Holiday Special

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well hello and welcome back. And as you have probably surmised, this is a holiday special. Yes, the little jingle jangle there at the beginning to let you know that this is a Christmas special. Our annual thing, we've been doing this, I think since the beginning. I know we've done this for many years. We've sort of added to it a little bit, tweaked it a little bit, but it's just a nice break when you're going through week after week, episode after episode, all these topics, all the things that we've covered. It's nice to have a little bit of break and hopefully it's nice for you to get a little bit of a break as well and get a little bit of a just view into how we're feeling, what we're thinking and things like that that we just cover that's not really an episode itself, but it's just perfect for a little special one-off holiday special as it were. We are in the midst of, although getting close to the end, looking at what we've got of our 20th season. It will wrap up around early February, it looks like right now. So just if you want to, if you're keeping track, we're just cruising along there. We're going to continue to do more or less the special topic and then interview and then special topic interview back and forth. We're going to tweak it a little bit here because we've got these holiday specials. So we're going to get a couple of back to back interviews and then we'll go back to our back and forth to wrap up this season. Season 21 will be next. We have not figured out what we're doing with that yet. There's a lot of things that are in play right now, a lot of things going on behind the scenes in the building better developers and developing our world. And so we'll just sort of see where we want to go with that one. We are continuing, have continued and will continue probably for the foreseeable future. We've got our channel out on YouTube so you can check stuff out there. We're just all over the place basically with tutorials. We have mixed in a couple of things that are more theory, things like that. We've talked a little bit about, I believe we've got some stuff recent, like in the last six months on creating an RFP. And I think we've got a couple of things on patterns and anti-patterns. We've got a lot of Python, a lot of sequel. We've got a little bit of Java in there, a little Spring Boot. So we're just, it's a little mix of everything and we will continue to do those. Try to keep them in the roughly the 15 minute-ish time frame so you can just sit down 15 minutes a day and get a little bit better as a developer. Obviously you can skip ahead and skip over the ones that you already know, but that's just a great way to continue to reach out, provide you guys some content. We've continued to periodically have blogs, blog articles that we throw in as well. You can always follow us out on Twitter, well, X, what used to be called Twitter, at developer.com. You can check out this developer.com site. We've always got stuff out there as far as blog articles and of course the latest podcast episode. And feel free to, and it'd be great if you would subscribe wherever it is you listen to podcasts. We're, as far as we know, we're everywhere. And if there's something you can't find us, let us know. We'll get ourselves out there so that we are available to everybody that wants to hear about it. With it being Christmas time and the end of the year and holiday and unless you're in retail, this is like, to me has always been the deadest week of the year is essentially Christmas week. Between Christmas and New Year's, yes, some people work, but they're like, traffic is super simple. Most people are off at least one or two days through that week long period. A lot of people take the whole week. If you're like me, when I have in the past, when I've been able to, I will take that whole week plus. I usually tried to take two weeks off at the end of the year because I could get about four days of holiday built in there somewhere. So it was basically get two weeks for 10 days off of paid, you know, 10 work days off, but you only have to take six days of vacation. Some things like that that make it nice to take a little bit longer than normal and have time to like actually wind down and chill and relax and enjoy, you know, the fruits of your labors. You've been working hard all year. It doesn't hurt to sleep in for a couple of days or, you know, have a slow start to your morning, things like that. If you have work to do, like often I do, it's not bad to just, you know, sleep in a little bit. Like I said, start your day a little slower, start it later. Instead of doing your normal, you know, if you're an eight to five grind kind of person, instead of doing that, maybe you take a few, you know, take a week and don't start to like 10 and wrap it up at like two. And that actually works out because there's a lot of people that are coming into work late or they're leaving early. And so if you're going to get stuff done during this week, that's really the only time to, if you have to deal with other people, that's the only time to do it anyway. So why not take advantage of it? Better yet, just take the day off and just go enjoy something that's out there. Try something new. Go see what's going on in your town, your city, you know, around you. Maybe there's something, there's an event or maybe you haven't been to a movie in a long time or a show or eat out somewhere special, whatever it is, do something a little different. Treat yourself a little bit, relax, pretend you're retired for a day, you know, even if it's just a day. And if you can try to string together three, four, five days of time off because it is so much better to get that. Once you get past a three day weekend, that you may get a little bit of free time, but really, you know, if you can go to four, five, six days in a row, that helps a lot because then your body can like break free of a few of those rhythms and actually