What Happened to your Blog?
What happened to my blog? Nothing happened, I still blog … except then I looked at my site the other day and realised, it’s been a while.
The blog here at lornajane.net is mumble years old. It is full of things I wanted to write down, and tells the story of most of my career to date. As a software engineer, open source project maintainer, author, speaker and teacher, this made perfect sense and I’ve been thankful many, many times for the thoughtful explanations of past-Lorna that have helped me along my way.
This year, my career changed. I’m a manager now, and the problems I solve don’t lend themselves so well to writing or sharing. As a manager of people, I’m both too early in my career growth to have much to say, and also conscious of writing about “my” humans, in a way that might not work for either or both of us. I still work with a lot of technology, and more formally with developer experiences than ever before, but this year has been a professional challenge beyond anything I’ve tackled for a while (and looking back, quiet patches on the blog have in the past been mostly when I was writing a book, which is also a professional challenge!)
That’s not to say that I didn’t write. I really did! Just … not here
As an engineer, a writer, a developer experience enthusiast and as an open source project maintainer/contributor, I still have a lot to say. Somehow, the combination of a demanding year and also a sizeable side project* doesn't leave me much spare time - and I mostly fill it with management textbooks and Stardew Valley! It has felt like a year of mostly listening and learning, more than sharing.
That’s not to say that I didn’t write. I really did! Just … not here (the more Lornajane has the links if you’re interested). See also: internal docs, and a whole new developer portal developer.aiven.io.
So what happens now? Nothing big. Just sitting down to write this reminded me why I love having a blog to write on in the first place. It’s been a strange year (more than one, for almost everyone), and between two big work transitions — a new employer, then a big promotion once I got there — and half a year of having the kitchen rebuilt, I didn’t have words to spare.
I have learned so much this year, and while it would look very different to most of the previous posts here, I would still like to write some of it down. This blog began as a way for me to capture things I wanted to share or reflect on in the future. Sometimes, other people read it too. But the purpose hasn’t changed, and it took me time to realise that it makes perfect sense for the content to change as my career does.
* I was preparing a Technical Communications workshop but unfortunately it won't be going ahead. However there are a lot of topics there that I've done a bunch of research and figured out how I want to share, so I'll be putting some of them here when I get chance. Topic requests in the comments, please.
Originally published at LornaJane.
