Dan York

My 3 Words for 2012

Following on the tradition I've started over the past couple of years (2011, 2010) after enjoying Chris Brogan's take on this, here are my three words for 2012. They aren't goals, per se, or resolutions, but more just three words to guide my actions through the year.

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FOCUS

In our age of distraction, it's insanely easy to lose focus and suddenly find yourself hours later not having accomplished anything you set out to do. It's an inherent challenge for those of us who are by nature bright-shiny-object chasers and whose job involves being on the edge of communication technologies...

Over the past six months or so I've been taking some very deliberate steps to reduce distractions and give me more time to focus.

I've reduced or eliminated many of the notifications on my computer. I've gone to checking email only at certain times of the day. I've blocked off time in my schedule where I just shut down all social media, IM, and email and just work on specific tasks. Friends would not recognize my desk these days because it is CLEAN... as I've worked on simplifying the distractions in my home office.

Still, these are just steps... and one of the areas I want to work on in 2012 is really bringing some discipline to this and trying to focus more on what is important to get done. (Oh, look, there's a butterfly.....)

QUEUE

There are two aspects to this word for me. First, due primarily to the unwelcome intruder in our life in 2011, I have a great queue of projects, both online and offline, that I want to work on in 2012. Naturally I have a l...o...n...g... queue of blog posts I'd like to clear out. I need to update my Migrating Applications to IPv6 book. I really MUST reboot the VoIP Security Alliance (VOIPSA) this year. There are some health issues I've put on hold that I need to address. There's a lot that was put on the proverbial back-burner... and I need to clear out that queue a good bit. There are a great many stories still left untold.

The second aspect of "queue" is that this year I really want to focus on maintaining a healthy queue of blog posts that are scheduled out in advance. Each week I'd like to be lining up some posts for the next week. Certainly there will be posts written in the moment to respond to other posts or to recent events... but I want to keep a schedule queue going so that my content is appearing regularly throughout the year. You do not need to hit the Publish button right now... and I want to work on that this year.

BALANCE

Finally, I've made some lifestyle changes over the past year... I've made a job change which also has brought some changes... I'm looking in 2012 at how to find a bit more of that ever-elusive "balance" between work and personal life. Beyond all that I do at work and online, I'm also a father of two daughters, a husband to a wonderful woman, a son, a brother, a friend, a community member... and many other roles.

This past year has once again reminded me of the incredible importance of all of that.

The challenge, of course, is that when you absolutely love what you do... when "work" is not a chore as much as almost "play"... well... it's hard to shut down the brain sometimes and let it go. Something I've always struggled with... to give that marvelous gift of being truly present with those around you.

So while I've made some changes in 2011, there's definitely further I can go... 

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Those are my "words" for 2012... we'll see how the year goes. What are you going to focus on this year?

My 3 Words for 2011 - How Did I Do?

So as 2011 enters its final hours, it's time to take a look back and see how I did with my "3 Words For 2011". As a reminder, they were:

• CONTENT
• PORTFOLIO
• LIFESTYLE

Well, to start with, they - and most all my plans for 2011 - were rather subsumed by an extremely unwelcome fourth word that dominated my year:

CANCER

Yes, indeed, the defining thread of 2011 has definitely been my wife's diagnosis and subsequent battle with breast cancer. It truly did consume the entire year - she had what was otherwise a routine doctor visit in January that started raising questions... and then her last chemo treatment was in early December.

In between, of course, were horrific months dealing with tests leading to the diagnosis in May, then the operation in July with the long recovery, and then the pathology reports of invasive breast cancer and then the start of chemotherapy in September and all the nastiness that followed.

She's not "done" now... next month she begins five years of a daily hormone therapy called Tamoxifen as well as one year of an every-three-week infusion of a drug called Herceptin.

But in theory we're through the worst of it. We hope.

So looking at 2011 through the cancer-colored lens, just surviving was a beautiful thing... but how did I do with the words that were to guide my activities? Let's see...

