John Burkholder

Today, the woman I love turns forty. I have had the honor to spend 21 of those years as part of her life. If you have someone you love in your life who you trust implicitly, then you may be as fortunate as me.   She makes me smile. It may be something as simple as laughing at cat videos, or something as complex as a long story that has that twist at the end that catches me off guard. But she does it...daily. She makes me think left and comes from the right. Her sense of humor makes me wonder WHY she stuck with me all these years. Andi can cause it by laughing at situations, something stupid I did like not putting addresses on hand selected postcards with the proper postage mailed at the post office, or laughing at herself for some situation she placed herself in. I am smiling just thinking about her.  Andi make me think. Sometimes it may not be a topic I want to think about right then, but I will mull it over and mentally floss my brain until I think I have a response. She i

I feel that fatherhood is one of the careers that is overlooked in business and dismissed in families.   How does fatherhood help me in my career? Well, it all started with my oldest child’s birth. As a 21 year old Air Force airman, my entire life changed when Jami was being born. It was a sudden realization that I was not only responsible for my wife, but now I am responsible for someone who could not fend for themselves. In an instant, I knew I was going to be something I wasn’t. I had to make sure we had the funds to support our burgeoning family and be there when she fell off the monkey bars, scraped her face along the pavement after riding and falling from her skateboard. I had to have the empathy to try to understand her challenges with life, and her discovery of her own identity.  I am not the best father. I learn more and more what a father should be. I have made and continue to make mistakes.  My adopted father committed suicide when I was six and left me and my moth

Ever want to order two vodkas for that flight to Vegas? I did it. It makes the trip a whole new flight. To set the scene, i am heading to another SharePoint conference in Las Vegas. It has been a while since the last one because Microsoft decided to combine a bunch of conferences and make Ignite. Unfortunately, the SharePoint folks weren’t getting as much out of the conference than they did when it was SharePoint conference by itself.   But I digress, during this 4 hour flight to Las Vegas, I decided that a couple travel vodkas and orange juice was in order. The in-flight entertainment is boring and I wanted a drink. Tito’s is not my favorite, but the corn vodka is better than so many of the grain vodkas.  I picked the seat for my flight long ago when I booked. The seats near me were empty and I thought I was going to have a bit of room. I chose the aisle seat because I wanted the arm room. But when we boarded the plane I was pleasantly greeted with the back half of the plan