I realized this afternoon that I let my fifth crochetiversary (in mid-November) and blogiversary (March 31) go unremarked upon. Sometime earlier last fall was my fifth anniversary with the Sew-op, as well. It made me think about how much has changed for me in the last five years.
When I started this blog, I had just realized I didn’t want to stay in mathematics, but had no idea what my next career would be. I was a week or so away from first meeting the man who became my husband, and we wouldn’t start dating for over eight months.
2011 was incredibly productive for me, though I was still working full time as a mathematician the whole year. It was my second most prolific year by measure of entries into the catalog and third by total number of posts (popping up to a very close second if you prorate). Surprisingly little of it was older work getting blogged about retroactively – I simply did a lot.
My most productive time was when I was semi-attempting to be a professional craft designer and teacher, roughly April 2013 to April 2014. I lacked the requisite passion and grit to make that happen, and discovered I really dislike sewing to order. I had already begun web development, learning enough to modify this blog’s theme and proceeding from there. I joined my little startup in February or March of 2014 and tried to make that work.
At the beginning of last year I decided to abandon the steady, frequent posting schedule I’d been more or less maintaining. That was absolutely the right decision. The nomadic piles of stuff in my sewing room are gone now, after a little work that was worth blogging about and a lot that wasn’t. I have plans to get through more longstanding projects during this quarter of the year, which will get me all but dug out of old project plans.
After that? Next month I begin a new job. I’ll be doing web development full time in an office. Reflecting on 2011 makes me wonder how 2016 will turn out. Being on the computer all day at home makes it hard to get off the computer; working for a start-up and freelancing without succeeding financially, and then also job hunting, makes it hard to think you should ever stop working. 2016 won’t be as productive as 2011 – for one thing, I was single for the second half of that year – but I’m hoping to simply do a lot again.