in the winter's sky
mountains rising through the wind
beyond bitter cold
Tonight’s Haiku: February 7, 2025
Blog
Today’s Haiku: Thursday, February 6, 2025
the morning snowfall
soon to be trampled by life
fading in the sun
The past few mornings have featured snow. Usually it’s melted by early afternoon. I’m grateful that it’s not become a giant ball of ice overnight.
“Freedom” by Langston Hughes
My fellow blogger, Michele Lee, posted this classic poem by Langston Hughes. A very powerful one, and one that’s relevance is still strong.
Freedom
by Langston Hughes
Freedom will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear.
…
Head over to her blog to read the rest. It’s well worth your time.
Social Media, Communications, and Career
I just updated my LinkedIn profile language to “maximizing the potential of technology”. I’m trying to capture my belief in the positive potential of technology while acknowledging the risks and downsides. My career focus will be technology focused, as a good chunk of my life has been. I’ve enjoyed the past few years of IT being my center focus and am eager to keep that going. A fun aside with this: IT is not that narrow a focus! Data, AI, networking, web development…all of these are so much more are encompassed by the umbrella of “IT”.
As I’ve been building a career plan, my research keeps driving home the importance of networking. Not in terms of information systems, but human connectivity. Now, this is not a new notion to me. And during my years in Real Estate, I saw so many times that it was connections that cemented business success. The main challenge in this: genuineness. Most people aren’t fans of being hit up only when someone wants something from them. “Hey, I don’t know if you remember, but we worked together 10 years ago. Can you help me get a job?” I know it’s wearying.
I’m taking this as a reminder to maintain connection with people I care about. For 2025, I’m making it a point to reach out to those my contacts and start with simply saying “hi”. Folks shouldn’t be in there unless I care about them, right? Now, I have hundreds of people in my contact list. Everyone I’d worked on a project with, was part of team with, all that sort of stuff ended up in my contact list. So, for the first step of this project, I’m going through and cleaning things up. If we worked together on a project 10 years ago, and we haven’t talked since, I’m just going to delete the contact. And I’ve been so bad at managing my contact list that there were people who’d died years ago in there. Yeah, this is a critical first step!
I deeply value my friends, and want you all to be more than potential sources of revenue. Being deliberate about maintaining these connections is but a first step. Yet this is an area that I really want to grow. It feeds my soul.
A Sunday Haiku
while the clouds moved past
winter's power continues
sleet and snow descend
Welcome to February!
So, we’ve made it through the first month of 2025! Congrats so far!
As I’ve noted earlier, I’ve lost a lot of my energy in January to sickness. This week I’m finally feeling solidly on the mend (though my cough is still annoying, but every day a bit less so).
I’ve spent this morning weeding through a backlog of email, and getting a few neglected tasks into my planner. I’ve also been able to do a bit of edification type reading.
This morning’s email about Complaining from Seth Godin struck me. I occasionally struggle with it, even though I find it (mostly) a waste of energy. Seth made some good points about it’s purpose.
- “The obvious reason to complain is to make a change happen.”
- That one is often not really the point. Though, if it is the goal, we need to “…focus those complaints where they’ll do the most good, and be prepared to do the work to have an impact”.
- He does list of other reasons, which is worth the minute or two it takes to read his post.
He also points out that complaining is the “evil cousin” of whining. And that whining is pretty wasteful in terms of effectiveness. Both are often simply functions of the entitled mentality.
His last point, which I’m going to embrace, is ““The best way to complain is to make things better.” At least, if positive change is your goal. If it’s simply to deflect blame, conceal fear, or anything else, then, well, go and do you.
Do you have strategies to keep complaining/whining at bay?
Tonight’s Haiku: January 31, 2025
this winter rainfall
gently upon the rooftop
silence of the night
A Pet Peeve From Recruiters
It looks like the job market’s about to pick up. I’m getting gobs of messages from recruiters. (Most of them are temp agencies, but I still take as a good sign). But I’m getting lots of them like this one:
Am I interested? Well, should I be? There is NOTHING in this description that’s useful. NOTHING! Who? What? When? Where? Salary? I have nothing here that makes me think I should give my time to this, nor my data. Is it with a company I want to work with? Is the salary something I can work with? Is it an urgent temp position that can’t wait for 2 weeks notice?
