Why Start a blog?

Mar 17, 2018

I will admit, that I have always had the imposter syndrome. I knew how to do stuff in my small little world, but in the grand scheme of things I didn’t know very much at all. Certainly not as much as people that I looked up to like Scott Lowe, Chris Wahl, Duncan Epping, Eric Shanks and many more. I always felt like what would I have to offer.

The first realization that I might know something was years ago, when I interviewed with a large insurance company, and after I got the job, they were just casually talking about the other candidates, and from my perspective, much more qualified, including a candidate that had a Ph. D. I asked why they hired me, and the response, was “every technology that we use you have experience with, it’s just a matter of scale after that.”

I knew after that, I at least had some marketable skills, and sometimes thought about starting a blog, but I always justified that no one would want to read what I have to say, so why bother. I don’t do anything grand or very technical that would lend anyone a hand. Every year, when I was thinking about what I wanted to accomplish for the year, the thought of starting a blog would be there, and I would think this is the year, but would always fall back to being an imposter.

So why start now?

I guess as I have gotten older, I have stopped caring so much what other people think, certainly people that I have never met. I don’t have to compare myself to the big hitters out there, I only have to compare myself to how good I can be. Maybe nothing I write will help a ton of people, heck it might not help anyone at all. There are people out there just starting out in IT and maybe something that we think is so simple, might be useful to them. I have been around the industry for quite some time, maybe that experience will be useful to someone.

Bottom line, it doesn’t really matter. I have decided I am doing this to collect my thoughts and get them down, as kind of a record of what I learned. If no one ever even looks at this site, I am fine with that. This is for me.

I will see where this journey takes me and if by some small chance, my blog helps someone, well then that will be icing on the cake.

Credits

I would like to give some credit to Scott Lowe for the technical knowledge on a good way to build and host my site. Specifically this article on using Hugo to build the site was valuable. I know Scott will probably never see this, but thank you. If imitation is the great form of flattery, then Scott should be flattered, I stole his look and feel as well. I just liked the simple clean look to it, I didn’t want it to be too cluttered.

Goals for 2018

Mar 13, 2018

I thought it might be good idea to put my goals for the year out there to see if making them public would help make me be more accountable about achieving them. I generally set some pretty aggressive goals for each year and don’t end up making most of them, so we will see how this goes.

1. Start a Blog - I guess I am well on my way to achieving this, I guess if I ever do more than just write this and actually get it posted somewhere. I will probably do a whole post on why I want to do a blog separately.
2. Acheive a certification. - There are not certifications that I have to have to do my job, but a lot of things I am interested in. The top candidates for certifications this year would be the AWS Solutions Architect Associates certification, the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) and the Offensive Security Certified Professional (OSCP). I fear the OSCP exam, so that one might be my stretch goal.
3. Read 25 books in the year. - This isn’t just a goal of reading 25 technical books, I am not sure how many technical books I have ever read cover to cover, but rather this is about reading in general. This will probably end up being mostly novels that I read, but hopefully there will be a couple of biographies and non-fiction books in there as well.
4. Improve my Web Development Skills. - I know that for work, I am being asked to consolidate and update the website, and I knew just enough the last time to get something out there, but to move it to the next level, I am going to have to improve my skills in this area. The things I need to improve on are updating my Bootstrap knowledge to include the new version. Since Bootstrap has gone to SASS over LESS, I will need to update that skill as well. I would also like to become more proficient in javascript.
5. Lose 50 pounds - I realize this blog is more geared toward what I do technically, at least that is my intention, but I wanted to get this out there, because if I need accountability for anything it is my weight loss.