Catching Up

Wow, it’s been almost 4 years since I’ve blogged. Certainly not the first break I’ve had in many years of having a blog, but this was a good long one. Since I last blogged I’ve been pretty busy and haven’t really felt like trying to articulate the normalcy of my life.

For a quick catch-up, in 2016 I was very focused mostly on my company. For many years I worked at Lullabot, first as a consultant and eventually becoming the Director of Education, running Drupalize.Me, our online Drupal training site. In 2016 we split that site off into its own new company called Lullabot Education, sibling to Lullabot (we’ve recently changed the name to Osio Labs though). I became the CEO. Needless to say it was an eventful year with a lot of hard work from the whole team. While we had been operating as a department in Lullabot for years, that is a far cry from having to stand fully on our own two feet as a business. There were a lot of lessons, some happy and some hard. It was an intense year, and I think I can be forgiven for being mostly distracted by the business.

After getting a feel for the new business and having things settle, 2017 became a year of focusing on some non-work-related priorities that I really needed to address. I spent half of this year in classrooms and taking tests related to living in Denmark. I had been putting off continuing my Danish language skills and, more importantly, passing my language test that will make me eligible for permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. Denmark is pretty awesome with supporting residents (not just citizens) with free education possibilities. I took free Danish courses (FVU for those who care) from the spring into the fall and finally passed my important test in October. That was 7 hours a week of class, plus homework and assignments. Shortly after I started FVU I also started with driving school. I’ve been driving for 30 years, but my U.S. license is not valid in Denmark and I had to actually go to driving school from the very start as if I’d never driven before. (It’s a long story as to why this was true for me and not others. Other people can now, as of a couple of years ago, trade their U.S. license with only a continuation test, but this did not apply to me.) So in addition to Danish class, I ended up in driving classes. Denmark’s driving school regulations are intense and expensive (I spent ~$2400 total before it was all said and done). I had to attend 12 hours of classroom and 12 hours of practical driving, plus two special 3-hour practical driving courses and an all-day first aid course. I’m happy to say that I passed my final driving test in December 2017, and I’ve accomplished both of those important goals. I had to get all of my Danish and driving classwork in around running a business and my not infrequent travel. It was a grueling 7 months. Much respect to people who are in school and working full-time jobs. I have no desire to do that again any time soon. Also in 2017, Camilla and I started spending our winters in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is an amazing place and has now become our home away from home from January through March. I’ve just started a new site all about Oaxaca as well.

2018 was a pretty fun year with the company since we have been working on expanding our market outside of Drupal. We learned a lot about market research, went to a lot of JavaScript events, and eventually decided to head into the Node.js world (with a little side of Gatsby.js). We’re still working on the new Node site (look for something this spring) and it occupied most of the end of last year for me, along with some other new markets we’re looking into. We also decided to make the big turn of changing the company name from Lullabot Education to Osio Labs. On the personal front, Camilla and I started doing a lot more hiking and backpacking, in Denmark, Sweden, and the U.S. (we had an amazing trip to the Sawtooths in Idaho). From all of that fun outdoor adventures, Camilla has decided to hike the Appalachian Trail this year. It’s about a 6-month trip and she’s starting in March. I’ll be writing more about that (hopefully) in future blog posts.

This year is shaping up to be a pretty exciting and challenging year for me—launching a new product, growing the company, lots of travel, and missing Camilla while she’s hiking—and I may just do some blogging to share the journey a bit.