Haven't been here for a while, unfortunately, but I've been a little busy and am now forced to play catch up. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
First and foremost, I got a new job!!! Finally, after reams of resumes and scads of interviews, a great company that likes me as much as I like them hired me. Terrific benefits, a substantial jump in pay, intellectually rigorous and satisfying work, a defined career and skill development path as well as smart and hilarious people with whom to work -- it's a dream come true.
For the first few weeks, I sang a song during my morning commute.
Going to my new job
Going to my new job --
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
As I pulled in to the parking lot, it changed to
Parking in the parking lot
Of my new job --
Oh yeah!
Oh yeah!
I sang similar songs throughout the day. One for my desk, the chair, the coffee maker and my co-workers. These, of course, I kept in my head. I didn't even hum.
It's been over two months now and I'm still singing. The learning curve has been steep, but a couple of weeks ago a lightbulb went off, and I started to embrace the flow of the many applications we must navigate through on any given day in any given situation. I'm still asking a lot of questions, but everyone says that's normal. No one, the conventional wisdom says, actually "gets it" until about six months on the job.
In any case, my boss thinks I'm doing great and has already discussed with me my upward path through the company -- where I want to go (developer support) and what I need to get there. This is the first job I've had in a long time where my boss actually wants me to succeed and progress and is taking steps to ensure that happens.
Hooray!!
Also, I've finally started running again. After the misery of last year and the slow rehab of this one, I have managed to work my way up to a daily 84 minutes of walking and running -- three minutes walking, three minutes running. It works out to about a 11:30 per mile pace, which for basically starting over is plenty fast for me. Once I'm up to 2 hours a day, I might start cutting back on the walking to increase the running, ever mindful of the little signals my feet and knees send me.
The only signal they seem to be sending me via the telegraph of my soul is
Keep going
which I'm trying to do every day.
I have found with the rhythm of getting out the door every morning and steadily placing one foot in front of the other that my body is flourishing. In almost unnoticeable increments I am getting stronger and faster. Because I run by time rather than miles -- an hour is an hour no matter how fast I go -- increases in distance are products of speed and strength, both of which are coming naturally by the way of a gentle daily run.
Note to self: Perhaps this model can be applied to other things as well.
Also, I've built a web site. After writing sites for company intranets and rebuilding the GUI for a web app, I figured I'd make something for myself. It is certainly not fancy or interactive, but then neither am I. A lot of the content is shamelessly lifted from here.
The whole process took longer than I thought. Of course, I wasn't spending several hours a day pecking away at it, but instead tried to squeeze a few minutes of precious computer time between dinner time, picking up from soccer practice time, checking homework time and tucking in time. Besides, I gotta get up early to run.
In any case, I must be doing something right since I have two businesses that want me to write sites for them -- content, design, markup, maintenance, da woiks.
So things are looking up. My friend Mabel said, "I know it's your year, Lovejoy. I've been saying blessings over you and I knew they were due to hit." Whether that's the reason or not, I don't know, and I'm not going to think about it. I'm just glad it's happening. It's about time.