Crazy Times

I created this blog because I started a new career right when Washington state was closing down for the COVID pandemic. I had an unusual perspective that might be interesting to share. After working towards changing my career for many years, from deciding what I wanted to do next to going back to school to the long trek finding a job, everything changed for me all at once.

After working at a public library for 14 years, it was closed on my last scheduled day because of COVID. The library had a plan for a pandemic and we all saw the signs. When I shared my happy news about finally landing a job, my coworkers couldn’t hug me because COVID was looming. We had planned on my going away party being held at a date to be determined, after things got back to “normal”. On the last day I got to work, we were removing furniture to try to facilitate social distancing.

Two days later I started as a junior programmer with a company where everyone already worked from home. As we all know, though, the world changed and right now a lot of people get to work from home. But even to my new coworkers, this world was not the same. While they already worked from home, everything else was in flux.

I was also the newest of the n00bs in my new career. While there were other new hires, everyone at my small company had worked with WordPress for 10+ years. Except for my interview process, I had never used WordPress. My company knew this, and I think it’s part of the reason they hired me, but it was jarring to go from having 14 years of experience at a job to having absolutely none.

Two months into quarantine and my new career, when things were starting to fall into a routine, everything shifted for me again. I was diagnosed with breast cancer. It totally blindsided me and my loved ones. I am 41 years old. I have no family history of breast cancer or really of much cancer at all. I have been remarkably healthy; I’ve never had a tooth pulled or broke a bone, never been hospitalized. But change is inevitable.

Over the last few weeks I have had a multitude of firsts:

• First mammogram (I’m up to 3 now)
• First IV (5 of those)
• First MRI (2)
• First PET/CT

Everything around me and inside of me has changed. So, rather than write about my new career as a junior programmer at an amazing company, the focus of this blog will probably be to document and share my experiences and feelings dealing with cancer. I’m sure I’ll still write about work, but the focus of my world has changed.

I’ve never been comfortable talking about myself or being the center of attention. That’s not really an option now.

I am lucky to have a lot of people who care about me and I won’t be able to keep each individual up to date. Even just sharing my diagnosis has been challenging and I apologize to the people I have missed.

So, that’s what I plan on using this blog for. It won’t all be cancer, but that is a big part of my life now. I also plan to write about programming, learning WordPress and PHP on the job, and as always, talking about books and Prince.

I invite anyone who wants, to follow my blog, comment, and share your stories and support. As my blog subtitle explains: I have no idea what I’m doing.