I started a Twitch stream today.

Why?

I discovered the non-gaming world of Twitch recently thanks to my brother, an artist, who starting a stream where he just draws in full public view and chats to whoever drops into the chat.

Why did this intrigue me?

Well, several things actually.

The tech was the first thing that interested me. You can setup your own broadcasting station using OBS, send it to Twitch, and you basically have your own TV Station. And you can do whatever you want (legally and within the ToS of course).

How cool is that? I know it's not new, but the idea of that landed differently for me this time around.

Along with Twitch, came Discord...

A lot of anxiety comes from uncertainty.

Not knowing one way or the other how something will turn out.

Especially if it's something you really want, and the possibility you might fail to achieve it is enough to make you second guess yourself. Your ego kicks in and you start thinking about what others might think if you fail. You're already running the scenarios through your head, and there's a million of them- and very few of them good.

"Purpose gives meaning, not happiness."

That was my thought for the week. I scribbled down some ideas that were coming to me as I surveyed my surroundings and made sense of why I was thinking about purpose.

I was asked to give a talk at an upcoming DevOps event, so I'm in the first stages of planning what I'm going to present.

I've never given a talk like this before, but I've done plenty of presentations to engineering teams of things I've built and how they work and where to find the documentation. I imagine this will be much the same- but to a bunch of strangers, instead of people I've worked with for months.

I'm okay with public speaking, my brothers and I grew up doing public performances for various church events, singing, dancing, choirs, church band, church plays etc. So that aspect of it doesn't concern me much.

It's not something I think people often think about.

I'm sure everyone thinks the way they are at work is 100% genuine (with a few caveats of course) and any deviations from a 100% authentic behaviour is expected because there are social norms to uphold and you don't want to make people uncomfortable when you don't abide by them.

Right? Sure.

So this week this idea of "Bringing your whole self to work" came to mind because of my new 100% remote-first team.

Happy New Year!

Yes. I know it's the 12th.

2021 is here, it's still January and I'm getting the first post of the year out early!

I know this is the time of year people will do their new year's resolutions, plan for the year ahead etc., but this is the first New Year's I've seen through not as a contractor.

What's the difference?

I'd usually be working through the break, and just be focused on the contract in front of me. The usual plan for contracting is just work on whatever contract you're on until the final month of the term (whenever that is- sometimes the client would extend, other time's you'd just want out) then either look for another contract, or take a break.

I read this brilliantly written piece by media theorist Douglas Rushkoff called "The Privileged Have Entered Their Escape Pods".

And it made me think about privilege. My privilege.

I'm a mentor.

I never thought I would be, and it's not something I ever aspired to be at any stage of my life.

But here I am. Mentoring in 2020.

And not just to one person, but two people. And just this year. As in, literally in the last couple of months, I have taken on mentoring 2 people.

They're both Software Developers. Which is funny because I am not a developer.

I recently started mentoring a young junior developer who wanted to learn about DevOps and Cloud Infrastructure Engineering.I heard the saying "teach once, learn twice" where in teaching something, you learn the subject better yourself once from my martial arts teaching long ago, and I agree.

The mentoring experience gave me an opportunity to dive into and examine what DevOps is, how it's supposed to be used and more importantly in my opinion, how and why it fails out in the real world.

I've been thinking about the idea behind the saying "it's not what you know, its who you know" as I've gone about various tasks over the last couple of weeks.

People usually say this when they're looking for work, and it's either they're not getting any traction because they don't know anyone, or they're getting their foot in the door because they know someone.

I have to say this has been my experience as well.