Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Miss me?

It's been a long while since I posted here and a LOT has happened since my last update.  The cliffs notes version:
  • Went to Hawaii and had an AWESOME vacation.  Two weeks, three islands.  Really magical.  And I had a lot of time to ponder life after Launch Academy (and life in general).  I got some clarity around my next steps, which, surprisingly to many of you, don't involve Ruby or Rails
  • Had an epiphany while on Kauai, being driven to the Airport to drop Ruth off for her flight home.  It's worth exploring in another post, but the driver opened my eyes to the importance of true passion - the kind that emanates from the deepest part of your core.  The "a-ha" in that moment helped me to understand that I'm happiest when I am creating experiences for people.  That is a super-broad statement, but it helps me with direction.
  • Decided to focus on front-end development and user experience (experiences for people!) and am self-teaching HTML, CSS & Javascript.
  • Moved to DALLAS!  What?!  Yup.  Thanks to a casual conversation with a friend, we are now without property.  Our home on Cape Cod has been sold and we packed all of our valuables into a POD, which is currently being stored somewhere near Dallas, awaiting our next adventure.  Many thanks to Ruth for giving us her guest-wing while we sort out next steps.
  • Met a super cool recruiter here in Dallas who works for Vitamin T, a subsidiary of Aquent.  She and I are currently collaborating on my potential dip into the front-end water here in Dallas.  Presuming something awesome comes out of that relationship, we could be in Dallas for a little while.  If not, us vagabonds might just surprise everyone and pop over to Hawaii for a year or two while I continue to self-teach FED and prepare for a future role crafting incredible experiences in any number of niche industries.
If you know us, you know that this is a thrilling time.  The future is wide open and, without the roots of property, we can literally go where the wind takes us.  Some days it's intimidating, but I have to say, the majority of the time is feels incredibly liberating.  

Back to Developer Tools in Google Chrome - developing in the browser - the coolest way to get 'under the hood' of your favorite website and really get to know how all the different pieces work together to give you the experience that they want you to have.  

Cheers!