2018 life update

“So, what’s new with you?”

Um, a lot:

1. Today’s my last day at 18F. It’s been an honor and a privilege to get to work at such an amazing place with such fantastic colleagues. I’ve learned so much. If you have the oportunity to join 18F – take it. It’s truly a unique oportunity. If you’re thinking about joining and want to chat about my experience there, I’d be happy to talk.

   I’m super-sad to be leaving, but see #3.

2. I’m moving to Blacksburg, VA. My wife graduates from vet school this month, and has taken an internship at VA Tech. So we’re moving to the Beast Coast in a month! We’ll stay at least a year, and potentially longer. However, shortly after moving I’ll be heading back west, because…

3. I’m hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT is a ~2600 trail from Mexico to Canada through California, Oregon, and Washington. I’m hiking south, so I’ll start in northern Washington in early July. I hope to finish in sourthern CA by early winter. I’ve been wanting to do this for literally 20 years. But Real Life kept getting in the way. I had school, then jobs, a house, a marriage, a career… every summer, it wasn’t the right time to go leave and hike a long trail.

   It’s not the right time now, either – it kinda never is. But enough’s aligned to make this possible-ish, so I’m going for it.

   If you want to follow along, I’ll be posting some sort of updates over here, and/or over on Instagram. And if you want to meet up along the way and say hi or bring me a beer, get in touch!

All this means that I’ll be subsantially offline from late June until the end of 2018. So now you know why your email’s bouncing.

I’m deliberately leaving the question of what comes next open-ended. It’s likely that I’ll be looking for a job come January, but it’s also possible I’ll decide I want to do… something else….

I’ll be at PyCon US next week, and would love to tell you more about any of this. Come say hi!