Introduction
Yesterday was my last day of work for the year, so I figured what better time to write a blog post to reflect on my experience so far while it’s still fresh in my memory (before the Christmas festivities). I also think it would be a good idea to list what I hope to achieve over the holidays so I can hold myself somewhat self-accountable and not just waste this perfect opportunity to put to rest all of my longer-term projects!
My Work Experience
I never would have thought I would learn this much in such a relatively small amount of time in web development. I learn something new every day, and I could just about write a blog post on just about every one of them. There’s so much to learn and even more to achieve. Not at all what I expected when I accepted the job offer earlier this year!
This amount of learning has and still is stressful on occasion, but thankfully I have some very intelligent people to send me in the right direction. I am thankful this is the environment I work in and now know this would be a significant factor for me deciding to work for a company. From what my colleges at different, larger companies tell me, this is not always the case and even though you are tasked with more responsibility, it can be isolating and overwhelming.
Christmas Break
As I mentioned in my introduction, there’s a lot of projects I want to finish off as well as many projects that just need small changes or fixes to get them up to speed again. I have 3 weeks for my Christmas break, which if following a schedule, should be more than enough to do finish everything I want to. The problem is given an extended break like this, I have a tough time regulating my time and end up wasting it when I know I would rather be learning and doing something productive.
For this reason, I have decided to block Facebook on my laptop and remove it from my phone, and start a Trello board to keep tabs on all of my Christmas tasks. Below is a screenshot of my Trello board which I have filled up to keep me busy to start with.
Conclusion
Writing this post is a commitment to myself that I will try to achieve as much of these as possible, and at the end of the holidays, before I head back to work, I want to write a followup post showing what I actually achieved. I know from my experience at work now that all of this is possible, and I have the skills to do them (or at least the skills to learn how to do them) it’s just a matter of how I motivate myself through this luxurious Christmas break.
Thanks for reading! Interested to see how I’ve been doing so far? You can check out the Trello board I made over here https://trello.com/b/oMSUNa0p/jeremys-holiday