done both at the same time. I’ll meetup with him again tomorrow, hoping to finish up some test automation greatness before we take a break for Christmas.

This time of year is really busy. I have lots of folks to shop for, lots of things on my personal to-do list, and in order to visit here I left a home full of mostly unpacked boxes. This week my employer needed me to list my accomplishments, which is difficult because I’m still trying to accomplish things, but the due date for this report was on my day off. Today.

I had to have my family stop at a Starbucks off I-64 so I could submit what I typed up. When I returned, my sister Jessie wanted to type her own report.

What I like about Jessie is that she reminds me of what’s possible when you don’t have lots to do.

In this moment, she’s typing for my sake even though she prefers playing with other things. It’s more for me than her. But soon, she starts to enjoy the challenge of typing and I start to enjoy helping her find the words.

When I begin my day focused on others instead of my own list of stuff, I’m typically more pleased with the result. That’s because instead of churning through what you think is important, you automatically have to do what someone else will value.

Jessie does that because when chooses me over herself, it’s natural for her to give me something I value. Time. Patience. Kindness. As I can’t help but to do the same in return, it reminds me that sometimes my priorities are off.

My challenge is to make moments like this more than a reminder. It’s a checkpoint. More breaks from your endless to-do list give you space to really change.

We’re all not perfect. But these moments remind me of our potential. It’s a bit unsettling, but I don’t want to keep working harder at my own priorities if it means I’m ultimately not helping others.

As this year draws to an end, reserve some time without your to-do list to remember what matters most.

I’ve been busy in the last few weeks for good reason: I’ve been interviewing for a new job at Yahoo!. Today, it’s official: I’ve accepted a position there working on technologies related to Yahoo! Open Strategy.

While interviewing with Yahoo!, I met a lot of awesome people and can’t wait to start working with a few of them. I believe that it’ll be quite an experience for me personally and professionally. I’ll be working with a team that is making technology like SearchMonkey happen on a enormous scale spanning all of Yahoo!’s properties.

This means that I’ll be leaving SchoolCenter as a senior programmer in the next couple of weeks. I have spent over 4 years here and learned a tremendous amount from the very talented coworkers I’ve had. I will certainly miss all of them. It also means that I’ll be relocating to the San Francisco Bay area next month. That’s going to be a lot of work: I have to change my car’s registration, get new insurance, get more furniture, schedule the move and find a new place out there. Nevertheless, it will definitely be worth the effort.

Expect to hear more during my transition, until then, yahoo! 🙂