Humans in general are very good at looking for patterns using data to find empirical truths. Some credit this skill to the forefathers of the scientific method. For me, not everything comes into my mind that way. Perhaps it's my left handedness or right brainedness but I like to try out things that wouldn't seem to make sense or are against the norm. For instance to an outsider, you would think leaving a good paying job after having just been promoted for a company that had so many marquee clients would be an unwise move especially without having a job to fall back on. For me, there is an inner voice that connects your body and your health and your energy to the outside world. In my upbringing, that voice is called spirituality or soul and it has been given by God. It guides you but you have the option of not listening to it. Sometimes your body and health and energy begin to waiver because you go so far down the path that inner voice is asking you to follow. Sure, I am well trained in the scientific method but many times, the inner voice is what leads me to my best discoveries.

In the case of my job, I had automated so many processes and in stilled knowledge in others so much so that I needed a new challenge. I thought managing analytics for the company would sustain me but the road was too long and burnt for me to pass safely. I didn't have the energy to keep going down that path.

Meanwhile, the inner voice tells you that the market is good enough with someone of your skills to make a shift back to consulting. You've seen the world and what not to do and you can give that advice to others. They'll listen to you as a consultant even though they don't seem to listen to you as an employee as well. Luckily, I found a gig that paid on par to what I was making. It's been about a month and I feel my energy has been restored. There is also more of a balance with my home life. I was able to work from home yesterday and see my daughter's last baseball game. In the meanwhile, I am spending more hours working but feel the work is making a difference and is appreciated. I am also learning new things. Yesterday, I brushed off my perl skills to use a library that scrapes web content.

So back to patterns, I have just read Freakonomics and am through the first 38 pages of The World Is Flat. Freakonomics was about running the world through proper incentive systems. Eli Goldratt echoes a similar message when he says to eliminate conflicts to productivity. In the World Is Flat, I just read about homesourcing. JetBlue does it with their reservation systems using Utah housewives. If you look at the media messages about oil these days, you see that America relies way too heavily on foreign oil. What is oil? Oil provides energy.  So you can say America relies too much on the energy of others. This includes outsourcing. We don't focus on looking at our own resources and just do things better. This is because of corruption in the system. People gain powerful positions and make more money doing things the wrong way for short term gain rather than for the benefit of society. Is this a fault of capitalism and the market driven economy? There is hope, I latch onto stories about home sourcing, I latch onto stories about the US having coal and oil shale that could sustain us if we could figure out how to process it correctly, I look at stories about Al Gore pushing environmentalism and I think, Americans are seeing the result of outsourcing and foreign oil dependence and refocusing on the definitions of "Energy" and it's relation to "The Environment". If we push these messages, we will see the American economy follow. We must put value on energy and the environment. I will in upcoming blogs try to form a more well structured argument on these things and tie them back to Decision Support Systems building.