Taking Stock, Making Plans.

My company has a couple of projects that are about to wrap up. In both cases the client has hired a full time employee to pick up the work. This is great for them and normal for my business but it does mean finding "the next big thing" around the holidays.

My company is small. Really small. OK, it is just me. So I have the flexibility to take my time finding the next big project. I still have smaller, recurring contracts to carry through.

Before I get into what kind of excitement I want from my next big thing, I am looking forward to taking a few weeks off and maybe getting to a few of the many "if only I had the time" projects that are on my list. At least spending *some* time on wish items in between searching for the next big thing.

I often wish I could be more diligent about writing  and presenting. Writing here and even contributing to opensource.com. Presenting at conferences which I have done in the past, but also at local meetups. The small groups are a lot more fun! I had a couple of conference proposals that did not make the cut recently but that I think are still valuable. One I even planned to write an article on and still just have not gotten it done. It is on the list.

As I have watched my Goddaughter grow up, I have meant to get more involved in sharing my knowledge with kids. I took her to a Kid's Day event before a Red Hat Summit one year and we had a blast. Since I first explored the CISSP certification I have had the interest to go through the Safe and Secure Online training so I can look for volunteer opportunities. I also think the Techgirlz program is awesome (I might be a bit biased since a fellow instructor went to work there) and they have a local chapter. It is on the list.

When I got started contributing to open source communities it was with the Fedora Project and specifically the Docs team. I have not been anywhere near as active with Fedora lately and I miss it. I still consider myself an active Ambassador with each class I teach but I have not really contributed through content or formal activities lately. I am actually looking for a new challenge though, rather than returning to an old stomping ground, and probably with a smaller project. I dabbled in an Apache Hadoop ecosystem project for a bit and I still follow that mailing list but I never really got into that community. Melding open source and security is ideal, though I have really enjoyed the past year where I jumped into automation with Ansible and containers with OpenShift. The search continues.

Then of course there is the true time off - something that never really happens when you own your own business - where I can get things done around the house. The builtin bookcase that is already planned, the office cleaned out with all the old equipment donated, the yard spruced up, some light reading, etc.  Also all on the list.

-SML