Break time

Next week, I'm planning to be back in San Francisco for about a week. My boyfriend is going to Google IO and I will just be hanging out with friends and family. It'll be a nice break. I'm not sure about moving up there for work, there are many great companies in the city, not to mention the surrounding areas. Those are the kinds of companies who probably have plenty of good experience job seekers to choose from, which is most likely why I may not even be considered to work there. A lot of contract jobs I get contacted about are in the Bay Area, and it's definitely easier to get that kind of work before something more permanent.

I'm fortunate to have many breaks from work, but that's a mixed blessing. I'm not getting the experience (or pay) of someone who is continuously working, but I do have the time to reflect and decide what to do next rather than just having to keep going. I've had the time to travel, make friends, take classes, and ultimately change my career path. As much as I'd like to be an experienced and highly paid something or other, I'm just figuring what I want to do and how I can do it.

My family is generally supportive about me working, but not necessarily doing things I enjoy. They do provide me financial support in the housing area for the most part, so I'm happy to be able to not pay rent or anything while I try to get where I want to be in life. I still think working from home would be nice, but I do like going into a workplace and having an office to work in that's separate from where I live. My current excuse for a home office is way too messy to be productive in and my room is not much better. I often say I'd clean more if I had time, but I really just need to be motivated to do it.

Busy busy week...

I've had a very good and busy week. Today, I finished a website that I designed and built from scratch. It is based on a template the customer liked, but I put a lot of my own ideas into. I did have help from a developer who's been with the company awhile, and I am really grateful that she's been guiding me. She's also been very encouraging and helpful to me and my fellow co-workers, who are also still pretty new to the company.

I ended up having time to take on a bunch of other developers' website revisions, which will keep me busy tomorrow. Before getting all those revisions, I had time to look into the Certificate programs at Cypress College. I'm very interested in the Web Development one. Some of the required classes are XML, Perl, Python, and PHP or ASP. The Web Page Design Certificates have required courses that include Java, C++, and XML. I may go for that one too.

It really depends on what they offer and if the classes are online or in person. I'm leaning more towards online since I hope to continue working full-time and would like to keep up with my workload. It is nice to finally have a good job doing something that I enjoy. Also, it's good to be working with some nice smart people, most of whom are also pretty creative. I think my team has been great to work with so far, and I feel like I've already learned a lot from them.

Anime Expo is next week, and I am very excited about it. I got my time off approved last week, and I've had everything else (tickets, hotel room) planned for awhile now. I'm going to all 4 days of Anime Expo, so it'll be very fun to see how big it's gotten. The 4th of July is on Sunday, so I'll also get the day off for the Monday after it. It'll be like a 5 day weekend! It's hard to believe tomorrow is already Friday, this week has gone by so fast.