December is always a crazy month, and it’s not likely that this one will be any different. So I’m trying to be realistic about my goals for the month, but as always, I want to accomplish some good stuff.
- Positive motion in job hunt
- Finish two Udemy courses
- Resume training
Job Hunt: Motion
The goal here wasn’t necessarily to land something — this is the time of year when everyone is going to be out of the office with the holidays approaching. I did, however, blast through Never Search Alone by Phyl Terry, and then I made a second stab at joining a job search council. It’s something that Tim Eiler, a former co-worker, recommended to me. One of the good points about the month is that the job listings have been ramping up pretty quickly, too, and that’s resulted in more interviews in December than I had in November.
So yeah, I got into a JSC, I stepped up on the networking, and I increased the pace of applying for gigs. And yeah, it was pretty awesome. On Friday the 27th, I had a pretty promising first-round interview for a local company. I’d call this complete.
Udemy Coursework
I decided that I needed to blast through a bunch of coursework. I had a client that needed some work done in WordPress. Specifically, Gutenberg blocks, something I hadn’t ever really built before. Documentation is a bit crunchy, there’s not a lot of good “follow these instructions” out there, and thus, I went scurrying off to Udemy for a crash course in how to build these things. I got the Gutenberg one done, but not any of the others. I’m calling this partially complete.
Resume Training
When I got back from Tucson in November, I was pretty beat. I didn’t want to look at the bike for awhile, and took a break until mid-December, which is when the new cycle (pun intended) of training began. I’m taking it easy here, for a month, low volume, not beating myself up if I miss a workout, or anything like that. Complete.
Minor/Other Accomplishments
- Finished the big contract gig that I had hanging over my head, and got it pushed live and billed-for.
- Got the gravel tires back on the gravel bike.
- Packed up a bunch of Lego and moved it to the storage unit so it’s out of the way until we move next summer.
- Lovely anniversary celebration with Didi.
- Lived another fuckin’ year.
- Got the car in for service and one of the senior cats to the emergency vet in the same day. In the same two-hour span, actually.
Blockers
- It’s fuckin’ December. Think: holiday parties, gift shopping, traffic, and more of the people-y shit than you can possibly imagine.
- Eddy was particularly problematic this month. I spent tons of time trying to get him caught up on homework and almost as much time dealing with his attitude problem.
- Spent some time migrating this (and the other family WordPress instances) off of Azure and back to DigitalOcean as a cost-savings method.
- We added a new kitten this month and she’s a 21-toed nightmare. We love her.
Lessons Learned
- Fuck winters so damn hard, yo.
- If you have no intent of adopting a kitten, you should not ever hold the kitten that is looking for a home. You will end up with a kitten and, accordingly, another mouth to feed.
- When the December weather offers you the opportunity to get out on the bike, you should get out on the bike.