Filling Each Day

or Purposefully Making Each Day Count

This week, as I entered week 5 after my The Iron Yard studies, I knew that I would need an extra helping of poise to stay afloat. There were a few possible interviews looming from the ten or so places I have applied over the last month. This week, though, this week is going to count. Lots to do and lots to see. Keep your head down and work hard.

A selection of happenings in the Mathew house:

• My lovely wife and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary! (Festivities on hold until I have a jobby job again. We will head to Gloria’s soon!)
• My 13-year-old son had a band concert and rocked the french horn. Keeping it in the family.
• My 10-year-old daughter had caroling with her elementary Honor Choir.
• I spent five days working hard on a portfolio website that is ready to launch…just waiting on the web hosting and DNS servers to all click together.
• I had an interview with a staffing agency in Dallas. What a terrific view they have in their downtown Dallas perch!
• My 17-year-old brother had a band concert. Percussion rules!
• Our 3-year-old daughter has had a daddy chauffeur most days.
• I have another interview tomorrow with an awesome company on the north side of the metroplex that uses technology I dig. This place understands their culture and purpose — I can get on board with that!
• Another phone interview day after tomorrow with a recruiter for a position that reads perfectly for me.
• I also started working on the Advent of Code, which has been a lot of fun (and some of it is pretty darn challenging!).
• Star Wars movie comes out. I am waiting to get a job lined up to buy tickets. Bit of incentive to me. I must see this.

15 years…just the beginning!

I have only heard back from one place that requires front end developers to have a Computer Science degree. I don’t know all developers, obviously, but many of the ones I know (or know about) either have degrees in unrelated areas like physics (nutellahabit dot com) or Japanese (daverupert dot com) or they didn’t even go to college at all! I not only have a Bachelor’s degree, but I am nearly done with a Master’s degree. I know how to play the game, and I know how to learn and improve. Just gotta keep my chin up and continue to bust my butt each day. Thankfully I have endless curiosity about things which means I will likely never be bored again. There is so much to learn. Very exciting!

Overall, things are going well. I am staying healthy in all ways. I am getting a little exercise here and there. I am relaxing and playing video games or hanging with my kiddos enough to break the monotony of staring into my flux-ed screen all day. I am getting out of bed, making the bed, showering, and working each day. I kinda like going downstairs and working in our home office. My dog Chewie does, too. I am willing to wager that Chewie knows more about JavaScript than most of the neighborhood dogs!

Written by Mike Mathew who lives and works in Dallas building useful things. Sometimes he posts on Mastodon. Mike also wears many hats at Presto Assistant where he is a co-founder, owner, and product engineer.