About 98 Percent There

Let me set the stage a bit. Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning." - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957 This was written in 2017.  I was trying to gather together my thoughts on how to apply all my studying into a cohesive whole.  I was also trying to set a bit of a direction, making it clear to myself what I was about to do.  In no way did I follow this plan exactly, but it gave me bounds to start thinking about, areas I could start experimenting on, seeing which pieces really fit me and my life and which pieces wouldn't work. Chaos Engineering is the discipline of experimenting on a system in order to build confidence in the system’s capability to withstand turbulent conditions in production. - Principles of Chaos Engineering

Vision In short, what do you want to do?  Companies often have vision plans, frequently they sound like BS.  However, in your vision plan, you need to actually have something to align your life to. My vision plan effectively was to create situations to increase my freedom to choose more aspects of my life including where I live, what I work on and when I work on it.  It need not be fully free, just free-er.  You'll notice I don't say freedom to have a leisurely life.  I don't say security.  I also don't claim to be fully serendipitous.  I did include serendipity in my plan (future blog on that), but it isn't required to full fill my vision.  I for example don't have the freedom to live in New York City.  In fact, there are many places I can't live in, but I'm a lot more free to choose than I was when I worked a job where the distance I could move was measured in miles and the number of states I could live in might have been 2. "Mom, I've

I'm sitting in my AirBnb, with 24 hours left until I'm gently removed by a nice family and forced to be homeless again.  How did I get this way?  See the first item in the series here . Experiencing Moving from Place to Place Going on a grand tour. I'm in St. Paul, more commonly referred to the twin cities.  We've driven about 1800 miles from Meridian, Idaho, my former home, to St. Paul, Minnesota in 5 days.  In that time I've been in several wonderful AirBnbs, some dorm like and some just friendly, sharing a room.  Then there was one terrible AirBnb with more problems than I care to list.  That was my previous stay, in South Dakota.  The best part of that stay was we choose to leave and sleep in a rest area instead of staying.  With 4 hours sleep in the car under our belts, we drove another 5 hours to get to this place.  They were so generous, they let us in an hour early and we simply collapsed into bed. I've just enjoyed 2 days of a wonderful stay

I'm sitting in front of a blank sheet of paper, about to become homeless, embarking on a 20 day drive across the country, then a flight half way across the world, having just quit a job making a solid six figure salary.  How is that for a catchy story?  Well,  in some ways, that is the ending, not the beginning, so lets start at the beginning. Jobs Yeah, I hear ya buddy. In 2012, I was sitting in a building, across from a man who would gladly scream at me for the smallest of annoyances.  I worked on a team doing software testing and was hired for this team not for my skill but my temperament.  I could take the screaming guy whom couldn't be fired.  I was talking to my boss about how I didn't think I could do this job forever.  I was feeling tired of work.  While not true of everyone, I felt unsupported and unloved by my team.  My work didn't seem to matter--no one valued it, no one supported it and no one else understood it.  You think with an attitude like tha