Come to a Stand Still? How to Move Forward

January 2016 · 6 minute read

So… it would seem writing blog posts and maintaining my site has taken a back seat lately. I guess I just haven’t had anything exciting to write about, ever since that burst last year when I wrote about everything that had been on mind for the I dunno, the entire rest of my life I just haven’t had any new interesting topics to talk about. Programming development seems to have stagnated, I feel like I’ve kind of gone as far as I can just mucking around with trying out stuff that I think of that’s unrelated to anything in particular. I need some new inspiration, some new expertise, or ideally a new real-world project with a team of expertise and inspiration. I guess that’s the step that I’m kind of working on right now though right? One of my goals for 2016.

But in the mean-time, while that goal works itself out I kind of need a project to occupy myself… I’ve been putting all my time into learning the AWS platform and studying hard for my Associate Developer Certification, which I’d like to follow on quickly with an Associate Solutions Architect Certification. I’d be quite happy to say whole-heartedly that I can use the platform and use it well. It is quite nerve-racking, though, I mean if I fail I can always take the test again but I don’t want to have to do that, I’m just not a person who fails. Not sound cocky or anything, I’m probably just harder on myself that what I really need to be, but you know what? Someone’s got to be hard on me! Otherwise, I could just end up coaxing through life in a mundane job (not a career) without any challenges or any reason to work harder or get further ahead, go places, see things, experience life.

I mean sure, some people are happy with that, for some people that’s probably the dream! But not me, I need a challenge. I need to work hard and succeed in order to feel good. I need to break personal records to feel like I’ve made an accomplishment and I need to be moving forward. But back to this certification, though, I would be so insanely happy with myself if I passed but I’m so nervous about it because I haven’t had to sit an exam for about 10 years… dun dun duuunnnnnn…. Oh yeah, and you need to score at least 80% to pass… I’ve been through so many resources and practice questions and content in the last two weeks that I’m possibly going to go insane before I actually get to sit the test. Oh and here’s another good thing, new services are constantly being added to the AWS platform so new curve ball questions about topics that I haven’t even heard of could show up in the ever-changing test at any time – that’s reassuring.

Well, hopefully between now and D-day I can understand the services a little better -especially for the debugging section which is currently my lowest scoring topic, and memorize more of what each of the services actually do. On the bright side, as far as practice tests and quizzes go I’m currently looking at scoring 100% on the design and development section which is the biggest and probably, most important section in the exam. That’s cool. And regardless of whether I pass or not, I can now competently build a Virtual Private Cloud with public and private instances, an internet tunnel and a network address translation pipeline making the whole fully usable, and with secure access management. I suppose being able to do that is still kind of an accomplishment? Although it’s really not that difficult of a task. Suppose that comes down to a matter of perception really aye…

Well, regardless of the outcome I’m going to need another project to dive into and keep me busy. Probably something more difficult than what I’ve been doing… I did have an idea that I want to rebuild my site with a framework called Hugo, but man that’s actually not that easy, or exciting for that matter… Good way to learn Golang though. I guess I just haven’t given it a good go yet because I’ve been side-tracked, so my previous comment’s probably not that fair. Really, it’s an opportunity to learn some new technologies. And when I say new technologies, Go really is one of the upcoming languages of the near future. One key thing that I’m going to have to work out before I go ahead with that project though is a better design strategy. If you ask me design is the major downfall of my current site, followed a close second by performance, which I haven’t really focused on as yet since it was only temporarily the way that it is anyway.

Understanding website performance is a mildly interesting topic and something that I spend a good amount of time researching and strategizing as part of my current job, so I’m relatively confident that I could get my site into a position where it is performing well and since I will either be managing the server with AWS or deploying a static site (more likely) which doesn’t need a server, it will certainly be loading faster than it is now at an incredibly slow 0.83 seconds!

So, after typing out an entire self-discussion analyzing the pro’s and con’s of my current programming affair, I think I may have come to some logical conclusions as to what it is that I want to do moving forward or what I had subconsciously already decided before even typing away on this tangent. (What I have written is not what this post was going to be about but now I can’t remember what it was going to be about). It looks like I am going to spend the weekend studying before passing a certification, which will hopefully help steer the course of my career. I will then most likely proceed to begin brainstorming what the purpose of my site is; researching a number of similar sites; and consulting with some designers to develop a new format for selenasmall.com before pushing forward with my mission to learn Golang and actually complete a rebuild of the prototype. Assuming I can dedicate one month to that project and successfully complete it, I will most definitely be ready to have a go at a second AWS associate certification.

Wow, good chat. Apparently self-analysis of your subconscious thoughts might be just what you need to keep moving forward…