rest and relax. And you know, maybe you'll have enough time to catch up on something or plan a day where all you're going to do is do cool, fun stuff or not so cool, not so fun stuff like get all of your Christmas shopping done right before the holiday or get all of your New Year's plans in right before the holiday. That can be a little bit stressful, but not as stressful if you have the day off to do it as it is if you are working while you're trying to do that. So as we're doing this wrap up, you know, getting to the end of our year, as always, this is also a great time. Always want to remind people to think about where you want to go next year. Where do you want to be next year? This is a great time to like we've talked about before, have that little retrospective, think about what you did this year. In particular, reflect on what you like to do and what you don't like to do. What do you want to do more of and what do you want to do less of? And then maybe with those things bouncing around in your head, you can come up with some plans as we get into the New Year's. We're talking about, you know, New Year's resolutions, all those kinds of things that you have a plan that is building something that you want to do, something that will make you happy, something that will allow you to go to work but not feel like you've worked. Ideally, go to work, have that charge you, recharge you, make you feel rested so you get the end of your day and you're ready to go do other stuff that is living life, whether it's dealing with, you know, working with your family and doing stuff there, whether you've got some sort of side hustle thing you want to do, whether it's some sort of exercise you want to do, if you want to, if you're in technology, you want to do art or vice versa, you name it. 24 hours a day may seem like not a lot, but really, even when you factor in sleep and all that, you'd be amazed at how good it can be when you're just cruising through, enjoying life and doing things that you want to do. The time does fly by, but also you can get a lot done. It just takes a little bit of planning. We've talked about that quite a bit. As always, as you're getting in this time and you're on, you know, you're doing car rides, you've got a little downtime, stuff like that, it is a great time to go check out, like maybe see what other podcasts are out there, see what is out there that is maybe useful to you, maybe audio books, blogs, radio shows, TV shows, whatever it is, YouTube channels. There are things out there. There's so much content. There's so many ways for us to consume content these days, to learn new stuff. In a lot of these cases, like podcasts and even YouTube channels, that it's sort of almost learned by osmosis because you can just like turn it on and have it running in the background and just be slowly mentally catching on, learning it, absorbing it. And the next thing you know, you're like, wow, I really know that stuff because it's just been run through over and over and over again. And your mind eventually gets all of those pieces and puts them into place. Or I mean, you can always do it a little faster and not have to listen over and over. Instead, grab pencil and paper and take some notes and make sure that it sticks the first time through. But there's so many things out there. It's just, we are inundated. And so it is nice to take a little bit of this time and say, huh, I wonder what else is out there. What's something that I can change? Maybe there's something that you're doing that you want to stop. Maybe there's obviously there's things like, hey, if you've got a subscription that you're not using, go ahead and stop it. But maybe there are job pursuits that you're doing that you don't want to. Maybe you don't want to listen to that DOS basic YouTube channel anymore because you're not going to be doing any DOS basic stuff or something like that. All of this is to say, take advantage of this time and let your mind wander a little bit, but in a positive way. It's like wander and think about what is it that, to yourself, say, what is it that I want to think about? If I'm going to let my mind drift, what do I want to allow it to drift to? If it starts drifting back into work and stressful stuff, drift out of that into something else so that you can actually enjoy your holiday time and this Christmas New Year's window, make the most of it. Because before you know it, we're in the middle of January or February and we are diving into a new year and we are slammed once again. So where you get a breather, take it. Take a few moments, take a deep breath, stop and smell the roses, and then be ready to dive right back into the year because it will be here before we know it. As always, I want to wish you and yours a great, happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Merry, happy, joyful, whatever else that you may focus on during this time. Happy New Year's, enjoy that, be safe. Go out there, have a good time, but make sure you Uber back and all the things you need to do so that you're safe while you're out having, you know, with all of the festivities so that you can come back and join us as we dive into 2024. Yes, New Year is right around the corner. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, a great rest of the year, and we will talk to you next time. Here we go, my song for Rob, my little insta hit. Now they always have a bit of a love song vibe to them because I think it's funny and it makes it a bit creepy and weird. So just heads up, here we go. Drink is where he likes to be, but he's dying to head to Italy with Tim, Ian, Ben, Beckham Tongue where he can stare at the stars all day long. He can eat that pasta till he passes out. Oh, well I love you Rob, I think there ain't a shadow of doubt. Come on, so I said give it up for Rob, he's my new best friend. I think I love you and we haven't even met. I want to say thank you for having me on your show. Cause this friendship of ours is one that can only grow.