2018 what a year! I managed to do a ski season while working remotely doing web development work, spend 3 months travelling around USA and Canada, learned a load of new web dev skills, wrote some articles, moved back to England and landed myself an awesome job. If anyone cares (thanks for reading mum), here's what I did.
Jump to heading Digital Nomading for a ski season
Whiter Ski resort statue from 2010 winter Olympics
In October of 2017 my girlfriend, Sarah and I moved to Whistler, Canada to spend the winter season in one of the worlds best ski resorts. Since I was 13 and spend my first week on the snow, I’ve always wanted to do a ski season. Before the snow started I worked remotely with the awesome Sonr.global team doing the frontend build for the initial site and product (it’s changed a bit since then but the foundation of what I did is still there). I spend the majority of the 6 weeks working with the legendary Jon Pearse who was developing the backend. As per usual working with such a talented, patient deveoper, such a Jon meant I learnt LOADS!
It was overall enjoyable to be working remotely on a project while being in a totally different timezone. Everyone who I worked with was 100% behind me being remote and -8 hours behind so that aspect was easy. For me, I think my ideal situation would be to split my time with working remotely and on site.
My “office” in our shared Whistler house
I did some other small projects during the season but was lucky to be able to take most of it off from client work. I spent my time learning Vue.js/Nuxt.js which I used to rebuild the Northern Badger website. I went to the south of USA for the first time for Vue conf USA which was a cool experience. Having dedicated time away from client work to learn while being able to explore and exercise loads was amazing! I want to make a point of taking a couple months off every 2–3 years just for this. I think in this period of time I was able to learn faster, be more productive and most importantly give my mental health a big old boost. It may sound like a pipe dream, but I think it was so good for me I am going to put myself in a position to do this again.
Me jumping off a small cliff on Blackcomb, Canada. It may look small but It was REAL scary doing it.
Jump to heading Travelling Canada & USA in a camper van
Sarah hanging off the back of Ernie, our 1996 Dodge Ram Van on the Icefields Parkway
The winter season finished at the end of May but we wanted to go exploring before heading home. We bought a 1996 Dodge Ram Van that had been converted into a camper. We named him Ernie, a reliable old man. He wasn’t the fastest, the biggest or flashiest van but he was ours.
We did over 7000 miles from Vancouver Island to Jasper national park, down to Calgary for the Stamped (Canada’s biggest Rodeo). Into the USA to Yellowstone, Bryce Canyon and onto Vegas to get out of the +45C head and for Ernie some TLC. After being coming pros and getting free Mojitos we escaped the heat on the coast of Californian where we surfed with seals and a grey whale who was a 150m further out to sea than us. Then up the west coast of the USA through the Redwood forests, Portland, Seattle where we saw a Seattle Seahawks pre-season game and finally back to Vancouver. For more info about our adventures, checkout Sarah’s blog.
Working on Vancouver Island. I took a break to go exploring and we saw a beaver in this awesome emerald green river!
For the first month or so of the trip I was doing a static website build for a super nice Cardiff based agency, Marsden/Mee. Working with Becky was great, one of those people who is always reasonable and logical. Big up Becky. Being on the road while working remotely was a bit challenging. Since I didn’t have access to wifi without using someone else's. I was at the mercy of cafes/Walmart/bars. I found the whole uncertainty about if this cafe was going to have a comfy chair, quiet enough/distraction atmosphere etc difficult. Sarah at the time wasn’t working remotely so all things combined it wasn’t ideal. I would consider doing it again but I’d prefer to be working remotely with a solid base as I did earlier in the year.
Snapshot of one of the interfaces I built for TOTM
Jump to heading Back to the UK & full-time job
Come the end of August we flew home. While we loved our time in Canada & USA coming back to England was awesome. In the first few weeks, I was seeing family, friends while planning what to do next. I was exploring contract opportunities in Bath/Bristol while also looking at the possibility of moving to Amsterdam to experience life there.
I went for a meeting with a Bath agency to discuss a contract job and left with the offer of also possibly becoming full time. Ready, a multi-disciplined creative agency specializing in breakthrough promotional and tactical marketing campaigns for consumer brands were looking for a new senior developer. It’s a small company of 10 people with 3 developers and a digital designer/frontend dev. I was delighted to accept the full-time job offer! While it wasn’t something I was looking for at the time, working at Ready is a great fit for me. The founders have been really supportive in backing me to make changes so we can great better work more efficiently.
Stepping up to be a senior dev was daunting for me. When I was going through if I wanted to take the role one of my big doubts was if I would be able to fulfil the role. I spoke to my Dad, my long-standing business advisor at length about this. I also reached out to three people I used to live with who have done senior/lead roles before. While I would say there are definitely technically more advanced seniors devs out there, I do feel I have other skills. An ability to work well with others, a strong foundation in HTML/CSS/JavaScipt/WordPress, a genuine passion for coding in the right way and the ability to work well under pressure.
At the end of my 2nd week, we went to Helskini on the company holiday. It was rad! I went to a sauna every day.
Jump to heading Writing articles and Open Source work
This time last year I committed to writing some web developer articles. Being dyslexic this isn’t something that comes naturally to me but I really wanted to try. I really admire developers that share their knowledge. I remember Sara Soueidan saying once that writing articles is helpful for documenting things for herself as it is for helping others. After going through the process myself, I totally agree! My articles have been used in accessibility email newsletters, reference in smashing magazine and has shared a bunch of times on Twitter.
I wanted to try and write 12 articles but only managed 8. I had just over 50,000 views which I still find mind-blowing. Massive thanks to everyone who has read and shared my articles.
My accordion plugin, Badger Accordion this time last year had 14 downloads. Its now had 6,907! I’ve found the experience of maintaining it pretty interesting. Aside from one numpty submitting a rude ticket it’s been great. Having an issue template I think massively helps both users and maintainers to improve the project combined with good issue labels.
Shredding through the fresh snow on Blackcomb
2018 has been awesome but I am confident 2019 will be better.