CONTENT

My big goal was to increase the amount of actual writing I was doing across my blogs and other sites. Unfortunately I don't have a count for 2010 to know how my writing exactly compares, but I know that I did write more this year. My total was:

• 632 blog posts:
  • 438 across my various personal blogs (primarily Disruptive Telephony and Disruptive Conversations)
    
    
  • 194 posts on Voxeo's blogs

Given that I was manually tracking all those entries across several different blogging platforms, it could certainly be off to a certain degree... but it's probably in the general area. Through the first half of the year I was writing more and averaging out about 2 to 3 posts each day. I had aimed to get at least one post out every day of 2011, but that goal feel by the wayside in March and then with all the cancer happenings it never really became a goal again.

Still, I'm pleased with a good body of work out there for 2011. Some of it shorter content... some of it the longer, deeper pieces I love to write. There's still a ton of stories left untold that are sitting in my queue... but I did get a good bit out.

Add to that, I believe, 51 podcast contributions to For Immediate Release. I seem to recall Shel & Neville taking one show off... and I don't think I missed any of the weeks. (And if they didn't take a week off this year, then it was 52 contributions.)

Plus, I published another book, this time with O'Reilly, "Migrating Applications to IPv6". The idea was that this was to be primarily an "ebook" that could then be frequently updated... which, given everything else going on, didn't happen (updates), despite my best of intentions. I'm looking forward to making some updates in 2012.

Where I had hoped to do more in 2011 was with photography and videos. My camera traveled with me a good bit... and I shot lots of photos... I just didn't have a whole lot of the curation/post-production time to then get photos online. 2012! Ditto video.

PORTFOLIO

I made some progress on this... I haven't really publicized it yet, but I've been aggregating my content from across various blogs into a new site at:

danyork.me

It's my attempt to bring together all my content into one central site. There's still much I would like to do with that and it's still not working the way I want, but it's a start.

I never did move my main blogs off of TypePad... perhaps 2012 will be the year I finally make that happen. And I still would like to improve how this site (DanYork.com) presents me...

LIFESTYLE

This is one where I did make serious progress. I had wondered a year ago if running would be something I really continued.

I did!

In fact, I ran 5 miles yesterday morning and will probably go for a similar run tomorrow. (Today's a resting day.) Over the course of 2011 I probably ran 400 or 500 miles... hard to know exactly as I'm not tracking all my running (such as on the treadmill).

I also ran in 6 actual races, including my first-ever half-marathon in September.

2011 also marked the time when I brought my running gear with me on every business trip and speaking engagement - and actually RAN!

Wellllll... except for the trip to Orlando where I left my shorts back in New Hampshire! On every other trip (including multiple trips to Orlando), I managed to get out and run at least once if not more. New York... Miami Beach... Toronto... San Francisco... Orlando... Virginia... Austin... I was quite pleased with this, actually, because it's so easy NOT to run while traveling.

So yes, running has become part and parcel of who I am.

Outside of running, there were some other lifestyle changes, too. Some tweaking of what we eat. Trying to do some more of the offline things I enjoy. Adding curling back into my life. Continuing to try to find that balance between the work I love and the family I love... The sudden job change from Voxeo to the Internet Society also brought some lifestyle changes, too.

Outside of the cancer chaos, or perhaps because of the chaos making me think more about priorities, 2011 was definitely one of thinking about - and acting on - lifestyle changes.

More changes to come, I hope, but this was a big part of 2011.

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What's on tap for my 3 Words for 2012? Well... I'll write about that soon... ;-)

Starting Work Today at the Internet Society

After some of my tweets today I had friends contacting me in great surprise asking if I had really left Voxeo.

Yes, to a certain degree of my own great surprise, I actually did.  

I started today (Sept 19, 2011) in a brand new role on a brand new project at the Internet Society, based in Reston, VA.  I'm still working remotely from my home office in Keene, NH, so that didn't (and won't) change.

The full story of my job change can be found over on my Disruptive Telephony blog.

And yes, with all the other chaos going on in my life, it probably wasn't the ideal time to make a job change... but is there ever really such a time?  And in fact I can say that to a certain degree my change is because of some of the perspective gained from that ongoing experience...

A Monday Morning Reminder About Those Best Laid Plans...

It's Monday morning. For me, summer is effectively over. My vacation week ended yesterday. It's time to get back into the flow of work and life and get out there and kick some serious _____. I was up early and went for a 5K run this morning focused on speed and came in just over 8:30/mile even while pushing the jogger stroller the whole way.

