So, sorry in advance for the non-technical fluff post but well, it’s my personal space so I think that could be excused ^^

I haven’t written a single word for this blog in the past two and a half months. I’ve been dreaming about completing a-post-per-week since early 2020, and even though I was never really close to the goal, it was a continuous and fun effort of picking up ideas, writing drafts, polishing older posts, or writing toy programs to explain weird interactions.

But for these past two and a half months I did nothing of the sort; I didn’t even touch my blog folder. When I asked myself why, I had multiple reasons to give.

• I got two conference talk proposals shot down. I was really hyped to prepare material, dive deep and give my whole energy into it, but I was ultimately just… ghosted which bummed me out
• I decided to spend some more time away from screens. I used weekends and afternoons to take spontaneous road trips, learn how to brew beer at home, and read fiction books
• I decided to learn toy around with different technologies and tools. I took a course about Figma, read about CUE and played around with some HTML5. While these were fun (it’s always fun to get something working for the first time, right?), I didn’t feel I was ready to write something down.

Then what?

But this past week I read a post by Julia Evans, where she says Blog about what you’ve struggled with.

I initially felt bad that in these past two months I haven’t faced unsurmountable technical challenges; these are the ones that I’m most confident to bang my head against.

Also, as Julia puts it, “it’s a bit weird to be vulnerable on the internet”. What would a prosper employer think if he read me dabbling with toy rc cars instead of hardcore technical posts? gasp.

But I realized have faced different kind of challenges that were just as great and interesting, such as :

• organizing and prioritizing a team’s workload
• gathering requirements from people of different crafts and perspectives
• facilitating the team’s ceremonies
• building a roadmap not only for my personal development, but for the team’s growth
• looking ahead for potential roadblocks and anticipating organizational issues

When all of these points intersect with technical know-how, is where it became even more engaging!

And while I don’t think I wouldn’t go down the managerial path at this point in my career (or ever, who knows?!), I feel I’m learning a lot about team dynamics, how to set and achieve goals as a cohesive unit, and how to keep rowing through the storm.

Parting words

So, what I meant to say is I’ve missed this :) Let’s continue on this learning journey!
Also this post is exactly 42 lines and three thousand fourty characters long.