Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Yesterday my boss forwarded a resume to myself and several of the people on my team. The candidate has a ton of experience doing projects similar to what we're doing and would likely be a good fit. Reading through the previous positions on his resume and then his education I realized that he's been working as a programmer as long as I've been alive (I'm 27). I find the thought that I might still be sending out resumes in 20 years is horribly depressing.

I started reading through On The Shortness Of Life an essay by Lucius Seneca last week here and there while waiting for things to build/install and when eating my lunch. Tim Ferris had a blog post about it and that got me interested. Anyhow, It has me thinking a lot about my time and the fact that it's a limited commodity, the fact that I'm giving up much of the lives of my children for work, and priorities. Here are a few excerpts that I've found particularly insightful:

So it is - the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it . . . life is amply long for him who orders it properly.

"The part of life we really live is small." For all the rest of existence is not life, but merely time.

Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live!

your vices will swallow up any amount of time. The space you have ... escapes from you quickly; for you do not seize it ... but allow it to slip away as if it were something superfluous and that could be replaced.

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