It's been a while since I last published a blog post, but I'm excited to announce that I'm back and ready to start writing again.
When I started this blog, I aimed to experiment with what it would take to maintain a regular publishing schedule. I set a goal of publishing a new blog entry every week for a year. I wanted to build a routine that would allow me to generate high-quality content regularly. Whether or not the content remained high-quality is up for debate, but I was able to establish a system that kept me on track for the most part, with only a minor break during that first year.
After a year of publishing weekly blog posts, I ran out of topics to discuss. Or, more accurately, I had put all my focus on generating the content and zero focus on promoting the blog, so the organic traffic needed more. Without any interaction from an audience, I was speaking into the void with no feedback cycle. Then the pandemic hit, and with it came a lot of craziness.
Life hit hard, shattering my routine and my motivation.
My personal life has changed since I last wrote a blog post. My role at my day job has continued to expand, and I've had more and more opportunities to take on leadership positions. My last entry was January 2020 at which point I was a Senior Manager managing around 20 or so Engineers. Four years later, my employer has stayed the same, but I've received two promotions to Executive Director and manage anywhere from 60-80 people depending on the re-org of the week. The growth rate has forced a high level of increase in professional maturity, leadership techniques and skills, and even personal maturity.
In my personal life, things have also been in flux, with a mix of successes and failures. My wife's oldest has both gone to university and graduated. My oldest has moved with her mother a state away. Our youngest is now eight years old but has been diagnosed with being on the autism spectrum along with having ADHD (highly functional, but it explains all of his quirks). We obtained passports for our kids (which are about to expire as underaged passports only last five years!) and have made three international trips as a family, two being to my wife's home country in Latin America.
To round things out, I have become more proactive in this blog and the PCB. I have rebuilt the old Trello tracking system into a Confluence system. I have worked with a few others to establish their unique system based on the PCB concepts and then watched them achieve amazing results.
As a result, I have a new set of topics to discuss. So here we go.
I'm excited to see where this blog can go in the future. I want to continue to share my knowledge with others, but I'd also like to find ways to incorporate more community and critical thinking into the blog.
Stay tuned for future updates and new blog posts. I look forward to reconnecting with my audience and continuing this experimental journey.
