Gratitude and Growth - A Thanksgiving Special on Building Better Developers

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. As you noted probably, this is again a special episode with our little turkey gobbles starting this whole thing off because it is turkey day. It is Thanksgiving. If you don't know what that is, look it up. If you do know what it is, just get ready for a lot of nap time because if you're like me, napping is a very essential part of celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday along with the football games and all the other stuff that's out there. A good solid nap. That's what we're looking for. Like bears hibernating, those kinds of good naps. And I'm not talking to Chicago Bears. I'm talking like those big furry guys that like take a long time to take a good nap. This is Building Better Developers. This is Develop-a-Nur. I am Rob Brodhead, one of the founders, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we go out and we help you leverage technology that you have or the technology world and find some technology that you need to make your life, your business better. Whether that's through simplification, automation, integration, we find ways to just like take that technology sprawl and all the related pain and anguish and turn it into a work of joy in allowing you to get your stuff done better. Good thing, bad thing. We're going to switch it up a little bit in this special episode and talk about it's a good thing and a bad thing about Thanksgiving in past or in general. Now the good thing for me is this is a day like there's a couple of things, holidays and stuff like that where I have historically in large portions of my life spent a lot of time in a kitchen. Now I'm a little Julia Childish type person in that when I'm spending time in the kitchen, there is usually a bottle of wine or a half a dozen of those, a big pile like cheese of varying a sort, crackers, fruit, veggies, snacky stuff. And I am a snack meister in those kinds of situations. So I love sitting there cooking. I've even baked occasionally, but usually it's more the cooking side of it while like snacking, having a drink, talking to whoever else is there, just good, like enjoying life moments. The downside or a bad part of it is all of that food sticks around for days. And I don't mean like in the refrigerator as leftovers. I mean on me. I usually gain lots of weight and then I'm like feeling bad the rest of the month and like, all right, I got to like work this stuff off because I have that obligatory nap. And then because I have so much food and so much of the same kind of stuff for the next several days, napping is a very large portion of my like, you know, Thanksgiving, Thursday through the weekend. And now I got to wake him up. We're going to poke him so he can get out of his nap. Is Michael, I'll let you introduce yourself. Hey everyone. My name is Michael Molloch. I'm one of the co-founders of developer NUR, also the founder of Envision QA, where we help businesses pretty much launch their or fix their software stacks and make sure that the software they have really meets the demands of the business. Past holidays, good and bad. Let me start with the good. For most of my life growing up, I had a large extended family. We had lots of relatives. My mother was a child of five and I'm part of that grandchildren. Of that there's about six or seven of us and of that we now have great grandchildren going out even further. For many years, we always tried to get together when we were all up in Michigan. We would go to one family or another and we would always kind of be like a full family gathering, almost like a yearly family. Like hey everyone come together kind of event. There were many years where there was lots of food, lots of naps like you said, lots of football. Detroit, Lions, big football up there, even when we lose. We always would take turns in the kitchen helping out, setting up the placemaster, always be tons of food. Bad side to that is depending upon which house it was at, there were pets. I'm going to tell a funny story about one time my one aunt had a beagle and this beagle was hell bent on getting whatever he could get anytime there was food in the kitchen. If there were frozen biscuits on the counter, he would wait till someone walks out of the room, he would jump up, grab a biscuit and disappear. Napkins gone. My favorite memory is when someone opened up the refrigerator door and the dog bolted right in and got a whole pie. So those were still good moments, but unfortunately we didn't have pies, we're missing food from our dinner table. But that's just the kind of good and bad that goes with these holiday seasons, you know, and then there's always, you know, the occasional argument about football game or whatever. But those are both the good and the bad can also be good times with the holidays. So that leads us into it being a special, wanted to go through, which is something we've done in the past, it's Thanksgiving holidays. So let's talk about what we are thankful for. So I'm going to start with, let's do three things that we're going to talk about each of us, what are the three things that we are thankful for, you know, in this mostly like looking at the year back, like what are some things that we are thankful for here? Now for me, I'll go with the, I have low hanging fruit in a sense here is that I have, I got married this year and sometimes feels like it's been, it's like weird that it was this year, but yes, earlier this year. And so that is definitely something to be thankful for is that, you know, you find somebody that you, and it's not just the marrying that person, it's like the family that comes with it and things like that, that have been, just made my life more full and very enjoyable. On the other basis, there's when you've doubled or tripled the size of your family as we have then you just have a lot more people that you get to relate to and with and all the good times related to that. Another good thing is related to the family and things like that is I have also became an empty nester this year is that I had like the final kids moved out, crossing my fingers that they won't move back, but you know, got people out and you know, that's just like some people talk about it and say, now you get to go do things you want to do and stuff like that, but it's more about the whole, they are able to do that, that you know, you worry about when you kick somebody out of the nest that