Hello, friends!
An update, my poems for the last two months, and what's coming next
Hello, friends. It’s been a while since I’ve made posts on Substack. A lot has happened since July, so I wanted to send you a quick note to confirm: I’m still here! I’m still writing.
I’ve been mostly writing poems in short bursts, as time and energy have allowed. Those are compiled below for you to read at the bottom of this post, in case you missed these on my Instagram. There are more on another anonymous Instagram account I have, but I intend to keep that private and anonymous. If you know, you know.
In August, I made a job transition. I wanted two things from this transition: growth in my industry as a high-impact individual contributor in Cloud Infrastructure, and better work/life balance so that I would have the energy and time to write. On this side of the transition, I’m proud to say that I’ve accomplished both objectives.
My new role is at Loft Orbital, where my official title is Technical Program Manager, Infrastructure. My role is designed to help organize and streamline the flow of work and creation of smooth processes for myself and my fellow Site Reliability Engineers (SREs). After those new processes and workflows are in place, I will contribute more directly as an SRE myself. This week marks the first week where I think I’ll get to contribute as an SRE, since I spent my first month in the role working with my team to develop those new processes and workflows. The people I work with are kind and highly driven, and each person possesses some expertise in areas that I would love to grow in, technically. I trust them to guide me in mentorship, and I trust them to respect my boundaries as I work hard to preserve this new work/life balance, which has been absent from my life for… years.
I would be lying if I said leaving my prior role wasn’t the source of any pain. I grieved the loss of working with many great humans at Capella Space, and I grieved hard. The decision to move on, however, has shown itself to be therapeutic in more ways than I’d anticipated. I’ve made many friends in the Bay Area and in Colorado, and have even made a few connections that I know will persist for years. I’m grateful.
What’s next for my technical career: Google Cloud Certification: Associate Cloud Engineer, and some deep dives in cloud networking and cloud security. I will also learn Go more solidly, and Cuelang, in support of the SRE side of my duties.
And with all of that, I have been able to reestablish some much needed boundaries between the time and energy I allocate for productive, meaningful, impactful work at Loft Orbital, and the time and energy I have needed to reserve for creative writing. I see myself as a multipassionate, multidimensional human, and the need to create by writing has swelled up so large with me that if I don’t let it out, I would regret it for the rest of my life.
What’s next for my writing: a poem for my friend Dave, more entries for The Me Book series on Substack (ending in October), and writing my first novel during NaNoWriMo (November). I’m currently doing prep work for NaNoWriMo towards a historical horror fiction novel that I’ve had stowed safely away for exactly this moment. I will continue to sporadically release poems on Instagram but will try to do better about sharing those on my Substack, too.
Poems from my Instagram (most recent first)
This poem was for Rose, our beloved cat of 15+ years who passed away last week. We miss her so much, and it still hurts today. It will hurt for a long time.
“Neutral”
“Thanks?”
If you’ve made it this far…
Thank you. I’ll see you again soon.