When I started this blog I wasn’t sure what to put here or how often to post content. Recently, I committed to a weekly schedule when I ran a series of posts on the book Extreme Ownership. Now that I’m done with that project, I plan to continue posting weekly with different types of content.

Building Technical Skills

I’ll admit, the reason I have this blog is that it’s part of my mandatory training at work. My employer wants to establish a culture of learning, and I’m contributing to this by journaling the things I’ve learned at work and beyond.

My recent posts have focused on interpersonal relationships, but I need to develop my technical skills as well. Expect to see more articles on programming, the frameworks I use, and maybe some other topics like hosting and infrastructure.

Building Up Job Security

I enjoy my current job, but I need to be prepared to reach out to new employers in case I’m forced to. While I’m confident I’ll keep my position, my company’s industry took a hit due to COVID-19 so job security isn’t a 100% guarantee. I was caught off guard when my last employer went out of business, and I wasn’t prepared to present myself to other companies. I was so disillusioned with my last job search that I considered dropping out of tech altogether.

There were several roadblocks on my journey from Makr to Publicis that could’ve been avoided if I just hunkered down and focused on my presentation. To avoid this problem in the future I need to update all of my public-facing materials, such as my main website (which still doesn’t link to this blog, by the way). I think I’ve found a way to tie this in with my overall learning process.

Return to Other Content Creation

This is perhaps a tertiary goal considering everything else I’m doing, but it is still very important to me. Last year I interviewed for jobs, worked as a freelancer, and launched several social media accounts with the intent to monetize them. I fortunately picked up a new job, but the other initiatives weren’t successful. 2019 was a difficult year for me, not because of the failures, but the fact that these side hustles took time away from the things I really wanted to do.

In five years I want to launch Annual Saga, a media franchise consisting of games and other forms of entertainment. To move toward this goal I got into game development, a field where I can capitalize on my experience as a programmer. My most recent stint lasted from 2016 to 2018, but it was stopped in its tracks when I started taking personal finance seriously. My momentum dropped to zero, and now I have to build it back up. I want to write game-related articles in addition to posts tied to my current job function.

As for the other projects, I want to get them to a state where I can put them on auto-pilot and move on. My side hustles weren’t just experiments with different career paths; I wanted to build communities to enact cultural change. These artifacts can remain conversation starters, letting people know that I dabble in these worlds, until I find someone who can carry my vision for me.

Next Steps

First, I’ll convert my website into a static Angular app, and I’ll write about the process in the upcoming weeks. I’ll also mix in standalone posts, covering assorted programming tricks and articles I’ve read that are related to software development. Lastly, I’ll post monthly content roundups covering my progress on other projects.