What are you thankful for?

It was one year ago at the beginning of December that I felt a really BIG test thrust upon me.

I had been let go maybe a week or two earlier in the Broadcom acquisition of VMware and told I was no longer a part of the Spring team.

This wasn’t just a job…it was one of the best pieces of tech I had EVER worked on!

But that was over. And something that I was suddenly in the midst of was the fact that two of my kids had been picked to be part of the bible quizzing team going to the regional competition in St. Louis!

So I told myself that whatever angst I had, I would put it on the shelf and instead focus on spending time with them. After all, no one else was calling me up. No tickets. No pull requests to review. And I had keenly decided to NOT do any podcasting of livestreaming until the severance check (of which I qualified for the MAX, which combined with my accelerated equity option, gave me about 7 1/2 months of salary) was in my hands. I didn’t want to hand the incoming company any REASON to withhold that check. I doubted they would, but way put yourself into a position of playing defense?

So I loaded my two kids into the van, and off we went for a 5-hour drive.

And something happened on that trip.