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What would you say you do here?

For the past seven years, when people have asked what do I do for work? The answer was either, “I run data centers for Facebook” or if they wanted some additional detail, “I handle the care and feeding of the server fleet”.

Both of these were true and very high level. I have been responsible for Facebook’s Altoona Iowa Data Center on the Site Operations Team. I’m a server nerd at heart and make sure that Facebook, Instagram and the other properties can be served up to connect the world. This is a challenging position and one that requires technical skill, strong partnership and influencing skills, and to build out a great team to be truly successful in what we do.

The Theme System

In case you have missed it in the past, I’ve decided to switch from the usual goals for a year to a theme. Sure there are some measurement or ideas on where I would like something to go. But this is more about making choices and having some momentum towards a certain change in my life that I’d like to make. If you would like more on setting a theme for a year or season, I suggest you check out The Theme System or watch this quick video from their page:

I think it goes without saying, this year has been a dumpster fire on so many levels. Everyone has challenges and I’m not going to get into the muck and mire of who had it worse. Let’s chalk this one up to, we survived, let’s not do that again!

So let’s see how we did!

Theme results

This was the year of renovation. I had some general ideas of things I wanted to accomplish. I had a few pounds to shed, I had some career goals that I was focused on making happen and for the most part, I made some significant progress in this area. While my weight at one point was down 15 pounds, I’ve gained a few back due to stress, lack of sleep and general bad habits. Still in the right direction. My sleep is still very much an issue and something that will be a factor into the habits of next year.

What a freaking year this has been. Shit show might be the better term for it. Pandemic, conspiracy theories, race riots, and its an election year. Every time I think it can’t get any worse, somehow the shit show gets renewed for another month.

But as with tradition, its time for the mid year checkin on the annual goals and this year, theme.

Theme update

The theme we’ll address first. This is a year of renovation. I think that one is pretty clear that it is happening. Kind of forced to happen but it is happening. I’m working at home full time which has had a variety of effects on the body, mind and soul. Some for the better, some for the much worse. My health has been fairly in check. I’ve been healthy, lost weight. But some of my habits are getting the best of me. My sleep is atrocious, some of my work hours are getting longer and longer. The overall net effect of all of this has been positive from the fact that I’m around more to help out with the kiddos, I’m losing weight, and work has been hyper focused on only a few things. The second half of this year could setup some major renovations on the career front as well.

I’ve been a listener of several shows on Relay.fm for a while now but finally got around to checking out Cortex. One of the big things that they do on the show for the past several years are themes. They are not goals or resolutions, but more things you want to do in a certain amount of time frame. Some are yearly but not necessarily starting on January 1st. Check out episode 95 to get some background on it and the types of themes that they take on.