Thanksgiving was more solitary this year out of necessity, but still good. (Any meal we eat together as a family is good in my book.)
I’ve finished all the readings for one class and have just half a project left on the other (reaction-diffusion is done and I’ve started implementing Perlin noise). So close to The Real End. I’m getting legitimately giddy. The experience of grad school has been fine, don’t get me wrong, but it’s still been taking up a sizable part of my brain for the last four years and there is so much I want to do with that space when I get it back.
My protodecision to pivot my career back to design seems to be sticking. It’s been a few years since I was a designer, and my head hasn’t been in that space at all in the intervening time (I realize now that I needed to be fully in the engineering mindset to be able to do the master’s), but returning to design feels right and good — and a bit of a relief, too, if I’m honest.
Since my flight to engineering a few years ago seemed at the time to be a one-way ticket, however, my younger self inconveniently neglected to put together a UX/product design portfolio. With time travel not among my hobbies (yet!), I’m now cobbling together a portfolio with new work as swiftly as I can. Once that’s done, I’ll start sending feelers out again. Oh how I wish I’d figured this out before I started applying and interviewing for all those engineer jobs. (That said, my experience has absolutely been that God works with me line upon line, a bit at a time, and I’m convinced that I needed to go through all that to get to this point.)
We watched Enola Holmes on Netflix. Quite fun.
Nonfiction reading: I just finished Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Whew. Rough lives. Harrowing. Glad to be done, really.
I’m about to start Robert Iger’s The Ride of a Lifetime, which seems to be primarily about his time at Disney.
Fiction reading: I’m halfway through The Crown Conspiracy. My progress slowed down mid-week because:
I took a break to read Jim Butcher’s Battle Ground, the latest installment in the Dresden Files series. One very, very long battle. Whew. A quick read, though.
I’m still on track to read at least 100 books this year. 93 down, just seven to go in the month that remains. The number doesn’t actually matter, of course — it’s just a slightly silly personal challenge.