A week ago today I heard the news-my position at Microsoft had been eliminated and my last day was Friday. I wrote about this in my blog “Thank you Microsoft and Goodbye”. I honestly had no idea that a simple blog post from my heart would impact so many people. I’ve received more than a hundred emails, most from people I’ve never met, thanking me for the blog. Many people mentioned that my blog gave them a new perspective and re-energized them for their work. As a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma I love data. For fun, I pulled the statistics on WordPress. As of this writing nearly 25,000 visitors have seen my blog. I’m overwhelmed by the encouragement and response and I wanted to take a minute and thank everyone for their encouragement and support. Furthermore, I had multiple people ask for me to keep them updated on my journey so I’ve decided to blog about my experiences.

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

A few years ago I asked my neighbor, former Huskies football head coach Jim Lambright, to speak at the men’s breakfast at our church. What he said was likely the inspiration for the blog I wrote after being laid off from Microsoft. He shared that on the day he was fired as the Husky head coach he really wanted to feel sorry for himself. Instead, he decided to call his friend who worked at Children’s Hospital in Seattle. The next day, he spent the day visiting children with cancer, children with life threatening diseases, and the families of these children. Nothing like a little perspective on life to keep one from feeling sorry for themselves. Thank you for that word, Jim, I’m glad I took your advice to not feel sorry for myself after Microsoft laid me off but rather dwell on all the good that came from Microsoft.

Last week was an extremely challenging but rewarding week. My mom had just returned home a few weeks earlier after being in the hospital and rehab (she has COPD and her lungs were not doing well). She had to go back into the hospital and on July 4^th they discovered she had colon cancer and if something didn’t change fast, she would have to have emergency surgery the next morning resulting in a colostomy. This surgery would be very high risk and we were in Eastern Washington, unable to return in time for the surgery. Thankfully, the next morning things looked better and they were able to postpone the surgery until Tuesday. Tuesday morning I was with her before she went into surgery and 2.5 hours later the surgeon reported that he’d successfully removed the cancer and mom didn’t need a colostomy!

The next day I was informed about my layoff. This morning I got a call from the hospital. Mom is doing so well that she is transferring to rehab today to start the path to being healthy again!

I also mentioned in my blog that I am the co-owner of Marina’s Edge Vacation Rentals on Lake Chelan. What I didn’t mention is that our second building was under construction and would need my full attention that weekend. I walked out of Microsoft for the last time on Friday and got into my truck to drive to Lake Chelan! My wife, kids, brother, and business partners pulled together and I’m happy to say that we finished everything in the nick of time and today is the official opening of our new unit!

The day after I was informed of my layoff I had coffee with Ercan. I met Ercan when I decided I wanted to do some home automation with our vacation rental on Lake Chelan. I sent an email to one of the many aliases at Microsoft and through this alias I was introduced to Ercan. To make a long story short, Ercan is building a startup business, UniHome. It turns out that UniHome’s primary target market is helping vacation rental owners like myself automate their vacation rentals (things like automatically programming the key codes for locks, flood prevention, energy savings, etc.). Ercan was also a former Microsoft employee and as a result of his layoff he’s pursuing his dream of starting a small business. During coffee it became obvious that my skills and experience would benefit UniHome so I’ve decided to join him as we make a run at building a start-up!

Saturday is the ChelanMan Triathlon. As I mentioned in my previous blog, I’ve found a love for this sport. I’ve been training for months as this year’s “Olympic” is twice as far on everything as the “Sprint” that I did last year. Unfortunately, I’d neglected to register assuming that I could just register as a walk-in. I was mistaken. Last night when I went to register, the registration for this event was closed. I was devastated to the point of tears, but decided to take a chance and send a personal email to Tara (she runs the ChelanMan). This morning she made my day and said she’d register me! I am so grateful for her generosity! As a side note, Tara exemplifies generosity by volunteering her time and donating all of the proceeds from the ChelanMan to local charities in Chelan! Thank you, Tara!!!

I’m writing this blog on the drive to Chelan. We are finally going to rest after one of the more challenging weeks of our lives. To everyone that took the time to email me or comment on the blog post I wanted to say thank you again. Your words of encouragement have fueled me during this challenging week.