Yesterday was actually a good day. A productive day. The kind of day where you feel like things are moving forward instead of just happening to you.
With the severance officially signed (details classified, sealed, and probably guarded by lawyers), that chapter of my life is now closed. I’m still waiting for what I assume will be a dragon-hoard-sized delivery of boxes, plants, and a foosball table to show up at my house at some point, but otherwise that part is done.
I spent the first half of the day watching a video by Cassie Kozyrkov called Making Friends with Machine Learning: The Entire Course.
It’s only 6.5 hours long, which in internet time counts as a short video.
So far it has mostly been a refresher for me on the fundamentals of machine learning, but it’s a really well-done course. If you don’t know ML at all, it’s a fantastic way to get up to speed. I still have about four hours left, which is currently on my to-do list, possibly for the plane tomorrow.
At some point my attention span started drifting, which usually means one of two things: either I need a break, or I’m about to start something completely different that somehow feels related.
This time it turned into me thinking about what I actually want in my next role.
It should surprise nobody that I think by writing. This blog is basically me processing life in public, one post at a time. So I sat down and wrote a two-page mission statement. Not for a company. For me.
What I want.
What I’m good at.
What I enjoy.
What kind of environment I work best in.
What my philosophy is about data, teams, and how things should work.
Once I finished that, it occurred to me that this would be a good thing to add to my resume and my website.
And that’s when the yak shaving began.
If you don’t know the term, yak shaving is when you try to do something simple, but in order to do that thing, you have to do another thing, and that thing requires something else, and before you know it you’re on a long journey that somehow ends with you shaving a yak.
This was absolutely a yak shaving day.
I went to update one page on my site, and the next thing I knew I had completely rebuilt the professional section.
If you’re curious, here it is:
https://www.brettwiens.com/professional
I split things up, added the mission statement, reorganized the content, and moved the old page into a proper resume section. I think it looks better, and it definitely tells a clearer story about who I am and what I want to do next.
And really, who wouldn’t want to learn more about me.
Later in the day I took my son to a Calgary Cavalry soccer event at the Genesis Centre.
Free event, he got to play, meet one of the goalies, kick a ball around, and generally have a great time. Hard to beat that.
This morning I met with the son of one of my favourite professors. The professor himself supervised my master’s thesis, got me published, helped me land my first job, and at one point even got me a chance to meet the Flames.
Anyway… yak shaving again.
I met with his son to talk about a startup idea he’s working on. I went in expecting to just offer a bit of advice, share some experience, maybe point him in a useful direction.
It might turn into something bigger than that.
I’ll keep the details vague for now, but it’s the kind of opportunity where the worst case is I learn something new, and the best case is… well, we’ll see.
Either way, I’m interested.
I’m wrapping this up quickly because tomorrow I’m heading out on a mini-vacation to Saskatoon to visit my brother. I’ll be gone for a few days, so the blog will probably go quiet for a bit.
There are also at least three people I haven’t managed to connect with this week, and if you’re one of them, I promise I’m not avoiding you. I’m just juggling a lot of moving pieces right now.
Which, honestly, is a pretty good problem to have.
Brett Wiens 