A Change of Employment

2022-12-05

Some news: Remix was acquired by Shopify and I did not end up going over in the acquisition.

Rather than jump right back in the saddle, I took this turn of events as an opportunity to try not working for a bit.

What have I been doing with my time the last few months?

Career-wise, not much. I’ve deliberately tried to repress the feeling to hustle and Get Stuff Done™ — though admittedly haven’t always succeeded (Do Nothing has been a relevant read, thx for the recommendation Dave).

Outside of the “career”, I’ve mostly been: A) doing miscellaneous chores that I previously never had the time for, and B) going where the wind blows in terms of interest on any given day.

I fixed the fence in our backyard that was destroyed when our tree blew over in a windstorm. I was going to hire someone to do it, but then I figured, “We’ll, I’m unemployed so I guess I have some extra time.”

Before and after photograph showing a fence knocked over by a downed tree and then half repaird with a new post and fence siding.

I also baked — a lot. Breads, pies, and pretzels were some of my favorites.

Photograph collage of various baked goods, including pumpkin cookies, white bread, pumpkin pie with whipped cream, chocolate cream pie, pretezels, cake, and apple berry pie.

I tried to take more advantage of the stuff people come from all over to do in my neck of the woods. For example, I started actively mountain biking on all the trails around my house.

Collage of photographs showing a mountain bike on various desert trails with dirt, plateaus, and blue skies in the background.

And on a weekday when it was snowing at the higher altitudes, I went for an impromptu hike alone in Zion National Park.

Collage of photographs from the Three Patriarchs hike in Zion National Park during the early winter with light snow and clouds.

Lastly, I spent a lot of time with my wife and kids. I know that might sound trite, but I genuinely mean it more than anything I’ve written above.

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. It’s time for me to start looking for my next opportunity — and I have no idea what that is.

That’s where you, dear reader, come in. If you have any recommendations or referrals, I would love to hear them. Shoot me an email. Or, my DMs are open on Twitter (if you’re still there). As it stands, my hope of Twitter being a kind of professional network might not prove fruitful under our current circumstances…I guess there’s always my LinkedIn account^[1].

If you don’t follow my blog, a quick bit about me: I consider myself a designer first and foremost, but I also love to code and write. At the highest level, I love to take complex things, break them down, and reassemble them in new ways that are intelligible, intuitive, and empowering to the people who use them — and my tools for doing this are visual design, code (HTML, CSS, JS), and writing. I’d love an opportunity where I can flex all those muscles in the context of building for the web. As I say on my homepage: I love the web. I think the web browser is the most influential piece of software ever written. And I’m looking to be at the intersection of art and engineering on the web.