Welcome Wednesday: How it started vs How it's going!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Happy Wednesday Everyone!

I thought it might be fun to give people an opportunity to share something they started earlier and how well things are going with it. You don't need to share pictures, and it can be about anything.

For myself, earlier in the year I shared pictures of the garden expansion that my wife and I had done. One of our main intentions in doing this (other than the satisfaction of growing some of our own food) was to have something that our kids could benefit from as a hands on learning experience.

We decided to try a number of vine based vegetables this year, and I'm very pleased to report that as of this past weekend we were able to produce 10 jars of pickles from various items we have growing in our garden!

In addition, I could help but share this, at the beginning of the year my wife, son and I welcomed a new member of the family, and I can't believe she is now 8 months old!

I'd love to hear about all of your own accomplishments this year, please let me know in the comments below!

Have a wonderful rest of the week!

[Catherine Johnson]

Congratulations - what a cutie!!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Thank you!

[Nicole Christensen]

Love this topic! Thanks @Jimmy Seddon 

I will share about my crazy career path:

I began as a HS English teacher. One of my favorite treasures from that time of my life is a parody that some of my honors students made because I called a couple of them out on singing a not so school appropriate song while working in class one day. At the end of the school year, I received this gem. (Note: my name at the time was Nicole Sherry, thus the Ms. Sherry in the lyrics.

Now, I am the Product Owner for an Ed Tech organization called Readable English which is working to eliminate the literacy crisis in the US. It uses a markup to turn the English language into a phonetic language while keeping the spelling in tact. Once someone maps the visual spelling and sound of the word with the meaning, they no longer need the markup. My current treasure is a recording of a recent Podcast where Dave West, the CEO of Scrum.org interviewed me on my journey to Product and how Scrum.org and certification has helped with that process.

It has been an amazing journey and I have had the most amazing teachers and students to learn from along the way. 

[Jimmy Seddon]

That's amazing @Nicole Christensen!  I always love how where we thought we'd be career-wise and where we end up isn't always what we thought but that doesn't mean it's bad or wrong.

Thanks for sharing!

[Nicole Christensen]

And, despite all the pressure that may be placed on us when we are young to determine what we are going to be, it really does not matter. What matters more is who we will become.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I look to the smaller things for examples of this:

Why	What I started	Where we are
A bout of stress-related illness.	Plan more "don't work" time and stick to it	I'm sticking to it.
Catch up on TV I've heard is good but never managed to watch	Preacher	Finished it yesterday.  American Gods and Cowboy Bebop are arguing for the next place
Learn a new coding language	Got a Pi project that is best done in Python	Pi has sat in the to-do cupboard for 18 months
My father has dementia and we want him to be at our wedding	Preparing to get married	No huge rush, dad has a while before he won't be able to come, it's been 19 years and I've not proposed yet.  But it will happen sooner rather than later

[vikram]

its really crazy things happen like this only. 

[Jimmy Seddon]

@Nic Brough -Adaptavist- I love the detailed chart, this is awesome!

[vikram]

Let me share my story.

I usually spend evening to night times with my local shop owners of different business.  In early starting this year in Feb,2022, I was spending my time with one of my friend in one shop, around 10pm, a person came and wanted to draft some local document, the person tried few shops and could not get the work done, as helping nature I drafted the document in proper way and did the needful to that person. 

Now that helping nature of drafting local documents turned me one of the popular document writter in my area.

The person to whom I help, told to some one else and it went like that and know people from different areas call me and give me documents to be prepared.    

I feel happy that I am helpful to them. 

[Jimmy Seddon]

Awesome @vikram! Thanks for sharing!

[Taranjeet Singh]

It's great to see your garden and the little one growing so well, @Jimmy Seddon !

I would like to take this opportunity to share that in last December 2021, I started working on a Jira Server to Cloud migration, as the only technical consultant, for a client and it has finally concluded well at the end of June 2022, after all the complexities were finally sorted out.

It was a great learning for me, especially it was my first use of JCMA tool for such migration.

Have a great rest of the week, everyone!

[Jimmy Seddon]

Congrats @Taranjeet Singh!  That is wonderful news!  Having been through a migration myself I know how stressful it can be and how relived you feel when it has been completed successfully.

Take some time to celebrate and relax, you've earned it!

[Taranjeet Singh]

Thank you for the kind and motivational words, @Jimmy Seddon !