Tracie's World

Last weekend, I was asked to speak at a funeral. A man in my ward had passed away unexpectedly, and I used to visit teach his wife. I never met the man - he had been pretty much home-bound for the last couple of years. When I did visit his wife, he never came out to the living room, and I never went into their back bedroom. So needless to say, the invitation to speak was unexpected. The motivation for the invitation seems to have been from a talk that I gave back around the first of the year. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the talk was recorded, and given to him. I guess it provided some sort of comfort to him in his situation, and he would listen to it regularly. Admittedly, that information, and the invitation to speak, sort of "weirded me out", and I felt intense pressure. I'm not a General Authority, so that anyone should really set me up as someone to listen to gave me pause for concern. I was also worried that being my imperfect self, there would come a time that

Registered for my first two gad school courses last week. One is an Enterprise Architecture Foundations class, and one is a Project Management class. While I'm working on the degree, I'll also acquire enough credits to get a Certificate in Project Management. Project Management is definitely not my passion, but it will be a nice bonus and resume padder. Classes begin January 9th. Onward and upward!

This past Saturday dawned bright and beautiful, so my pal Cyndee and I went for a hike around Red Butte Garden. Not only does the Garden have walking paths of its own, but there are several trails in the foothills behind it. The fall colors were great, and the garden was a nice sanctuary. Great way to start off the weekend.

In my last post, I mentioned some big plans. And thankfully, I'm now in a position to share some of those. To put some context around it, these last several months have been a period of increased difficulty and unhappiness with my employment situation. Back around 6 weeks ago, I was feeling at my absolute worst, and was trying to figure out where else to go and what to do. Should I look for a new job, should I look to get into some sort of program? And nothing was really clicking. About this time, I was following some social media conversation about the current state of my industry. One of the more well-known Business Analysts brought up the topic of "Business Architecture". It's the concept of helping an organization understand what it's capabilities are, and how to put itself in a position to get to where it wants to be.  On a lark, I googled "Master's in Business Architecture", and up popped a program in "Enterprise Architecture" from

Those of you who have been regulars followers of Tracie's World have no doubt noticed that I've been absent for a few months. And for that I wish to apologize. The regular excuses of having lots going on and dealing with life seem like a cliche', but nevertheless, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyhoo - I'm happy to say that I'm back, and I've got some big plans ahead, which I'll be sharing with you shortly. In the meantime, thanks for your patience and for hanging in there with me.