I haven\'t checked in for months. Life just got a bit hectic and I just been heads down really. At this point my days are either work and school, competition and school, or just competition. I think I\'m ok with it since I do plan on doing grad school next year, but I can definitely say that I\'m noticing that I really don\'t like the way my day is structured. Why Am I doing those 3 things? ------------------------------ Well\...let\'s talk school first. I haven\'t been in school for years so I wanted to refresh on some math before starting grad school. To me this was super reasonable, but some other people don\'t understand the vision. I don\'t care about them. I\'ve started and dropped grad school and I would like to course correct where I messed up the last time. Competition\...well I won\'t go into much detail on the specifics here. If you know me then we have probably talked about it. Competiting has been a fun way to relax and meet new people. It\'s not that easy to find and build community where I am, but this has been a game changer for me. I get to spend 3-4hours 2-3/4 wks a month being semi-athletic and relaxing to the point that school and work stress is forgotten. Work is pretty simple, I need money. lol I\'m having a problem here and that I\'m getting stuck yet again but we can talk about that next. I\'ve really been focused on work skills that increase my income. I do have a long term retirement goal for the field that I\'m currently in and that requires me to try to gain all the skills possible. Any goals? ---------- So here is where things get weird. School goals is to pass, competition goals is to move up in classification, and work goals are a big mystery. I just really don\'t know what else I need to do in devops. I think this field has no set anything so you have to set your own path. The problem is I\'m not sure what path is best. I can\'t see the same level of impact now that I saw at my previous job. I don\'t believe getting certs is worth my time anymore, and honestly I\'m just wondering if being an SME in this space is worth it in corporate. I\'d love to eventually run my own small agency for cloud devops and compliance (I guess I could do on-prem here as well), but how can I use corporate to get there? I don\'t know. I don\'t like putting my career future in the hands of others or anything like that so I need to figure something out. So what are your next steps? ---------------------------- 1. Survive school 2. Figure out an ideal 8-6 schedule 3. Keep making money 4. More music concerts and sleep 5. Figure out career goal for the next 2 years A simple 5 part list that I think I can get through this year. I\'ll try to make these updates more. If I don\'t you can reach out to me through email.