Have you ever left a stressful job and started a new job and momentarily forgot that you had a blog because you were preoccupied with the issues you want to solve at your new job? That, plus other personal life stuff took over for the last few weeks. I promised myself I would blog more this year, so here I am. I’m also not going to apologize for being absent because I’m certain no one expects an apology and I’ve made a commitment to being more brave and less apologetic. I’m also not going to make any promises.

I’m afraid I don’t really have a purpose for this entry though. I figured I would just sit at my computer until something came to mind, but that’s pretty blank right now. I struggled to come up with a topic to write about next because, if I’m being completely honest, my blog hasn’t been my highest priority lately. I will, however, provide some life updates for those who are curious.

I’m very excited to be at my new job and in fact, I placed my first order as an employee earlier last week. Here are some other things about my job change:

• I’m experiencing a lot less job-related stress and far fewer meetings.
• I’m writing more code and learning how product teams work. (I’m not doing a whole lot of learning about code, but rather building up my institutional knowledge about this company.)
• I’m thinking about ways to introduce some more structure to a team that’s very much a startup.
• Perhaps most importantly, I feel safe enough to introduce ideas of my own without punishment because the team has given me a decent amount of belonging cues.

On the flip side of the same coin, I’ve been dealing with getting vaccine appointments for family, changing my kid’s schedule, and anxiously awaiting my husband’s last day at his job so that less of the household management will be on my plate. If all of that wasn’t enough, I found out I had to make some major car repairs, which are still in progress. That’s life, I guess.

Here’s to hoping more folks are vaccinated very soon and we can hug each other again.