I had all sorts of blog posts planned... I knew I had to run out to Staples to get a printer cartridge so that my fax/printer/scanner could fax out a document (a rant for another day!)... but I expected to be up in my home office around 8:20am pounding away on those blog posts.

Then... I made a critical mistake.

I handed my used-and-theoretically-dead inkjet printer cartridge to my 2-year-old to carry into Staples because she wanted to "help".

Other parents or those interacting with toddlers reading this undoubtedly know what is about to happen...

HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU SPELL "FAIL"???

Leave it to the 2-yr-old to discover that yes, indeed, the cartridge did have some ink in it... and to get that ink ALL over her hands... and on her clothes... and subsequently on my hands....

Oops.

So there I was at the checkout counter using some Purelle and paper towels they had to attempt to clean up the major parts of the mess. The cute little hands you see in the picture here are after most of the ink was scrubbed off... but back at home where I could use some more aggressive soap.

As it was all unfolding, I felt myself starting to get agitated and anxious because I had all these plans! I had things to do, articles to write, messages to send... I could feel my blood pressure rising even as I externally was calm and patient.

And then I breathed deeply.

And reflected that this is the reality we all live in...

life happens.

You can plan all you want... you can make incredible plans, in fact... only to have them derailed by some little action, perhaps by your own action as it was in this case, or perhaps by circumstances outside your control.

The measure of ourselves as people is how we choose to react to those changes to our plans and what we learn from those changes.

In my case, I just sighed and went about the actions of trying to clean up all the ink... (and I made a note to myself that it's probably better NOT to let the wee one hold "dead" ink cartridges ;-)

When The "1 in 8 Women" Stat Hits Home...

A fascinating aspect about being as open as we have been about my wife's breast cancer is that you learn this:

Breast cancer really impacts a LARGE number of people.

It's one thing to hear a statistic like:

1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lifetime

But it's a completely different thing when that "1 in 8" stat is brought home by the sheer number of people in your own life who turn out to be affected by breast cancer.

In the few weeks I've been public about it, I've had many friends and colleagues come forward and tell me that they or their spouse either have dealt with breast cancer in recent years or are currently dealing with it. Multiple colleagues from Voxeo... friends from IETF and SIP Forum... colleagues from former employers... friends from social media circles... and many folks on Facebook, Twitter and more...

It's truly been amazing to experience (and has been greatly appreciated, as well).

"1 in 8" may not immediately sound like much... but when you start thinking of how many women you know, it turns out to be a pretty significant number...

Of Inverted Nipples... and Breast Cancer

I've learned a lot about breasts lately. More than any guy really wants to know... and not in a good way.

We of the male gender generally have a rather simplistic view of female breasts. (Some/most women may consider it a "juvenile" view in some/most/all men.) We may enjoy looking at breasts... in various states of dress or undress. We may want to touch them... or fantasize about that... or... or...

But I'm pretty sure that outside of those in the medical profession the vast majority of men don't really want to know how breasts are put together... about the plumbing inside of them.

Classify that in the "Too Much Information" category and stick it in that folder with all those other aspects of female biology about which we really have no clue.

I'm learning, though... all about lobules and ducts and lymph nodes and so much more. Not by choice. Two weeks ago I added a new term to my vocabulary: Ductal Carcinoma In Situ, a.k.a. DCIS. As a bonus, I learned the correct way to pronounce "In Situ" (at least, the way one doctor said it)... but that was really the only bonus I got that day.

My wife was diagnosed with very early stage DCIS in one breast. It appears to be "non-invasive" from the biopsy and at this point the good news is that there seems little danger of it being life-threatening. Today.

Cancer. My wife.

And so life was thrown into a chaotic holding pattern that will unfortunately continue for at least two more weeks until we meet with her next team of doctors up at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Norris Cotton Cancer Center to understand the next steps in her specific process... and when that will all occur. Meanwhile, they've sent us DVDs for what will surely be an über-exciting "date night"... and booklets that dive into deep detail. And of course, there's the glorious Internet... which is sometimes helpful... and sometimes NOT.

Along the way, I've also learned that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lifetime and a hundred other stats that I didn't know.

