A Personal Note

A personal note

It is Sunday evening. I am doing what I’ve been doing for the last 5-6 years. I am literally preparing myself for the upcoming week at work.

There’s so much things to do, so much to learn, so much to share and achieve during a normal week of work.

In today’s industry, things are happening at a cadence we’ve never seen before. Cloud computing has definitively lead to an extreme pace of innovation that is really hard to keep up with, unless you are all in and have chosen the right battles to fight.

I am currently the CTO for one of the largest SI in the Nordics, which of course requires a lot from me. In addition, I am also a Microsoft MVP within Cloud & Datacenter that takes a lot of my time outside of work hours.

Attending several conferences each and every year, visiting customers around the entire globe and spending a lot of my time doing research & development, I had over 200 flights in 2015.

It is all good. I have been doing this for the last 5-6 years. I am used to it and I can admit it is also my passion.

At home, I have my significant other (Kristine) that takes care of our house and our 4 kids. Ideally, she would love to see that I was able to spend more time at home with her and our kids. But she know what I am and what I do. We have an agreement that I am able to focus more on my work, while she takes care of the things that are happening at home. Again, I have been doing this for the last 5-6 years and it’s all good.

I grew up in a valley where my parents had a farm with cattle’s. The situation there was quite similar to what we are practicing in our family. My dad was doing the work on the farm while my mum took care of our house and me and my two elder brothers.

I and my brothers helped him as good – and as much as we could when we grew up. We learned that quality was important. That we had to do things properly. If we took any shortcuts, it would backfire. We learned it back then. We learned it the hard way.

I learned a lot of growing up on a farm under these circumstances. No matter what happened, my dad always had to do his work. In the end of the day, all of his cows were depending on him. They needed their daily care, food, water and much more. He could never say that “I don’t feel well today, I have to call in sick”. No. it wasn’t possible.

He did his job in order to provide for his family, which was the most important thing in his life.

The same thing can be said about my father in law. His work was the foundation for his family. Working with logistics, he went to work every day and answered any call he might receive outside of work hours to help his co-workers no matter what the situation was. He did his work with pride too.

It is September now. The 9^th month in the year. We have had some significant losses during the last 10 months. My father in law passed away in December after losing the battle against liver cancer. He fought to the bitter end. Although he had cancer and was under treatment (chemotherapy), he was showing up on work every day, doing more than people expected from him – given the circumstances.

He wasn’t aware of any other way. He had been doing this for over 30 years, and it was all good.

Late in March this year. It was my father’s turn. He suddenly passed away, unexpectedly and shocking for all of us. The last thing he did before he passed away was to complete a project that he had promised our two sons.  

A couple of years ago, my father almost lost his right hand in an accident while working on his farm. Due to this injury, he had to let go of his cattle as he couldn’t take care of them anymore.

However, he still had a lot of buildings and land to maintain and kept up with that.

He had been doing this for over 40 years, and it was all good.

Looking back at these two events makes me sad. It is always very hard and tough when you are losing someone you love, that plays an significant role for the entire family.

Back when it happened, I was sad, I was devastated. I did my best to take care of my own family, our children. I still am and we work through our losses every day as a unit.

But I didn’t stop. I continued to work. I sat down on every Sunday, just like this one and prepared for the upcoming week.

I learned a lot from these two men. My core values cannot be questioned and is something I live and breathe every day. I take care of the one’s I love, I provide for them and I do what I am.

I honor these men through my actions, my commitments and my passion. I have been doing this for the last 5-6 years, and it’s all good.

Thanks for reading.

-kn