Personal Development

I've been thinking about my personal development recently. Over last last couple of years i've become a certified executive coach, did a course on human centred strategy, and kept my techncial awareness up with a couple of basic Azure Certs. When i look at what i want to do in the future, there is an area of learning that i know will be helpful to both gain and retain work in the future, however its an area i don't find interesting at all. so i'm presented with a challenge, do i a) focus my learning on an area that is of interest, b) Try and find something interesting within the area to try and generate some interest for myself or c) just knuckle down and slog through learning the thing regardless of my interest levels because i know it will be beneficial. I'm currently flitting between all three options on an hourly basis.

Modeling and Role Modeling

The photo at the top of this post was taken of me by my daughter as part of her photography a-level. I spent a large part of Saturday night dressed in a suit, standing, running, jumping and posing in a farmers field as part of a photo shoot for her project. It was fun to do a bit of 'modelling', and nice to help, but the topic of the shoot was something for me to reflect on. My daughter associates the adult world of work with really negative feelings. We had a bit of a chat about it, and i unintentionally settled into a 'its not as bad as you think it is' sort of role, but i had to stop myself at one point when the realisation hit me, i am the main person she sees doing work or talking about work, often she may be in the room when i'm chatting about my work day with my wife, so theres a good chance, if she has a negative view of the world of work that i'm the one that has contributed to it, so theres probably little use in me trying to backtrack now by saying 'oh it can be fun, its not as bad as you think' etc.

It's funny because i don't necessarily think i've got a negative view on work myself, i think i've been very fortunate in my career so far, i've mainly managed to avoid bad bosses, i've only had one very short instance (i was doing a short bit of consulting) of something bordering workplace bullying. Maybe if i have influenced her view its from the little drips of moaning i do to my wife at the end of a hard day, Maybe it my daughter's viewpoint is also part of a generational/zennial shift.

Continuing adventures in vibe coding

After another week of a few hours of 'vibe coding' on my little app i've pretty much got a fully functional app. ok, the functionality is limited, but it does exactly what i need it to do, and no less. I now need to look into how to build and package the electron app for Mac and Windows, and ideally do a little bit of testing on Windows. Unfortunately i don't have a personal windows machine, so i need to figure out how i'm going to test that.

Running

Achilles problems continue. I did a short 3k run on Saturday, my left achilles felt much better during the run but is very sore today. So, this means holding off on any longer runs, and definitely no park runs for a while longer. I may get myelf booked in for some shockwave therapy on it, as this did seem to work well in the tail end of last year when i started running again. I'm also replacing the runs i can't do with doing more calisthenics, which i actually really hate doing, but seem to be very effective, if i judge effectiveness through how much i ache.