A few weeks ago, I posted the following letter to this weblog as a note of departure.  I’ve since decided that it was a poor choice, and have re-instated it here, at this new address.  I post the letter here for personal, historical reasons.  There is quite a bit of content that was lost in the transition.  I will try my best to recover it in the coming days.  Thank you.

September 12th, 2008

Dear Visitor,

I hope that you may have found something useful at this website in the past. I have decided to take this all down permanently for a number of personal reasons and hope for your understanding in this. In about a month’s time, everything will expire and even this letter will be lost.

Major catalysts for this action include the hospitalization of someone I care for very dearly, and the sudden death of my father-in-law. I have a great amount of admiration and respect for him and his passing is truly a tragedy. If you are inclined, please pray for the repose of his good soul.

While the content of this website may have been useful for some, it is an unnecessary and fleeting distraction for myself. We have very little time on this earth with those that are close to us and we have to make the most of it. The entire idea of having a website domain bearing my name makes me ill, as the past few months have been rather humbling to say the least. While there is value in what I do- much of it is still dust and ashes and I cannot waste my time on trivial pursuits.

Again, thank you for your interest. I hope that this is a good step for me and for those close to me.

-Joseph Labrecque

I haven’t been posting much lately as I’ve taken a good, long vacation this past month.  Unfortunately, the vacation turned into a severe health crisis almost overnight and a good deal of it was spent in doctor’s offices and hospitals.

It wasn’t my own ailment that caused this and all is fine now that everything has been (medically) addressed, but it does cause a certain paranoia to think that one moment you can be having a great time and the next be in such extreme pain that you would rather die than go on living.

As a result of this experience, I’ve begun to reflect on the priorities in my own life and have started planning some shifts in accordance with these re-evaluations.

Do the things you find the most fulfilling.

Money isn’t everything.

We all have very little time left amoung the living.

Some of this is super-obvious… I know.  A lot of it is clichéd.  I’m super-paranoid now because it’s all very true.

This is probably very obvious to a lot of people… but really the best way to take vacation is to refrain from any work. Just recently getting back from 12 days of Christmas vacation has made me realize this oh-so-startling fact.

It’s very difficult for me to actually put everything down for an extended period of time. Sometimes this is my own fault and other times out of necessity. Unfortunately, I know that 9 times out of 10- the fault lies squarely with me and my work-habits.

Last year while on parental leave, I spent a good amount of time each day working. I would say that, in that instance, necessity did play a role. We were swamped and had a number of looming deadlines. I will state now though, that I fully intend to cut myself off from work, if possible, during all future “vacations” :)