they're just going to go boom and they're just like, you know, face plant, but when you kick them out of the nest and they actually are able to like fly away, even if they look like a woodstock by bouncing all over the place, that's okay. At least they're, you know, they're flying and they're getting there and they'll get better. So hugely thankful for that. And then for in a just like almost soppy kind of thing, I guess, is I'm thankful for you guys. I am thankful for this. I am thankful that we have made some adjustments this year. We really did change up the way the podcast works and some of these other things. And it is, you know, we've tried a little bit. We have a different channel. We've had YouTube for a long time, but we never really did the podcasts out there. That was a, there were two very different things and in melding those things, it has changed how we've done podcasts. It's changed my view of the podcast and like my preparation and things like that. It's actually freed up some more time because the guy on the other side there does a lot of the, does the editing and a lot of the footwork and kind of stuff that's involved with this. And I'm thankful that you guys, cause we're, we are still seeing, you know, some growth and things like that. We're seeing people come back. I would be more thankful if people send us more feedback, but that will come later. But I just want to say like, yeah, this has been a good year so far. Really like how it's going. So getting, finding things to be thankful for is actually pretty easy. Now setting that up, let's see if Michael can do the same and give us like three, just bam, bam, bam things that he's thankful for. Sure. Let me start off with, and I've mentioned this before, I'm very thankful for all the support I've had this year in going through the business relaunch at the end of last year. I had really started to plan and get into that mode and get into the relaunch and it really took a, it took a community to get across the line. It took the family being supportive. It took classes and people I worked with to kind of get that relaunch off the ground and find the business members and business to, you know, kind of sustain it and keep things moving forward. And with that, you know, I'm thankful for the customers and again, all the people that supported me through that, which leads me to my second one, which is family and friends. So with a lot of the kind of relaunch, I had to really be focused and heads down. So I didn't have a lot of time early in the year with family and friends, but once I got the launch done, I was able to spend more time with family and friends. We actually had a friend things, kind of like a Thanksgiving in June, kind of just get all the friends together. We had a lot more time where we had more cookouts, got to see what a whole hog cooked in a pit looked like. That was kind of interesting. So that was kind of fun. I had some more family and friend events kind of going on. So I'm very thankful for that. And I'm also thankful for you guys and this community. You know, if we didn't do building better developers, we could easily find ourselves working on other projects and other things and trying to help and mentor people. But this really keeps us focused on the community, helping you guys, and it helps push us to be better and not just better developers, but better people. It's through you guys that helps us improve through our content, through these podcasts, through our blogs. And, you know, just really thankful for you guys. And Rob, you know, we've worked together for years, our friendship. You know, I'm thankful for that. I am thankful right now that I was not on mute because I was thinking I was. So now this is the interesting one. So those are all, you know, obviously we could go on for days because we are very blessed to be where we're at and some of the things that we've done. But now looking forward a little bit in our crystal balls as it were, it's like what is it that we are, you know, we'll say are hoping for or expecting to be thankful for as we get to the end of the year? Because right now, you know, it's, as we mentioned, Turkey Day, it's Thanksgiving. We've got, you know, roughly five weeks, six weeks left, something like that to the end of the year. So what is it that we are looking forward to in this, you know, in these next few weeks? It'll be something we will look back and be like thankful for. We got it, whether it's a big thing or a little thing. And so I've got, these are questions that are a little bit self-serving to me because I'm just looking at stuff like I got actually a couple of things to look forward to. One is I mentioned the children. I've got another child that hopefully will be graduating college in the next couple of weeks here. So I'll be able to be very thankful that he has made it through there, like slogged his way through it and gotten out and gotten his degree and able to go out and do his own thing. It's like, yeah, he's sort of doing his own thing. But now just the same reason we do this is I want, you know, my kids are the same way. I want them to go out and do work that they enjoy. And so I'm very much looking forward to that and hoping to be thankful for that as we go through it. Another thing that is an oddity that I picked up a few, I don't know if it's an oddity, but it's something we picked up a few years ago, is there's these Advent calendar things that you can do. Now several years ago, we started with one that was an Advent calendar and it was wine. It was comes from the Aldi grocery stores and they would have a little wine thing. And you can go and you like, you know, each day of that, they have like a little bottle of wine and get to try it out. There is also like there are cheese ones, there's chocolate ones, there's teas, there's whiskeys, there's cigars, there's little like knickknacks. There's just there's all sorts of Advent calendars. And so this year we've got a couple of them that we've got one that is just like a general activity kind of calendar. We've got a new wine one, that's a different wine set. And then we've got a cheese one as well. So we'll be working on figuring out if they're wine and cheese pairings or not. But it's just a fun way to really like every day of the holiday of, you know, going basically between Thanksgiving and Christmas to just have something so different. And so that along with my traditional watching Christmas movies through thanks or through December is something