This blog started as my lifeline. Fifteen years ago, I was working on a project that wasn’t particularly compelling in an environment that wasn’t conducive to collaboration. I wasn’t doing geospatial work and I was worried that it would slip away. This blog was the mechanism that motivated side projects that kept me in touch with geography.
It started out as a technical outlet, with the intent of being the kind of blog that I often found myself searching for. From there, it evolved over time, though I fought that evolution for a while. Motivated by the same fear of losing my technical edge that caused me to start it, I kept a technical focus here even as my daily work became less technical. Eventually, I let that struggle go.
Perhaps because I know what my own thoughts were as I blogged, I can see that evolution unfold. Inadvertently, I ended up documenting the arc of a career in the geospatial technology industry.
And then it just stops.
While I have kept a trickle of posts going, the overall pace of my writing here has slowed to nearly a stop. The reason is that writing as I had been doing it here no longer really reflects how I approach my work and I no longer find that kind of writing compelling.
My career has evolved over the past few years in ways that are inextricably linked with evolution in my personal life and my own sense of identity. It’s no longer possible for me to continue writing here in a way that doesn’t weave in those concepts.
This is a long-winded way of saying things are going to change here. It will change in tone, content, and style. Part of my evolution has been to get back in touch with my need to write. It is how I organize my thoughts and communicate most effectively. In order to keep this blog relevant to me, I will need to bring in a wider range of concepts and themes. I reserve the right to be dry and technical. I also reserve the right to fictionalize. Ultimately, I reserve the right to expand on the idea of what a professionally-focused blog should be.
There will continue to be technical content, because I am a mid-career technologist. I am not, however, a mid-career technologist that exists in a vacuum. At this stage, technology, for me, is bound up in ideas of leadership, professional development, personal development, and a host of other concepts.
So, before I get back to technology, I need to write about and explore the components of my evolution over the past few years. To avoid doing so would not be honest and I may as well close up shop here if I’m not going to be honest. It would be nice if the traditional audience for this blog finds this new direction interesting, but it’s not required. I need to get this out whether anyone reads it or not.
As always, this is an unscientific look at one man’s experience. Maybe someone will one day point AI at millions of blogs and the arc of this one could, in some minute way, inform some analysis of themes and attitudes during this time in history. Until then, I will write for me the way I need to.
