Upwards!

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. This, of course, can be said of every person, every day. For me, today, it rings truer than ever. Today is the first day in my new position with Markley Cloud Services.

This is actually a set of fairly radical changes.

• First, I’ll be heading back into the trenches of actual network operations. Designing and building a new network from almost the ground up. My goal is to help build the best cloud services network on the planet. I hope to set an example of excellence from which many BCOPs (and several open source tools) are written.
• Second, I’ll be calling a city other than Denver home for the first time. Ever. While I’ve traveled fairly extensively, Denver has always been where I lived. Within a few weeks I’ll be moving to Boston – a city I’ve only visited once.
• Third, my lover, my partner, my “girlfriend,” Eva, will be moving with me! While we spend much of our free time together already, truly sharing a living space (and in a new city) is a big step.
• Finally, the time I spend with my two sons will change from frequent but short, to less frequent but longer.

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Then there’s all the change that these changes bring with them. Way less travel. Working from an office again. The pace and culture of an East coast city. Sharing closet space. Being more of a parent, and less of a weekend buddy. Trading mountains for ocean, Vegas for NYC, and flip-flops for scarves. Working to actually deploy the best technologies for Internet, rather than talking about it. I’m sure the list goes on.

I’m terrified and excited about all of this. Which is exactly where I wanted to be. I love having a fire lit under my ass, and have a tendency of lighting them myself. This is another example of that. For the past few days, since all of this became fully real to me, I’ve woken up earlier, with more energy than I’ve had in a while. I am a technologist but more importantly I’m a doer. When folks start talking sports my eyes glaze over. Not because I don’t like the games, but because I need to be on the field to enjoy them. I’ve never been a good spectator, and so it’s time to suit up again (which ironically means taking the suit off). It’s time reclaim my titles of Engineer and Operator. Let’s see if I’ve still got it.