Well it's a new year, so why not start off with a (presumably short-lived) set of goals?
The main one is obviously this site. It's a continuation of my old travel blog, but now I'm hoping to make it more of a journal / replacement for face-to-face, in-depth conversations (especially since The Situation makes travel a bit of a non-starter these days). The old travel posts have been migrated over from WordPress to Ghost and I'm still using the default theme, but hopefully I can add some polish soon. The goal is to try for at least one (short-ish) post every two weeks or so, which feels doable. Last year was pretty surreal for a multitude of reasons - moving out of London and buying a house, becoming a father (!) and the aforementioned Situation. This year is already shaping up to be more of the same, so keeping some notes for posterity is probably a good idea. At the very least, it'll be nice to look back at these entries in 10 years time and shake my head at the ridiculousness of it all.
Secondly, I want to start concentrating more on my technical skills again. Although my job is theoretically working with "cloud technologies", the technologies used by the particular vendor applications that I work with are so niche as to be essentially useless anywhere else. Ideally, I want to start building up certifications with one of the main cloud vendors (Google, Azure or AWS). The goal here is to try to achieve a Solution Architect certification with one of those technology stacks by the end of the year. Opinions on which tech stack I should choose are welcome.
Lastly, I want to start working on my side project a bit more. Anyone who's talked to me in the last 10 years or so probably knows that I've been tinkering around with an idea for at least that long, but it never really goes anywhere much. Partly because life gets in the way, but mostly because I have an extremely bad habit of rewriting working code to make it "better". This goal is tied to the first one - I'm hoping that if I start writing about what it is I'm trying to build, I might be able to keep up momentum (and maybe get some feedback on the way). I'll post again soon with the specifics of what it is I'm planning on building, and what I hope to get done this year.
And... that's it, really. They're some relatively big targets to aim for, but if 2020 taught me anything, it's that being forced to stay at home by the Government for weeks on end really does reinforce the need to have a hobby. Let's see how we go.
Yours etc,
Patto