I'm writing this in part because writing is what I do... it's how my brain works... it's how I deal with things. And also, if any of you wonder perhaps why I may not be as focused on some projects (like, oh, restarting VOIPSA, or helping launch the SIP Forum's IPv6 SIG) or as excited to jump into something new ... or why I'm not traveling to events much lately... my priorities have drastically changed a bit for this next while.

I'm also writing this to let my female friends and readers (and their male companions) know about the way in which my wife's breast cancer was found.

She didn't have a "lump". It did not show up on a mammogram... nor on a follow-up ultrasound of her breast. There is no family history of breast cancer. She has none of the other indicators for cancer. She's in fact in the best physical condition she's been in for years.

There was only one sign... and one that she didn't really think was significant.

She had an inverted nipple.

Instead of pointing outward as nipples usually do, this one started withdrawing in upon itself.

It changed.

My wife just casually mentioned the change in her annual checkup a few months ago when the physician asked that standard question to which they probably don't expect an answer: "anything else you've noticed unusual?"

The physician thought it was probably nothing, too, but said it should be looked at... which led to several months of testing, a horrid course of super-strong antibiotics (to see if an infection was causing it) and eventually multiple MRI scans (including a "MRI-driven biopsy") where the cancer was detected and confirmed.

An inverted nipple.

That was it. The only sign. And one that could have been easily overlooked.

Since that time, naturally, we've found various articles that mention this as a potential symptom of breast cancer... but it was certainly one that neither of us, nor anyone we've mentioned it to yet, knew about.

So, should you (or your female companion if you are male) ever notice a change like this... get it checked out. It may be absolutely nothing. Or it may be something more serious.

Meanwhile, life here continues in a holding pattern while we wait to understand what lies ahead in her specific case...

Image credit: hygienematters on Flickr

One Year Of Exercise: 50+ Pounds Lost and Hundreds of Miles Run

One year ago today, May 30, 2010, my wife and I began a concerted effort to introduce physical exercise into our daily routines. My exercise at the time was just walking because I quite simply couldn't run even up to the end of my street - and even walking too far was a stretch. Being who I am, I opened a spreadsheet and recorded my weight at the time: 255 pounds.

Fast-forward one year to today and this morning I ran a 7-mile run with an average pace around 10 minutes/mile.

Still pretty unbelievable to me.

Along the way, I dropped 50+ pounds... my pants size is now 6 inches smaller and I've dropped in T-shirt size not just from an XL to a Large... but even down into a Medium for many shirts.[1]

That, too, I still find hard to believe.

As I outlined at some length in a post back in November 2010, Living Proof that 40-year-old Fat Men Can Get Up and Run!, I didn't start out on this journey to become a runner. That was probably the last thing on my mind. But it just kind of happened along the way...

After that post in mid-November, my wife and I continued running outside into December, pushing each other until we were up over 6 miles (with her, again, raising the bar on that one). We then bought a treadmill and both worked out religiously through the long winter. I started back outside in the cold of March, averaging 3-4 miles until May, when I started ratcheting up the mileage to where a 5-7 mile run is now my new "normal". (Alas, my wife has been dealing with medical issues this Spring that have kept her away from running until just last week.)

I've continued to be very focused on running every other day with taking an extra day off on the weekends. Admittedly I haven't been as good lately about walking on the off days, but I'm trying to change that. In fact, last week I started introducing some bicycling as the off-day activity.

Along the way, we invested in Garmin GPS watches ... and I started using iPhone apps to track my running as well. I don't have a total count of the miles I've run and walked... but the two iPhone apps I've used (Nike+GPS and Runkeeper) together show me up around close to 400 miles.

The funny - or sick - thing is that I'm actually starting to enjoy the running.

What's even more amusing - or more sick, depending upon your perspective - is that I can actually see how people run even longer. With the distance I'm running now I've already passed a "10K"... the next target would be a half-marathon at 13.1 miles... and for the first time that doesn't seem completely unattainable. (The real challenge I have is finding the time for longer runs.)

We'll see where I go next... today I'm celebrating one year of exercise ... and of burning exercise into my daily routine. (And yes, I'll probably go eat a chocolate chip cookie to celebrate... I think I've earned it! ;-) )

And let me tell you... if I can do it, so can you!

