I am a marketer at heart, so a milquetoast Caring Bridge blog was never going to do the trick. But we need a theme because this is not the Rob Rex blog. That blog would be (will be?) about my passions – entrepreneurship, world class technology enabled experiences like the Hilton and Southwest apps, and the advances in our transportation and energy systems that I love to dream on and debate. If our regulators and government can keep up the next 20 years should change our world in really exciting ways – I believe Luke my 9 year old son gets his drivers license but Gray the 3 year old finds the concept of owning and driving a car a ridiculous burden when he can take a nap during his traffic-free ride wherever he dreams.
So we are going with a theme I think about a lot that feels appropriate to the crazy rollercoaster I have been on over the last couple weeks and just how out of nowhere it came: the concept (or illusion) of control vs. the fun, crazy, life of it’s own elements that make life so fun and exciting to live.
Foxfields 
Mardi Gras y’all 
Engineering Dorms 
Football 
Beerpong
I was a computer science major at the University of Virginia, but I went in with only a very vague understanding of what programming was and what computers could do. I still remember deciding UVA was my first choice based on the very sophisticated criteria that it was listed in 1) Top 25 in US News Top Academic Schools 2) Sport’s Illustrated’s Top 25 Sports Schools 3) Playboy’s Top 25 Party Schools and 4) it was about the right distance away in the direction that got warmer. I sat down at a computer to apply and there were 2 links – the College of Arts and Sciences or The School of Engineering. I had no idea what I wanted to do so I asked my dad and he said ‘you like math right?’ Sure. ‘You like science right?’ Sure. then do engineering. I did, and I still remember feeling hoodwinked when I met up with the other UVA bound girl in my high school who was joining the lacrosse team and had all the inside scoop. She had no Friday classes and all the right professors, I had a little orange card that told me about my 8 am biology classes and math labs. I hadn’t even picked the right set of dorms according to the girl’s lacrosse team… sheesh.
I distinctly remember just how bad I was at programming out of the gates and I never made it much past competent. One of my favorite memories was my first computer security class where this young smug professor just put up a transparency of a simple substitution cipher problem and stood at the front of the class waiting with his hand out for someone to hand him a completed assignment. 90% of the class starts analyzing letter frequencies and word lengths and frantically scribbling to be the first one to solve the very clever riddle. There were like 4 of us that just sat silently looking at each other like WTF is happening? – are we sure this field is expanding fast enough that we ALL get jobs? I was academically overwhelmed but felt like surrounded by nerds like these I at least had a shot at an as yet illusive ‘girlfriend’…
As I learned to program I loved the opportunity to create these little ‘thoughts’ that started off as a totally blank screen but could do some really powerful stuff – finding fastest paths, creating mini-games, and the seemingly endless possibilities presented by recursive functions. Recursive functions spawned new programs – by themselves. Instead of me grinding through lines of codes to do a specific task, a well written recursive function could solve these problems by spawning dozens of its own mini-programs to get to the answer. The problem with this incredibly powerful construct is that recursive functions are complex and as we have already established I was just not that good. So I could spawn the functions, I could sorta control what they did once they spawned… but I always lost control before they got where they were supposed to go and loved watching them take on minds of their own and go do god knows what.
Gray 
Luke 
NYE 
Tay 
Kate 
Beachin’
I’ve always had fun thinking about my kids as recursive functions. I definitely had a hand in spawning them, and I have SOME level of control on where they are going (at least for a while) but MAN is it fun to watch them take on a mind of their own and go do cool, crazy stuff that is way better than I could have imagined on my own.
My thoughts have also behaved this way over the last few weeks. A smooth, beautiful, darn-near-perfect life that I thought I was controlling – changed in an instant. Throw in a few extra weeks locked away from family and friends in a hospital and there have been a WHOLE lot of thoughts spawned between me, the little dudes in my head, and my hospital walls. Dark thoughts, hair-brained business ideas, themes about living intentionally, vacation ideas – there have been a lot of functions spawned. They rarely go where I plan them to, but as I’ve processed everything I’ve started to allow them to run just to see where they go and it has been really therapeutic and relaxing. At some point, you just have to embrace the lack of control and enjoy the ride 🙂
3 Bonus Thoughts
- For the record, I look forward to getting back to the vast majority of that life I’ve described, but as you’ll learn as you read – there are just some things that will never be the same. Some are hard and un-debatably negative but many will be positive and it is fun to think about personal growth and how I can come out of this better than I went in.
- The visual theme is from one of my favorite movies – The Shawshank Redemption. At the end of the movie the main character, Red played by Morgan Freeman, a super chill, open-minded guy who has grown into an admirable human through some tough circumstances climbs on a bus for a many thousand-mile journey to a vague destination he knows almost nothing about. I just love the wistful smile on Morgan Freeman’s (Red’s) face and how unhurried he is about his path. I’ve never really been a goal setter. I’m more of an adventure and a journey guy. I try to make decisions that open more future doors than they close (for example no neck tattoos) and as long as I am growing and progressing and enjoying myself I’m pretty open-minded about where the path takes me (My wife is more of a planner, and that is how you end up super happy but living 1 mile from your inlaws in your wife’s hometown). I’m hoping this helps me on the journey that is to come because there is just so much uncertainty in the path ahead and I’m going to try to tackle it with the same wistful determined smile as Red.
- If you think I’m telling a UVA story and not bringing up the greatest 2 weeks in the history of the sports world you are crazy. My wife runs into a Purdue friend who happens to be a pilot at a playground the day before a UVA-Purdue Elite 8 game then leads to following the Cavs all the way through the title surrounded by my college buddies that have scattered all over the country. This is my blog so look at the pictures. Revel in the emotion. Watch a couple of Youtube clips and maybe a few Kyle Guy free throws. And go on crazy trips every time your insanely supportive wife encourages you 😉
