Openly Blogging

Remembering to smell the roses

Wednesday Jun 20, 2007

A colleague of mine, Layne Ethington, recently died, losing a very quick battle to brain cancer. Layne was a Solaris System Administration writer. I worked with him when I was program manager for Solaris and OpenSolaris documentation.

We held a memorial at Sun for him this past week. It was a beautiful tribute to him, filled with both tears and laughter, as folks shared their memories with each other. Layne touched the hearts of a lot of people in our department. I learned so much about him that I never knew, or ever took the time to ask.

I have to admit that I've been in kind of a funk since the memorial though. Yes, I'm in a funk because some one I knew and cared about is gone. I am in more of a funk though because of how little I knew about Layne, and how little I know about a lot of people I work with. I don't often take the time to go to lunch with friends and colleagues, as I eat at my desk. Family commitments usually push me toward home after work, instead of going out with the gang. My average work day filled with meetings and emails doesn't allow much time for even simple conversations with the people that I spend more waking hours with than my family.

Layne's death serves as a reminder to me, to smell the roses, to go out to lunch with friends more often, and to talk about the things that matter in the world.

[3] Comments
Like this post? del.icio.us | furl | slashdot | technorati | digg
Posted at 07:44PM Jun 20, 2007 by sweber in Life and work, more generally
Tags:
Comments:

I went through this with my Brother in Law. It's really hard to cope with, no matter if it's your first loss or not. The lesson is value friendships, and create as many as possible. Keep your family close though. Bottom line, take the time. But you seemed to have figured that out.

Posted by ThinGuy on June 20, 2007 at 10:20 PM PDT #

Then living and working where I am would be an absolute nightmare for you (as it is for me as well). People here are cold, cold, cold. And uptight. Job matters are kept strictly business, and private stuff is kept strictly private. If there is any "private" stuff discussed, it's about vacation. Going out with the colleagues after hours for a beer is unthinkable, because everybody is "bogged down" with "appointments" (indeed, everything in this country revolves around "being on time" and "appointments"). I often have the feeling that these people are like robots. And now that I've read your post (which I agree with), I can only begin to imagine would kind of a funk you'd be in if you had to live and work here every day.

Posted by UX-admin on June 21, 2007 at 02:20 AM PDT #

Sue for what it's worth, you did reach out to me and through our blogs and our comments we did talk about the things that really matter to us. I'm glad I got to know about the personal side of you and how it fits in with the work-you. It would have been nicer to have these conversations over lunch but since we're in opposite hemispheres, the internet allowed us to have conversations that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to.

I wish I had known Layne, he sounds like a wonderful person.

Posted by melanie gao on June 25, 2007 at 09:32 PM PDT #

Post a Comment:
  • HTML Syntax: NOT allowed