Seek Nuance

In 2009, I want to…

Become more familiar with Plone and Zope. Heretofore, I’ve read, experimented, attended a Bootcamp, and attended a conference. I now want to become nuts-and-bolts familiar with them, so that I intuitively understand their internals. (Well, OK, so that I start to intuitively understand their internals.) This will come from touching many areas, rather than diving into just one or two.

Blog about my company’s Plone work. This won’t be easy. Some activities are confidential, some are not confidential but are sensitive, and some are OK to write about. A too-vague problem description is worthless, so, when should I publish something watered-down vs. just not write?

Contribute to Emacs (imminently), and Plone’s Documentation and Evangelism teams (it’ll be mid-year before I can do that).

Maintain a good balance between working on my team’s most important project (which is in Plone), and being a strategic resource for my division. I’ve hewed to being more hands-on here than in my most recent jobs, and I think I’ve been happier as a result. I could easily redefine my job as being more strategic thinking and advanced development, but I don’t want to. What I’m doing now is just as good for my company, and it’s good for my career. I must devote some energy to internal corporate technical advocacy and communications, but accomplishing concrete technical objectives is much more enjoyable. The pithy summation is, I’m happiest when I spend my day in Emacs and a terminal window, but I’m being paid to do “more” than that, so I’ve got to maintain a good balance. (If I sound like I haven’t figured this out yet, it’s because I haven’t.)

Build a great development team at work. Can I do that without being 100% management? I hope so. In the past, team building has been a source of tremendous personal achievement for me — I enjoyed being a forward deflector shield, and seeing them accomplish fantastic things.  But I’ve done that while operating entirely in “management mode.” Does this sound a bit contradictory with my previous goal? Yes. (IISLIHFTOY, IBIH.)

Normalize my family’s money situation. The TrenchMice years inflicted some, shall we say, disturbances to our finances. Regaining a steady income has, of course, helped, but some high-order TrenchMice harmonics are still rippling through our financial ether. I want to tamp them down within the next two months.

Lose 15 lbs.