I'm not letting this get me down!

I can honestly say that the past 3 months have been the most discouraging of my life. I have been working countless hours on my senior project with very little in returns. I could go off on all the brick wall's I've ran into, but you already know all about those. I want to go off instead on the things that I've learned through this whole ordeal. (And no, my senior project isn't over yet, so I'm sure there are more lessons to come)

This past week I made the executive decision that the part I was working on for my senior project can not be made operable in the remaining time allowed. This was a very difficult decision for me. Deep down I know that this was not a complete failure on my part, but it was hard for me to not look at it in the short term as a failure. I felt that I had failed, that I had spent hundreds of hours and thousands of a certain persons dollars and I have nothing to show for it. That's pretty frustrating!

However, about a day later from making this call, I began to see things in a different way. I'm not sure how much of our project we'll get working, but we definitely have over a thousand hours of project to show. And given the fact that it's suggested that we spend around 240 hours on our project, I think we have quite a bit to show for it. So after I began to feel a little better about not obtaining exactly what I was shooting for, I came across some other thoughts that gave me some more encouragement.

"Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."
- Sir Winston Churchill

My graduate adviser has random quotes attached at the end of her emails, and this happened to be one that I got this week. I found it very appropriate.

This weekend at the library I found a DVD documentary on Walt Disney, who I feel I can relate to in several ways when it comes to reaching for your dreams. There were two comments that I liked a lot.

"Walt Disney didn't think of weather or not his ideas were good, he was more concerned about where he was going to get the money for the idea."

I can't help but think of my mom on this one. She has invested more that she probably should have in my "education." I do have to say, however, that if any of this stuff ever goes to patenting, she'll definitely be on the list of contributors. Either way, I am truly grateful for her never ending support.

This DVD also talked a lot about Walt's love for trains, they had a whole section on the construction of the Carolwood Pacific, his train layout that went all around his property. As they were interviewing him about it he said, "Well, the hardest part of this project was getting the right-of-way through the rose garden." Emily can relate to that comment.



After watching this I was reminded that succeeding at amazing things takes a lot of hard work, A LOT of hard work. And Walt Disney and my Dad are prime examples of that. So don't worry, I am not going to give up and change my major to basket weaving. I still have ideas and dreams. I just have to learn how to properly balance them with my responsibilities as a husband and father. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to take as many risks as Disney did. I don't think my wife would enjoy being millions of dollars in debt. But I still am going to continue dreaming and looking for ideas on how to invent the next great thing.