Being Shopify’s Platform Evangelist has been a great privilege that I’ve enjoyed for the past year. There are no “B” players at Shopify, which means that I’ve had the honour to represent the best and the brightest. Wherever I’ve gone on behalf of the company, the mere mention of the name “Shopify” has commanded respect, admiration, kudos and high-fives, and all the credit has to go to the Shopifolks for making the best damned system for setting up shop online. Computer science may say that software is made up of data structures and algorithms, but I know better: it’s made of people, and these people are the best. Naturally, so is the software they create.
That being said, I need to take a summer vacation. At the risk of repeating the “it’s not you, it’s me” cliche, I need a break. I haven’t had a proper vacation in years, and it hasn’t helped that the last eighteen months have been crazy ones for Yours Truly. I’ll just gloss over the sordid details and quickly summarize:
- Major life change
- Near-death experience
- The incident of which a certain software-producing multinational corporation headquartered in the Pacific Northwest does not speak, ever
- The non-date, my first as a newly-freed man that went horribly, tragically wrong (not screaming-in-the-fetal-position wrong, but pretty badly for a first time out in years)
- Signing a job offer with Shopify, leaving my old job, and starting the new one a week later
- Relocating to Ottawa for the summer, then re-relocating back to Toronto in September
- At one point, averaging a flight every couple of weeks as a participant in the 2011 BarCamp Tour, helping out with hackathons and speaking at South by Southwest, ConFoo and other events
- Relearning the Ruby programming language and the Rails framework
- Meeting a girl from far away, and the requisite travel involved
All told, I consider these good happenings, but I need to take some time to collect myself. A lot of stuff has happened, and I’ve been leaping from one big change to the next without a break. I’m in great danger of bringing my “B” game to everything I do, and I need to make sure that that doesn’t happen.
Hence the vacation. It wasn’t easy, but I resigned from Shopify last week. They’ve been incredibly supportive and helpful in ways that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to repay. Even though I’m no longer with the company, I remain their supporter, advocate and friend. I may even open a Shopify shop very soon (and if you ever need help opening one, you can ask me).
I’m going to go hang out with Anitra (that’s her in the picture above; she was my date for the Filipino Centre of Toronto’s President’s Gala) in Tampa for a couple of weeks starting next Saturday. She’ll have work during the day, during which I’ll hit the gym, work on my writing (the Global Nerdy blog’s been going like gangbusters as of late)…
…finally get around to learning how to write software for iPads and iPhones by actually writing (or trying to write) software for my iPad and iPhone, and of course, swimming in the pool pictured below:
In late June and early July, I’m going with my family to visit the Philippines. I haven’t been back in a dozen years; when I was married, I’d made peace with the fact that I might not ever see it again. Now that I’ve got the opportunity, the time and 145,000 credit card travel points burning a hole in my pocket, I’m going.
After the Philippines, it’s back to Florida to be Anitra’s arm ornament for a wedding, plus a little downtime to get used to the Eastern time zone.
After that, more learning, more writing, more working out, and eventually either landing a new job or making one. If you’re looking for a rock and roll accordion-playing tech evangelist in the late summer or fall, check out my LinkedIn profile and drop me a line!
In the meantime, the Accordion Guy and Global Nerdy blogs will go on, and when I’m not off in Florida or the Philippines, I’ll be in Accordion City catching up with friends. Perhaps I’ll see you!
I’m looking forward to my summer vacation.
This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.
12 replies on “Joey’s Summer Vacation”
[…] This article also appears in Global Nerdy. […]
If you’re in FL come early Aug, Nerdapalooza is happening in Orlando.
http://nerdapalooza.org/
If you make it, I’ll be the random stranger handing you a beer.
[…] As I mentioned in my previous post — the one where I announced that I was going on summer vaca… — I’m using my new-found copious amounts of free time to finally get around to learning iOS development. While I do that, I’m going to document the journey here on Global Nerdy. […]
Come back to the darkside – we have free soda!
I. Am. So. Jealous.
Love it. Sorry to hear you won’t be around town as much, but hope to know it when you are and see you. After all the next Polish/Ukrainian day is not that far off….!
Let’s do one more ROM Friday night before you head out, if we can?
xo
m(&m)
Good for you, man … take advantage of the time off now while you are in a position to do so! (Re “I’m the only person I’ve ever seen in this pool”: doesn’t that make you a little nervous? What could be keeping others away? Something in the water?)
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[…] As I wrote earlier, I’ve declared a bit of a summer vacation for myself, but that doesn’t mean it’s been all fun and games and loafing about. I mean there’s been some fun and games and loafing about, but there’s also been a little work as well, what with lining up some conversations about work opportunities, updating the LinkedIn profile and old-school resume and of course, learning iOS development, which is what the Vaya con iOS series of articles is all about. […]
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