11th week - the last letter

I've been alone at home with my cat and guinea pig basically the whole week. My dear wife was having a short leisure trip to Austria. The plan was to complete all the non-work things before the new life, but it seems only 50% got accomplished, and no K8s learning has been done. Obviously, a few new ideas and meetings took place as usual. Here you go:

• Had a quick assessment call and signed up for Veblen Director Programme membership. I'm already late with the first tasks.
• The last two worst leaders videos published - "Mr. Wise" and "Innovator on Steroids".
• Organized a simple "think of a future name for the platform" workshop
• Not sure why we didn't make a single picture from the RTG mentors event on Monday evening. 8 people joined to talk. I felt a bit rusty to facilitate and made a few minor mistakes, but all in all, it went well. I find it interesting how people at the beginning say that they have no specific topics to discuss but then open up and can think of something deep and worth discussing. After the event, I felt some kind of bliss and satisfaction but also was completely pumped out. The enthusiastic introvert.

I'm amazed by people who are capable of explaining the same obvious thing again and again.

It's a bit different with students, but in a professional environment I kind of automatically assume that we don't need to talk about basics. That we can jump to the "cause" of the problem, and skip the analysis of the "effect". But then I often find myself telling something DevOps related, people nodding but unable to contribute. In the end, after some questioning, I find out that the audience stayed fixated on my 3rd sentence when that was just the intro but I wanted to discuss the 5th, metaphorically speaking. At the workshop with RTG mentors I was listening to someone explaining what is a Retrospective and thinking to myself "Is this truly new information for people? They seem to be listening very carefully." The next morning this picture popped up in my head.

• Met a good friend over lunch. Discussed everything that matters and a bit more. It's most probably one of my weirdest friendships - it's almost like good colleagues who care about each other, discuss professional matters and a bit of personal life, but never meet for any "friend stuff". Lunch a few times per year it is.
• Somehow without looking, found someone who is starting an entrepreneur's journey and could use a bit of my help. After 1.5h deep dive, I probably have found one more core team member for the community stuff. You get what you give.
• Had a virtual coffee with Zanda Pu?īte . She showed up without a coffee ?? anyhow, we had a very good talk about many things and now can say that we know each other a bit. Overcoming that second to connect to the meeting and turn on the camera is hard. The rest is easy.
• Enjoyed lunch with Janis Orlovs . There's never too much talk of DevOps and the life of consultancy!

• I guess I'll never get to experience my dream of working for a month at Mcdonald's but at least I finally had my first VSAA (State Social Insurance Agency) visit in person. It felt like going to a hospital and waiting for your appointment. Since I had to show my diary right away and explain that I have signed an employment agreement, unfortunately, I didn't get to experience the bad stories that people tell about this place. It was all fine.
• Participated in the in-person TechChill volunteers kick-off meeting. All things seem to be under control. Met a few young energetic people. Not much to say. Since the event was in Workland Offices , no surprise, there was also the always-open-to-chat André Nitzschmann looking at me with big eyes. One thing leads to another and probably a new connection Līva Brutāne one day will talk at my meetup. But the interesting part was someone approaching me and asking me to guess her name. It was a pleasure to talk with you Anna Agapitova, PMP (another Unemployed Unicorn, hunt hunt hunt)! It was very interesting to remember a bit of the old times and hear your side of "the wall". What I enjoyed the most is how approachable I appeared to you. Obviously, I could be completely wrong, but without these letters probably you would have been a bit more hesitant. Thank you for being a human to a human! None of this would have ever happened if I'd been just sitting behind my fancy screen. Also, you can make Anna happier by fulfilling her survey.
• Jānis Ko?e?evs is cooking some podcasts program. I don't care what those will be about, if it's Janis behind them, it will be great. Follow this guy.
• Reworked and prepared the exam questions for the RTU DevOps intro course.
• Summarized the path forward and my further involvement in the adopted baby project to put it on hold. You'll probably hear about it a bit in the next DevOps Talk meets Agile event.
• Created the marketing concept for my theatre play in Latvian. You can follow it on Instagram. Ignore this if you can't accept a few spicy pictures.
• Had an honest talk with my RTG mentee about how our cooperation is going and what will happen next.

Ok, at this point you're probably angry that you haven't found the answer you were looking for. Sorry about that.

It’s time to buy a few new shirts. I'm returning to full-time employment starting the next week. It wasn't an easy decision to make, I don't have a pressing financial "motivator" yet, but it is an opportunity worth testing out. You'll hear more about it soon.

I'm not closing this newsletter. There must be a reason why 1000+ people haven't decided to opt-out. I may decide to write up a piece on how the Unicorn is doing at some point. Stay tuned.