I did not finish illustrating part 3 of book 1 of my comic book. I didn't even finish the dining hall scenes (though all of the materials are ready to finish at least that part as soon as I get some time). The main reason I didn't finish is because I have been working full time and concentrating completely on my responsibilities as CTO of a tech firm. I didn't want to leave for any large block of time, so I got some drawing done while I was taking off Fridays in the Summer as my "vacation" -- but it wasn't really enough to make the progress I wanted to make.
Disappointment #2 is that -- despite working like a maniac -- I did not meet the IT infrastructure improvement goals that I'd set back in January. The main problem was something I described in my article Growing from Startup to Scalable: In "startup mode" you end up not being able to afford to make investments (of time and human resources) in IT infrastructure that ultimately would save time and resources in the long run...
But that leads into one of the positive points: I wrote a series of articles for "The Startup" based on some ideas and analysis that I'd been building up over the course of my IT career. I'm also scheduled to give a talk on building your tech career through startups in January -- and I plan to write a companion article for the talk next week. Not to mention that I led a challenge at the Open Food Data hackathon and served as an invited expert at Climate-KIC's 2018 Climathon -- a huge overnight workshop to build startups that combat climate change and its effects. Basically, I've long had the idea of writing a book on how to build and grow the IT department of a tech startup, and it looks like I'm making progress towards that goal.
On the flip side, devoting all of my time and energy to tech startups has meant that other projects have suffered. I haven't been able to promote MAA Books (and particularly Mormon Erotica) as much as I'd like to have -- though I did organize a book club event within a Mormon Stories Workshop, and I made an appearance on the Mormon Happy Hour podcast. Really, if I could spend all of my time drawing comic books, making videos and podcasts, and writing essays and stories, I would! It has especially been fun -- now that my kids are teenagers -- to collaborate with them on some creative projects, and I intend to do that some more.
Trouble is, that stuff doesn't make any money -- at least not compared to the IT engineering skills I've built up and honed over the past 20 years. So the best I can hope for is to work four or five days a week to support one or two days of artistic expression (weekends are, of course, devoted to homemaking). That's the situation I've arranged for myself going into 2019, so I guess I have no business complaining.
And in terms of random fun, I've had the opportunity to construct some pretty impressive infrastructure for our Lego collection:
The funny part is that we never intentionally set out to amass a ginormous Lego collection. I didn't bring any Legos with me when I moved to Europe, and I even gave away our whole Lego collection once (when my kids grew out of Duplos, I mailed all of our Duplos to a cousin whose kids were younger). But with two kids who each get a few sets a year every year, it adds up. (See how much it's grown since 2012.) And of course I would always encourage Legos over other plastic toys because when you get bored of your set, it doesn't go into storage and then to the landfill -- you can take it apart and use the pieces to build something else.
And when the Legos are there, in my apartment, all jumbled together in large bins of chaos, I must organize them! It's kind of a "Why did you climb the mountain?" sort of thing, except that none of the mountains have tempted my quite the way a vat of unorganized Legos does...
And the ultimate objective is to build some new cool things like I've done in the past (see these posts). Also a YouTube reality show "Who Wants to Be a Master Builder?" is in the works! Happy 2019 to all!!
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