Plus plus thirty six.
When incrementing a number, I use the prefix operator unless I require the side effects of the postfix operator. That means you generally see ++i in my code, not i++. After I reread last year's birthday update, I was struck how similar my life is exactly one year later. Thus incrementing last year's title seemed most appropriate. Today I am plus plus thirty six.
Like last year, life feels very real. I’ve completely adapted to flying without a big corporate safety net and I like it. Everything happens fast. As fast as I am willing to make it happen. The only limited resource seems to be time.
Work/Home
Last year I had work and home separated. Now work and home life have blurred and not just because I work out of a home office. Every day I choose how much time is allocated to work and how much time is spent with my family. That means I wake up when my boy wakes up and we do breakfast before heading off to daycare. That means I take a long lunch with my wife on the odd Thursday. That means I work some number of hours on weekends to keep the mental flywheel spinning.
In reality, it means I work roughly 9am to 5pm and 9pm to midnight on week days. On most weekend days, I try to work 1pm to 5pm. The actual start and stop times are very fluid to best adapt to home life. For example, for a few days last week my boy was waking up closer to 9am than 8am so I was starting work closer to 10am.
The result is a 50 to 70 hour work week where my family doesn’t feel like I’m missing. For example, by not commuting I get almost 2 hours back every week day during hours when my boy is awake! Similarly my weekend work hours align with his nap time to maximize “awake time”.
Getting the balance right was very important to me when I left Microsoft. Right now, I’m quite happy.
Next
This next year is going to be a big year for us at FireGiant. We totally hit our stride in the last couple months and now it feels like we are flying. My dream is that when we publicly turn a year old—FireGiant launched June, 2013—we will have more to talk about. My timelines are always aggressive so only time will tell how well my dreams match up against reality.
So let’s check back here when I’m 38 to see how well the adventure I started at 36 is going.
In the meantime, keep coding. You know I am!