It feels like it’s been ages since I last blogged. There are a few reasons for this:
Moved house!
Finally did it! Me and Hannah moved into our lovely new house in Manchester. It was insanely stressful though but we’re here. I’m just waiting for new sofas to arrive now. It’s so nice not to be scared to go home now, to not have to deal with noisy neighbours and just being able to relax.
Micro Projects
I’ve started building little projects, most can be seen on my github account. I’m using this as a quick learning tool. If I have a problem I need to solve then I quickly create a solution to this. A great example of this is tsave it’s a simple flat file storage API for a game I’m playing. It allows me to sync save files between machines easily. I’ve also been playing around with front end stacks (don’t ask…).
Moving blog platforms
I’m moving from Ghost to Sculpin I just need to sort the styling out on the sculpin site and then it’s ready to go. I created my first composer package to handle the migration of the Ghost database which can be found here - https://packagist.org/packages/mikebell/ghosttosculpin.
Rubber-banding Mental State
On to the more negative side of the past few months. In the lead up to GLA going live (w00t we did it) it’s been really tough, my mental state has been all over the place. I’ve had some pretty dark days which have been tough on Hannah but she’s been awesome and looked after me. I’ve recovered a bit but I’m pretty anxious because:
New Job
I decided to leave CTI after GLA finished. It was a tough decision as I really really like my colleagues they’re such an great bunch. I need a change though and I need to be challenged in a different direction now. So for everyone asking I’m moving to WunderUK in the new year after a well deserved break. One of the things I really love about Wunder is how open they are. Even before I applied I read their intranet (yeah it’s open - http://way.wunder.io/ - it’s also on github!) and learnt so much stuff. After considering things for a while I decided I’d go for it and got it. Joe has published a great article on the hiring process at Wunder - http://www.wunder.uk/blog/were-changing-way-we-interview-people-%E2%80%93-heres-why-and-what-weve-learnt. Hopefully I’ll write something about my experience through this as it was a great experience.
Finally Drupal Easy Podcast
Let me start by saying Mike Anello is in the wrong job! He should be a political broadcaster, his questions were probing and intense. You can catch the episode here - http://drupaleasy.com/podcast/2015/12/drupaleasy-podcast-166-haulin-cats-mike-bell-mental-health-open-source. This was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in terms of discussing mental health. A few times through the whole thing I considered calling it quits since it was making me trigger pretty hard but I stuck through it. This is one podcast that I won’t be listening to any time soon, not through the fact it’s bad but because it’s pretty raw for me. I’m still really thankful that I had another opportunity to talk to an audience about MH issues.
That’s about it for this post. Expect more posts in the future maybe, actually scrap that I have a new PS4 and Fallout 4 ready to go. See you in the wastelands.