[1] I should note that running was NOT the only factor in my weight loss. I also changed my eating in one major way: I stopped taking second helpings. I simply limited myself to whatever I put on my plate the first time.

P.S. And yes, the effort at losing weight will continue... as the chart shows, I've been flirting with the 200 pound milestone for a while now, and I'm determined to break that mark... which would be the first time since probably 1990 or 1991...

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Photos of "What It Is That I Do"

I often get asked by people, even friends and family, "what is it that you do?" And some parts of what I do, like all the writing online, are relatively easy to understand. Other parts, like the speaking I do at conferences, is less clear to some people. Given that I actually wound up with some photos taken of me at a recent conference, SIPNOC, I thought I'd post them here (and clicking on each photo will take you to a larger image). These photos are part of a larger set of conference photos that I shot... except for the photos of me that were taken by a couple of friends while I was speaking.

In this particular case, I was at very technical conference at a hotel in Herndon, VA, of around 150 people involved with telecommunications. As described on a Voxeo events page, I was on a panel of people talking about security and then the next day was giving a talk about work we've done at Voxeo. I was also on a final panel at the end of the second day where we talked about what had happened at the conference.

Anyway, here is another aspect of "what it is that I do"...

And yes, if you're wondering, I did reverse the order of the images and started with the shots from the second day, largely because they are, to me, more interesting than the 2 shots of me from the first day.

Running the Automattic Worldwide WordPress 5K Today

As I mentioned previously over on Disruptive Conversations, the folks at Automattic (the folks behind WordPress) were going to run a 5K today, April 10, and were encouraging other bloggers and others to run, walk, roll, or do anything else like that.

Naturally, I had to play along, particularly since today was the first truly gorgeous day we've had that since the winter where I've been able to run! Temps in the mid-60s (Fahrenheit), sunny skies, most all of the mud was dried up... all around perfect conditions for a first outside run of the season.

So run it, I did.

Headed up to the beautiful Woodlawn and Greenlawn cemeteries here in Keene, NH, and did two loops through both cemeteries... stopping right at the 3.1 mile mark which, as it happened, was just after my second loop through the Greenlawn cemetery and right as I hit the bridge between the two.

As you can see from the map to the right, I got a bit creative coming up with ways to burn up some distance and still keep myself within the cemeteries. The pace image, too, gives you a good idea of where the hills are :-) And yes, that U turn where I was at my slowest was at the top of the incline leading up to the Sumner Knight chapel, if you are familiar with the cemetery, and then down the steep decline, too.

All in all it was a beautiful day for a run. Clocked in at 32:41 for an average pace of 10:30/mile. Not bad for a 43-year-old guy who just started running last year...

The even better news was that I could have continued running... I just stopped at 5K because that was my goal for today... but I still had energy and could have probably run the rest of the way home.

Now, I'm looking forward to the next race I can run with others...

Beginning the Race Season...

It's Spring here in New England... or at least, it is today. Tomorrow the forecast calls for a whopping big snowstorm, but even if it blanket us in white, it won't last long.

With the warmer weather, my thinking is naturally turning to running in some races in 2011... well, "naturally" perhaps isn't the right word. This concept of being a "runner" is still something I'm trying to wrap my brain around. But I definitely am one at this point... and what's more bizarre is that I'm actually enjoying it!

With that "enjoyment", I'm starting to look at what races I'll enter... sticking to 5Ks to start... maybe working up to a 10K. I don't know that I'll get beyond that this year, but we'll see.

I'd like to run the Cheshire Medical 5K here in Keene, NH, on April 9th, but alas we have a houseful of guests that day and some other events. I will run on April 10th as part of the Automattic WorldWide WordPress 5K... but that's me running by myself here locally and then sharing that with the world. I know there's a 4 mile race on July 4th here in Keene that I'll do. Beyond that, I'm starting to look through CoolRunning.com to find out where other local races are happening.

I'm looking forward to running some races this year... and odds are that I'll turn this personal blog into a bit of a "running blog" over the next few months... one of my goals for this year was to run some races... we'll see how I do.

What about you? Are you running in any races this year?

Image credit: Tri-state Racing