Earlier this evening, I neatly stacked my unbounded 200 page textbook onto the document feeder of a waist high scanner, converting a college Linear Algebra book from physical form into a 40 megabyte colored PDF — all within 3 minutes. And best of all: it was free! That’s right, I didn’t pay a single penny, thanks to my local library, which is somehow stocked with a blazing fast multi functioning scanner, a Sharp MX-4070 that sells for $15,000.  Tapping into the free resources that my library offers reminded me just how amazing libraries are. And after I scanned my book, I strolled up and down a couple aisles, running my fingers horizontally across book spines, settling on three books that caught my attention: “When” by Daniel H. Pink, String Theory by David Foster Wallace, and “Where the Past Begins” by Amy Tan. These three books are now sitting on the corner of my desk, within arm’s reach, books that I’ll cycle through over the next couple weeks.

Anyways, today’s experience served as a reminder of how magical libraries are and how, instead of buying new books that often lay on my shelf collecting dust, I should stroll down to my local library and lap into an incredible, free resource.

Today is donut day! Actually, every Friday is donut day.

I started a weekly ritual about six months ago. Every Friday, my entire team (apart from one or two people) rides the elevator from the 13th floor down to the lobby, and then we proceed to take a brisk 2 minute walk Mighty O: Seattle-based shop that serves vegan donuts.  Once we arrive, I firmly grip the handle of the glass door, swinging it wide open and rushing the counter, where donut samples lies on a silver shiny platter.  I lower my head towards the samples, my nose hovering half an inch above them, and inhale deeply, getting a sweet whiff of all sweet smells: chocolate, vanilla, french toast.

Following scarfing down a sample (sometimes two), I saunter over to the cashier and place my order: a french toast donut and a large almond milk chai.  Occasionally, I order a different flavored donut, depending if Mighty O offers a seasonal donut that appeals to my senses. For example, a few weeks back, Mighty O concocted an ore flavored donut — it was damn nice. But normally, I stick to the french toast.

What can I say ? I’m a creature of habit.

This entire donut routine spawns from my affinity for donuts. It’s an emotional food.  For me, donuts sends me back to my childhood.  When I was a young boy, about seven or eight, my father would drive me to school, the little me sitting in the front seat, feet dangling off the edge, too short to reach the floor. On the way to school, my father would stop by a local donut shop with a drive through ordering; we rarely (if never) ate inside the actual store.  As we pulled up to order, a cashier would slide open the drive through window, and my father would proceed with ordering: chocolate bar for him, me the sugar glaze with a side of milk.

At the end of the day, here it is: I love donuts.

I consider Seattle my new home.

Perhaps it’s the lack of pretension.  Folks around here tend to pragmatically dress themselves: sneakers, blue jeans, puffy Patagonia down jacket. This is unlike how people dress themselves in southern California, where I lived for over 25 years, where the overall vibe is to dress to impress. I admit, I once bought into that lifestyle, setting my alarm hour an hour earlier than normal in order to iron both my pin striped business long sleeve shirts along with my cream colored khakis. But not anymore — I dress for comfort.

Perhaps it’s the overwhelming love people have for their furry four legged babies.  On the weekends, rain or shine, you’ll find the park bustling with people walking their dogs,  winding up and launching tennis balls into the lake, their dogs galloping at full speed and diving in for the retrieve. Dogs love swimming.

It’s beautiful.

Or perhaps Seattle just happens to be the city in which I started feeling comfortable under own skin, shaking off years of built up anxiety and self consciousness and low self esteem. It’s here in this city that I not only found my singing voice, thanks to Liz Frazier (a top notch vocal instructor), but a voice that resonates with love and confidence and conviction.

Seattle. Thank you.

Lately, I’m feeling very content with my career.

For the majority of my life, I’ve been constantly searching for some job that would fulfill me. Like many others working in the tech industry, I had a tendency to hop around from company to company every two years, always switching it up, never allowing myself to settle down. This tactic, of shuffling my career, was somewhat deliberate and strategic in the sense that salaries leap when switching from one company to another. In other words, if you want a substantial increase in your salary, you need to move. Otherwise, your stuck with receiving incremental pay raises that are considered trivial in comparison. For example, when I left Cisco to join Fox Networks, my salary increased by 40% .

In addition to increasing my salary, I had vigilantly switched from one company to the next because I was afraid of intellectually stagnating, as if the company I was working at would potentially hinder my personal development. And this can be true, to a certain degree, since working for a small mom and pop software company will never present the same technical challenges as working for a large, cloud computing company.

