Blog, Interrupted
I started this blog in January of 2010, with the intention of re-contextualizing myself as an authority on career development for web development professionals. My goal was to post weekly about topics that would be relevant for early and mid-career web developers, or for new managers. The first month went decently, I thought: I had a long list of topics I wanted to address, I had a set time for writing (on my train commute), and I got great traffic and decent responses to what I published.
Then things got busy at work, and weekly posts turned into monthly ones. As issues and frustrations crept up at work, more time went by without posting. Without regular practice, constructing coherent opinions was time consuming and, due to what was going on in my day job, I found myself injecting too much cynicism and negativity in to my posts. Still, many readers and colleagues encouraged me to keep at it, and occasionally a post appeared.
Then, in February of 2011, my life changed when a family member became ill and I took on primary care-taking duties. Most of my time was taken up by phone calls to various state and government agencies, doctor’s visits, shopping trips, extra laundry… and what wasn’t taken up with care-taking work was spent trying to chill out. Now, almost exactly two years later, with that family member happily situated in the proper care facility, I have time to myself again. With this time, I’m starting to understand how much I’ve changed, and how much this experience has taught me about myself as a person, but also as a leader, a team member, a technologist, an advocate, an educator, a student — the list goes on and on. I am still me, but my brain has been rewired. And, I think, it’s for the better.
As for the blog, I do intend to continue with it. I still have a long list of topics to write about, and I need the writing practice! But change is constant and time is in limited supply, so I know that the posts won’t be produced quickly. I can’t promise that I will respond to every question I’ve received in the past few years, although I’d like to, since they were all wonderful and important questions I hear many people asking. I do hope that whatever I do write here will impart some knowledge that you, dear reader, find useful or interesting. Thanks for sticking it out with me.