It has been a while since I posted, which I will try to correct in the future. Massive amounts of change in my life right now.
I think I only have so much writing in me at a time, and that effort has been going elsewhere.
I'm no longer contracting to Microsoft, as of about a month ago. I really enjoyed working with my boss there and the pay was certainly good, but professionally and personally it was not fulfilling and I really wanted to make progress towards full time consulting. After talking to a few startups and firms in the area I lined up what looked like enough work to get started, and pulled the trigger.
So far I'm currently or soon working with three companies, each very different in terms of technology, business model, and intent. I've been very happy with the people and businesses and expect to have a lot of fun and be very challenged over the next half year or so that I expect to be focused on these three.
I am carefully working at expanding my consulting practice over time, but I want to be very conscientious about not overextending myself so that I can provide great results to my clients. It is all about reputation, referrals, and great relationships.
I continue to work with my personal trainer once a week and I'm probably in the best shape of my life, although swim team my sophomore year of high school may win that argument. Having that external motivator has made all the difference for me, and if I consider the money as a preventative health cost it is easily worth every penny and more. I now have more energy and strength to do other things, and I'm getting much more active in the rest of my life because of it.
I was in Colorado last weekend for a few reasons. The primary motivation for the trip was one of the businesses, we were getting a demo ready for a Boulder-based VC and wanted to hunker down and finalize it before the meeting on Monday. It went very well, and we'll continue to move that business forward. I also had a chance to meet up with my best friend from high school and his family for the first time in a long time, and we made it into a gathering for what high school friends I could get ahold of on short notice to have a picnic in Fort Collins' City Park. That went much better than I expected and I had a great time. I also got to spend a lot of time with a dear friend and her family, and had a better time than I thought possible.
