Pressing pause
Mary Cassatt, Breakfast In Bed, 1897, oil on canvas
This week, my daughter starts her first week of Kindergarten. I cannot believe she is already heading off to school or how quickly the time has passed. It seems like yesterday I was nuzzling this little baby under my chin, doing the hokey pokey at story time and figuring out the secrets of potty training.
This week has also been a time of self reflection. The past twelve weeks of teaching at The Iron Yard have been filled with countless hours, days, nights and weekends of teaching, writing curriculum, lesson plans and classroom exercises. At the same time, Mark and I were busy finishing up the final chapters and technical edits of our book. As you can imagine, it would not be an understatement to say that these past three months have been overly intense. With the students now graduated and the book officially approved for the final draft (YAY!), the level of intensity is starting to wane and life is getting back to something more normal.
It is within this week of self reflection that I have decided to leave The Iron Yard as it’s Front End Engineering Instructor. A lot has happened in my career over the past year and I am deciding to take a little time off for myself and my family. I’ll still be speaking at a few conferences (BlendConf + Frontporch.io), have a few other projects I am excited about and scheduling some freelance work.
I’ll also be focusing on doing more writing, creating, traveling, spending time with good friends/family, continuing to help empower women in tech as Chapter Leader for Girl Develop It RDU and considering what adventures I want to head into next. I am going to use my time to gather lots of creative and intellectual input to take with me wherever I decide to go to next.
I feel lucky to be able to take this time out for myself and my family and I am going to make the most of it.