Posts in category 'careerbreak'
Back to work
Yup, it happened. Over nineteen months and two eclipses later and the career break is officially behind me. I still can’t believe that time came and went so quickly, but I can say honestly that I’m excited to start something new.
How do nineteen months fly by so quickly? In some ways it feels like just yesterday that I made the difficult decision to leave my old role and, after over twenty long and fruitful years with my first and only real professional role, simply stop for a while.
In the over year and a half that followed, the world around me changed dramatically. The AI hype cycle truly took off with an investment bubble that has seen untold billions sunk into startups, large established players, and the picks-and-shovels companies that underpin the industry. In parallel, we saw increasing evidence of a white collar recession taking shape, with the software industry no exception. While I don’t personally believe the former trend has played much of a part in the latter, these parallel trends have seen the software industry disrupted in a way it hasn’t been since the dot-com crash of 2000.
Meanwhile, the political landscape has been utterly transformed. As the alt-right continued to rise and eventually take power in our neighbour to the south, we’ve seen sustained pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and practices, and a decline in support for investing that takes into account environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, with some of that pushback taking the form of real changes to the legal and regulatory landscape in the US.
As if that weren’t enough, in the first quarter of 2025 we’ve seen a sustained attack on Canadian sovereignty, as the new American administration has begun to wage an economic war on this country while cozying up to strongman dictators across the globe.
I genuinely don’t remember the last time the world felt this… precarious.
As you can imagine, given this context, I was more than a little anxious about beginning the hunt for a new job.
So imagine my surprise, back in late November, when a former colleague reached out after noticing I was open to work…
Continue reading...Failing
As I continue the process of learning to drive, and now need to start hunting for a new job, some thoughts on failure.
I never learned to drive.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve thought off and on about this, about how I managed to skip such a typically formative step in life. Looking back I can’t claim I made a specific decision not to get my license. It really was a combination of avoidance, lack of need or desire, and circumstance that led me to never learn.
The lack of need was born of the fact that, living in a city, through a combination of cycling and public transit, it was easy enough to get around, and I had little desire to go further afield. My passions were in school, in front of the computer, or on the basketball court, and all those were close enough that driving wasn’t really necessary. And as I got older, I had a girlfriend and eventually wife who not only could drive, but loved it and was happy to do it.
As for circumstance, I grew up a latchkey kid. My mom, who I now realize was a bit insane, typically worked two or three jobs to ensure we had a roof over our head, food on the table, and to my astonishment in hindsight, a computer to keep her nerdy kids occupied. Simply getting time behind the wheel back then was not easy, and we certainly couldn’t afford to pay for lessons.
As for avoidance, looking back it’s now obvious that as early as my late teens I had some issues with anxiety. I think I was genuinely afraid to get behind the wheel, recognizing the risks and responsibilities that driving entails.
But let’s not forget the greatest anxiety of all: the fear of failure.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but that fear of failure often ruled my life well into my mid-twenties. I chose my education not only because it was something I was already interested in, but also because it was something I was already very good at. I chose my career for the same reason, and stayed there, doing the same basic things, for quite a while before I found the will to shift my career into something new. I even delayed proposing to my now wife because I was afraid I’d get it wrong.
But over time I gradually became more comfortable with the prospect of failure and, oddly enough, in part I think I have knitting to thank for it.
Continue reading...One Year
Somehow, despite running a blog (sometimes quite intermittently) for the past twenty years, I never knew August 31st was World Blog Day. So it seemed as good a day as any to finally write a long-overdue post looking back on this break I’ve been on, and looking forward to what comes next.
Folks who know me, or who have been following my posts here or on social media, know that, after a lot of years of hard work, good planning, and truly monumental luck, last year I found myself in a position to take an extended break from my career. As a decision it was probably one of the most significant ones I’ve ever made, and it was far from an easy one, as I knew I’d be walking away from a lucrative career working with some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met. But after twenty years at the same company, and a lot of soul searching, I knew that it was time for a change, and rather than immediately jump into a new opportunity, I decided it was better to take some personal time to unwind, reflect, and eventually re-enter the work force with more purpose and intention.
Now, well over a year in, it feels like I made that decision only yesterday. Certainly, fairly early on I noticed just how quickly time can fly, but even then I don’t think I appreciated how short this break would feel fourteen months in. And while, yes, I went in with a lofty list of goals and only achieved a few, I can honestly say there’s little I would do differently.
At the beginning I genuinely assumed I’d eventually get so bored that going back to work would feel like a relief. Certainly, during past extended periods of time off (e.g. over Christmas), that was my experience.
And yet, rather than boredom, I discovered how freeing it is to spend time doing things both meaningful and yet outside any traditional definition of work, and how our western sense of self as being inherently tied to the work we do prevents us from seeing the many other ways that we can build and create and have a positive impact on others outside that narrow perspective.
Continue reading...- (https://b-ark.ca/KSAOK4)
Well, six of twenty hours of manual driving lessons done (plus a bit of in-between practice) and the instructor has only had to use the “uhoh” break once, and only because I almost blew through a yield sign that was hidden behind a tree. Progress!
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If I’m asked what I accomplished on my break, the first thing I’ll list is using my iFixit kit to repair the shoulder buttons on my old Nintendo DS Lite (easy repair, corroded contacts in the micro switches). Why? Because it was there.
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So I’ve been plugging away at a little side project for kicks. I haven’t written code for a month, now, due to other issues and distractions but I have been thinking about it, and it occurs to me how novel that is: without the pressure of deadlines I can actually spend time thinking about the problem, ensuring I build the right thing first, without the pressure to deliver the fast wrong answer.
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Three months into my career break and a couple of observations: 1) I thought I might eventually get bored. I absolutely have not. 2) Time flies. Fast. 3) I was concerned about becoming disconnected from people but in some ways the opposite is true as I’m so much more flexible that I can meet people where/when they are. 4) I am absolutely not ready to go back to work yet…
- (https://b-ark.ca/Ow_WSO)
So, to ensure we didn’t bankrupt ourselves during my sabbatical, I realized I needed to get a better handle on our budget and stood up Firefly III. I gotta say, so far, not bad! I particularly love that it has an API with what looks like complete functionality coverage. Just a shame open banking basically doesn’t exist… getting complete transaction data has meant writing Tampermonkey scripts and pulling down data manually. Hard to believe it’s 2023 and that’s still a problem…
Ending and Beginning
It’s official, I’m no longer an INVIDI employee. Let the sabbatical begin!
This is a copy of the note I posted to LinkedIn announcing my resignation from INVIDI. Since I didn’t syndicate my last blog post there, you’ll forgive a bit of overlap in the subject matter, but I liked what I wrote and wanted to preserve it on my blog. You know, Own Your Data and all that.
Continue reading...