now we are four

Hello readers! It’s been awhile.

This happened:

<3

Some other life happened as well!

• I was promoted to senior software engineer at my job
• We sold our house and bought another one about a mile away, which we are sharing with my mom
• Kiddo #1 is in pre-school, if you can believe that

Our family is now four people (plus bonus Grammy), and this fall is my 4 years of experience in the software industry anniversary. I’ve been meaning to write about the transition to a senior role, what it looks like and how it happened. So why haven’t I? First off: it’s complicated. Secondly, I’ve been pregnant all year, which means TIRED ALL THE TIME. This pregnancy was rough on me, but thankfully resulted in a pretty darn-near perfect baby.

I’m on family leave through the end of the year, and recovery is going a lot easier than last time. Which means… you guessed it… I’m itching for a new programming project. Here are some ideas I’m floating around:

• Build a Rails app using Rails 6 — my current work at job is all in a very outdated version of Rails 3, with little chance of an upgrade.
• Make a project with React — I do a lot of this at work, but it’s all behind the company repo and I have no personal projects to show in a portfolio.
• Update/document earlier projects with new technology. I think it might be fun to revisit some of my past projects with fresh eyes and experience, and document what I choose to do differently.

Help, I want to learn new tech, but I’m out of project ideas. Solution: re-make something that already exists.

I’ll leave it there for now. Maybe some more writing coming this year. Thanks for reading.