Regardless, I no longer feel as though there’s some magical company where I would work on a magical team that writes magical code.  In fact, as much as I enjoy working on new features or new products, I revel in maintaining software and systems.  In short, I realize that I control my technical growth and that regardless of what company I work for, I’ll always strive to improve my craft. Moreover, the more I study computer science, the more problems rise to the surface, problems that I would otherwise dismiss due to my lack of understanding.

Despite my contentment, I’m not saying I’m going to settle down in my current role and current company for the rest of my life. Nobody can predict what’s going to happen in a year (or even tomorrow).  But for the foreseeable future, I see myself staying put, working for Amazon Web Services, developing software and building systems, one byte at a time.

Last Saturday, I woke up at 06:00 AM (about 30 minutes later than I normally wake up on weekdays) and slipped into a striped, cotton t-shirt that my sister bought from target for my last birthday and my favorite knee length corduroy shorts, dressing myself in preparation for a 2 mile, dog friendly run in Tacoma, a city 45 miles south of where I live in North Seattle.  I found this event advertised in the pet connection magazine, a free and well circulated newspaper that’s often laying around in the local coffee shops and I decided that, since my wife was gone for the weekend on a women’s retreat, me and our two dogs would kick start the morning off with some exercise.

In addition to the 2 mile run, the event included exclusive access to a city owned swimming pool that was opened up for pet dogs.  The pool was to be drained and emptied out since summer was coming to an end, so the parks and recreations center decided to allow, for a small fee, owners to bring their dogs in for a swim.

So after getting dressed, I loaded the two dogs in the trunk of my ford escape, fired up the engine, popped the address of the parks and recreation center into Google Maps and then hopped on the I-5 freeway.  I had left the house an hour and a half before the event started, leaving myself 45 minutes of buffer; I did this for two reasons: I hate being late and I almost always get lost despite having directions.  And good thing I did, because the latter proved true once again, because when I arrived at the destination that I had initially keyed into Google Maps, I found myself pulling the car into an empty parking lot, a clear sign that I was in the wrong place. While idling in the parking lot, I opened up my phone’s browser and began typing away, searching for the correct address.  Eventually I landed on the event website, which had the address plastered across the front page.  So I took this new address and proceed to hop back on the freeway.

After driving 10 minutes back in the direction I came from, I eventually made it to the right location.  I was certain I was in the right place this time but not only was the parking lot packed like a can of sardines, but when the drivers (dressed in running clothes) opened up either the doors of the backseats or trunks, their dogs would leap out.

Now that I was in the right place, I harnessed Metric and Mushroom, and the three of us sauntered over to the center of the park that was bustling with people and dogs, finalizing my registration under registration canopy and then pinning my micro-chipped racing tag to my chest.  I then stepped over to the next canopy, where grocery sized bags, filled with goodies sponsored by Mud Bay, were laid out in rows along a table.  I grabbed two bags, one for each dog, and then returned to my parked car, where I locked all my belongings (e.g. phone, wallet) into the glove compartment.  With my pockets empty and with the two dogs amped up, ready to go, I proceeded to the starting line.

A crowd of us runners and our dogs huddled around the starting line, where the event coordinator, a tall man with the voice of a lion, was making some announcements, primarily house keeping items like thanking the sponsors of the event and directions on how to navigate the course.  While he wrapped up his speech, I snaked my way to the front of the line, a leash gripped in either hand.  After his final announcements, he announced that the race was beginning and counted down, ending with “Go!”

And we were off.

I began jogging at a reasonable pace, a pace of about 9 minutes per mile.  But after the first mile, Metric and Mushroom were no longer bolting in front of me.  Initially, they were galloping like horses, practically dragging me to the front of the race. But they slowly began to run out of steam, their tongues flopping to the side of their mouth, panting louder with every step.  And even though I wanted to power through and maintain my position in third place, I decided (after realizing that I was damn happy that the dogs were healthy enough to run this race with me) to reduce my jog down to a walk, stopping at the next check point, where bowls of water were laid out for the dogs.  Metric and Mushroom practically slurped up the entire bowl.

We ended up finishing in 4th place, both dogs completely drained and ready for their nap.  But as soon as I walked them over to the swimming pool, they were suddenly filled with energy, as if they didn’t just run 2 miles.  I unleashed them from their harnesses and the two of them dashed into the water, spending the next hour paddling in the pool, constantly fixing their gaze at me, their way of signalling me to toss a tennis ball for them to fetch.

I really enjoyed the event—running 2 miles and letting the dogs to swim—and will definitely return to Tacoma next year for round two.