that I'm looking forward to when I get to the end of the month, being able to say, wow, once again, I was able I was blessed to be able to do this. I had some time, was able to chill, have some good time in front of a fire, you know, under a blanket or whatever it is, and just like chilling and relaxing for a little bit. The third thing that I'm looking forward to being thankful for is actually to be thankful for like wrapping up, having a period of time that I can actually take some vacation of some sort, not only travel and stuff like that, although that may be part of it, but being able to get all of the work stuff together in a way that I am not scrambling to get things done on December 30th or 31st. I'm not I don't have anything that's like a burning task that I want to get done this year. It was the developer book. It was going to go out by that year and it was published at like 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve. It's like one of those I was like as close as you can get to not making it, but made it happen. I have set myself up to not have to do this that this year. So as long as no surprises come anything like that, I'm looking forward to New Year's Eve being to be thankful for the fact that I can just chill and enjoy New Year's Eve. How about yourself? So what I'm most immediately that I'm looking forward to is the day after Thanksgiving. Typically in our family, my wife does not like anything Christmas going up till the day after Thanksgiving. So the day after Thanksgiving, the first thing I'm going to be doing is taking out all those Christmas decorations and decorating the house. Or as my wife says, Christmas threw up in our house because I go a little overboard with the decorations sometimes. My mother's son, she used to decorate with like nutcrackers up in the front lawn. My mom was better at doing it than I am. Yes, sometimes when I do it, it does look like Christmas just threw up in the house. But that's partially because if I'm allowed to get away with it, there is like no surface not touched by something Christmas. I've got Christmas houses, decorations. I like it. It's fun. With that also come December 1st, my wife has been nagging me for weeks now to watch Die Hard. So that will be the annual kickoff of the Christmas shows that we'll be watching throughout the month. We typically binge watch all the Hallmark Christmas shows up until the week of Christmas or probably about 10 days before Christmas. And then we pretty much just binge all the Christmas holiday shows. That's pretty much all we watch all the time. I'm also thankful the fact that the elections are over and that's no longer really on the news and it's we're back to calmness. So, you know, you kind of get that pause. But also with the Christmas movies, you know, we get into drinking the eggnog, maybe add some brandy to it, cooking the Christmas cookies together as we do the Christmas decorations. We have a lot of fun with that. And then the last thing I'm also thankful for is, like you said, you know, at the end of the year, typically after Christmas, if I get any games, I'll sit down. I get about a week where I'm allowed to have the big screen TV all to myself and I'm allowed to just binge watch binge games, which is just kind of my annual tradition along with, you know, college basketball. I'm allowed the final four and the final. But and finally, you know, just glad that it's the end of the year. I'm looking forward to just really getting through Christmas, spending time with more family and friends, maybe getting out to some Christmas praise, go out, some, you know, drive around, look at some Christmas decorations. We've got a couple of small town centers around here that they really kind of go all out and deck out. So it's kind of funny. Just kind of go out, watch. Maybe there's caroling sometimes. So it's really for us, this last month of the year is a lot of fun. Is a lot more family time, a lot more Christmas, a lot more relaxation and a little bit of work in there. But, you know, we keep it as light as we can going into the end of the year. And that's I think that's part of it is we've got to remember all of us need to remember that it is easy to work our way right through a holiday. And the next thing you know, the holidays over and you're into the drudgery of January, February, March kind of stuff. And so enjoy it while you have it so that, you know, even if you get to January 4th or 5th and you're like, geez, I need a vacation, even though you took two weeks off, at least you got those two weeks off and you were able to, you know, maybe get some stuff done. You know, maybe there's a game that you want to complete or, you know, a puzzle that you want to finally put together or what, you know, a room that you're going to clean in your house because it's been driving, you know, whatever it is, is like, spend a little time and in a sense, treat yourself, do some things that are going to make you happy because it's too easy to get to go through life and not be doing the things that make us happy. There's so many things that don't that we have to do anyways. So, you know, take a little time and find one of those tasks or hobbies. Hey, if you want to enjoy writing us an email, you can do that and shoot us an email at info at developandwork.com. I'm not going to ruin the rest of your Turkey day telling about all the ways that you can contact us. If you want to say hi, say, you know, here's what you're thankful for. That's awesome. We're going to thank, be thankful for you anyways. We have spent, I think enough of your time. I want to, again, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. If you've taken a little bit out of your day, or maybe you're doing this while you're cooking and doing all of that prep work, awesome. Now it's time to just like turn us off, shut things out and actually embrace the day and embrace the family and the friends and all of those around you. We'll still be here because we are coming back. We're going to kick back into our season of building better habits. And then we'll have a couple more holiday episodes because we also want to like keep it a little lighter and a little easier. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Thank you for listening to building better developers, the developer podcast. You can subscribe on Apple podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts, we are there. And remember just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success.