It was a momentous week in the Shumpert house.  My son informed me that he was “ready for a kickstand”, and I was thrilled!  What he meant by this was that he was finally ready to have the training wheels removed from his bike.   In truth, he has been ready for a few months now, but had made up his mind that it was time.  So we went to the store and picked out a kickstand, brought it home and installed it.    He got on his bike and with a little push, he was cruising around the cul-de-sac like a pro.   I was very proud.

As I sat there watching him ride his bike, I started to think about what he said.  That he was “ready for a kickstand”, and how that expression is different than the one I have heard more often of “ready for the training wheels to come off”.

Being ready for a kickstand is to embrace the next challenge, to face what is ahead of you, and is a powerful, confident stance.   Being ready to have the training wheels removed is still a good thing, but it does not give the impression of charging ahead into the next challenge.  It is more of  an acknowledgment that you are ready to face current task or challenge on your own.

How often in our jobs or projects have we been ready to charge ahead to the next, more challenging stage?  To ask the more difficult questions? To begin to tackle things that in the past you would not have done.  This is especially meaningful to me as over the next few months I am setting out to do things that a year ago I could not have imagined.  I will be presenting at two different ColdFusion users groups on the benefits of adding web analytics to ColdFusion based web sites, applications.  And if all goes well, I’ll be giving a short customer talk at the Omniture summit on how my company is using the Omniture API’s.  This is something I am truly looking forward to.

And yes, I’m ready for my kickstand!  Are you?

-Rudi