Right now, I am open to an amazing opportunity, whether that’s pay-wise, work-wise, organization-wise. I have a job (properly, I have two) that I love and am not eager to change. I am not even close to desperate. You’ll need to do better than this.
Looking Forward: Career Thoughts
I’m a bit behind on my 2025 planning. This “bug” I’ve been fighting has sapped away SO much energy. As I’m FINALLY feeling my energy return (at least more of it) this week, I’m starting to map out what my career direction and focus looks like in 2025 and forward.
Quick summary: I spent the pandemic working on a degree in Information Systems with its main focus on Web Development. In a weird twist of fate, I finished it right as the tech sector meltdown was hitting hardest. Competing with 500k+ tech workers has made the transition challenging. But I did land an IT role. Currently, I work 1/2 time as an IT/Systems Analyst for the Edmonds Waterfront Center, and 1/2 as a “tech savvy” Administrative Assistant. I feel like I’m straddling both my past and my future. My vision of my future, though, is to move full-time into IT/Information Systems. And that’s the plan I’m building.
However, that’s not a narrow enough focus. Within this umbrella is a huge array of roles. Network administrator, help desk analyst, web developer, systems analyst, information security, and data analyst….and there’s plenty more! First world problems, a plethora of riches….you know.
Anyway, focus, right?
After looking over my notes, exploring all the projects I’ve worked on the past few years, reviewed the classes I’ve taken, exploring what I’ve found the most fulfilling, most valuable, and even what I thought was the most fun, I have pretty much narrowed things down to what I’ll call “data systems”.
I’ve worked with data in many settings, and have spend many hours with Excel. And I like this stuff! While studying for my ATA, I got to work with a LOT of database systems and tools. Besides extensive projects in Access, I got to do a lot of work with SQL. Not just MySQL, but also SQL Server, and even a few variants of Oracle. I find this stuff endlessly fascinating. And I see that “data” is a huge growth area in our economy. Between data analytics, data security, data warehouses, and data lakes, there’s a huge need for people who both understand these systems and structures, but also, well, enjoy it! My experience with data is pretty extensive as well. From budget tracking for my teams at both Starbucks and Microsoft, creating dashboards for real estate teams, and tracking projects and feasibility for construction companies, I’ve done a lot.
Looking towards the future, I want to dive deeper into key skills. First, Data Visualization. I have studied design and worked extensively with PowerPoint. Power BI and Tableau are a logical next step. Thus, I’ve started the Microsoft Power BI Data Analyst course on Coursera. I also want to build my skills in Python/R and Statistics. Perhaps via the IBM Data Analyst Cert or Google’s Data Analytics Cert. I’ll evaluate that as I move forward.
As I was cementing my data plan, a YouTuber that I value, Network Chuck, posted a video with a “Hacker” career roadmap (really, network engineering/cybersecurity). It sounded so cool! But, as much as it sounds awesome, I need to accept I’ve made my roadmap and need to move forward with it.
I recognize the place of privilege I’m in, where I have all these options that I struggle to choose amongst. For that, I’m grateful.
So, I know some of you have experience in this area. I’d love your thoughts on my framework/vision (I’m still turning it into a plan). And if you have any advice, I’d deeply appreciate your thoughts.
Music via YouTube
I like to listen to Trip Hop while I’m working. Today this one popped into my feed:
What first caught my attention was that this DJ was streaming from her kitchen, which is pretty cool. Oh, and I’m very jealous of this kitchen! But then I noticed this:
A stuffed llama! I thought “That’s so cool”. And, sure, that marks me as one type of nerd. But it gets better! I then think “LLama”…Large Language Ama”. Hmmm….now if I ever build an AI platform, I’m going to call it “LL Llama”. Sounds like a stutter.
Ok, I’ve flung enough dad jokes your way. Do you like to listen to a certain type of music while you’re working? What sort?