God am I shit at maintaining a blog. 245 commits behind master for the template that I’ve forked and an average of 1 post a year.
It might just be the case that I don’t want to spend my time writing about code when I spend all day coding. And maybe it’s okay, and very possible, to be good at your job without coming home and spending all your time working on side-projects and open source. I’ve settled on coding to live, rather than living to code so there’s no point in trying to keep up that charade online as well. Maybe I won’t score as highly for those job positions that want you to “Live and breathe code”, or “Be a full time Ninja” but I’m fine with that, I just won’t apply for them.
Because of that, I’m turning this into a journal. I don’t want to have to research and compile my own thoughts, but just get them written down one way or another - that feels more important to me.
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At the start of this year I set myself up as a contractract developer, for a number of reasons; the nagging feeling that doing a 9 to 5 was going to be ‘it’, that as I moved up the ranks as a developer I was going to be resigning myself to fewer and fewer LOC written per week, that I’d never see my full earning potential. And what brings us to now; I’d never be able to work and travel, and it looks like that gamble has paid off. When I say gamble, what I really mean is months of hard work, building trust and relationships and consistently delivering high quality software - but that feels like too much of a brag so lets stick to gamble.
I’m not planning on broadcasting this post; I don’t see myself as some Tony Robbins motivational speaker. I wanted to write it down to help me internalise the good news, and it makes me happy. So if you are reading this post and are curious on if I had any advice on how to go remote, I can offer a pretty short list:
- Be good at your job
Now by saying that I’m not saying I’m amazing, there’s no value in excessive self congratulation, this isn’t LinkedIn. In fact, I make mistakes all the time. Bugs in code, debateable architectural decisions etc. but I’m aware of them and know how to limit them creeping in. The only reason I gained enough confidence was to look at some of the best developers around me and figure out what they were doing. My findings were that they were all; quick, accurate, confident and human. So I did that.
Although not your typical source of zen realisation, Jimmy Carr came out with a blinder on his recent Desert Island Discs [27m]:
“The fundemental question with all the thrapy I did was ‘What do you want?’ And that stikes me as the most important question in life, is ‘What do you want?’. Finding out how to get it is comparatively easy.”
So I’ve now found myself in the position that I can live and work remotely anywhere in the world, working on a great project that I really care about, with a highly skilled team who are passionate about what they do. I can’t say I’m sure what I want next, but you know what, that might just be part of the fun. 🌞