It Has Been Nice

So, it has been about two months since I made my post about being laid off. Back then I said:

I’ve got some runway before things become critical, so I’m choosing to take the optimistic view and look at this as an opportunity. First to just take a little time and decompress and give myself my own time for the first time in forever. Just for a bit. Some relaxing. Some work around the house. Some personal projects that probably won’t make any money, but I might as well give them a shot because I won’t have a better opportunity.

And I have been doing that. It has been super nice. I’ll be honest, I’ve felt better than I have in years. More relaxed. Happier. And even though I haven’t gotten everything done that I wanted to, I’ve felt like I’ve been getting more done… of things I actually care about personally… than I have in years.

I’ve been doing some very light networking and looking at job listings, and even hit submit on a few applications over these last two months, but with the new year it is probably time to accelerate those things and slow down the “fun” stuff a bit. I feel a bit sad about that, but I know it is time. Probably past time. It is a tough market out there, I shouldn’t dawdle further.

Neither of the two projects I’ve spent the most time on are “ready” yet, although I’ve made tons of progress on both. But I figure I can at least say what they are. I’ve been mentioning them both occasionally on my podcast already.

• Robin Letter: An alternative to social media. All about keeping in touch with small well defined groups of people rather than broadcasting to the world, with the conceit that you provide updates only when it is “your turn” so everybody participates more equally, rather than being dominated by a few folks. – I’ve spent the most time working on this and building out the functionality. I’m hoping to run the first friends and family tests of this by the end of January. If that goes well, then maybe more people in February. The header image on this post is a preview of part of the UX.
• Jukepodder: A podcast discovery service aimed at helping discover the long tail of small podcasts rather than the same big podcasts everybody knows about and listens to already. Tries to be more like rummaging around the back shelves of a dusty used bookstore rather than seeing what’s promoted up front at a major chain. – This is actually already up and running, just not quite feature complete, and with a few known bugs I still need to squash.

If either of these interest you at all, please reach out to me, I’d love to get feedback and maybe have you as an early user. Ping me. Really.

Both of these are at easily guessable URLs given the names I gave above if you want to look for them, but I’ll officially post links and such to “launch” once I think they are a bit more ready.

And of course, if you have leads or introductions for actual job type things… please get in touch too. I spent just short of 20 years at Amazon as a Technical Program Manager, with the most time spent in anti-abuse efforts in the content and email realms… but am open to other things too of course, and in non-tech focused positions too… LinkedIn profile is mostly up to date, and I’ll pass along my resume to anybody who wants it. :-)

Oh, and support my older personal projects too, the Curmudgeon’s Corner podcast, the Wiki of the Day podcasts, and ElectionGraphs (currently dormant, but I’ll be getting it up and running for 2028 later this year).

Bye for now!