What crazy years the last ones have been! As with almost every resource, time is finite, so it seems that there is never enough for everything we want to do, and blogging just kept staying behind on my list of priorities. Since my last post here, a lot of stuff has happened, both in my personal and professional life. Here are some highlights:

From city to country life

My family and I have moved, and we no longer live in the suburbs of Lisbon. We are still in the Lisbon district, about one hour away from the city center, but we have decided to make a radical change in our lives and move from a city apartment to a country house on the west coast of this beautiful country.

This change has brought a lot of adjustments in our lives, some of which I never thought I could possibly make. Who would have imagined that I would start picking up some tools at the end of the day to do some gardening or house improvements? I now have some knowledge of those topics, and I’m far from being an expert, but learning new things unrelated to computer science and being able to spend time tiring my body instead of my mind has been doing wonders for me.

Most likely, this has been the only good thing COVID brought us. Due to that awful period of being restricted inside our apartment – and don’t get me wrong, I was very lucky to have enough space for my family not to go insane, and I’m really grateful for that – the decision to change our lifestyle became a priority.

From consulting to product

I also seized an opportunity that came up, and last year I decided to join PagerDuty. Since the first day I joined this company, I can confidently say that I’m proud to be a Dutonian. I am truly loving every aspect of this experience, and the transition from a consulting to a product development mindset has been incredibly rewarding, to say the least.

With this professional change, I also departed from the Microsoft/C# object-oriented space and shifted my focus to functional programming with Elixir, among other technologies. Some of you may not fully grasp the significance of what I’m about to say: It was an incredibly difficult decision to make! I had been deeply invested in the Microsoft stack since 2007. However, over time, I’ve come to believe that it’s not solely about the stack itself, but rather the satisfaction derived from what you’re building, the people you collaborate with, and the stack’s ability to effectively accomplish the task at hand. Working at PagerDuty and embracing the Elixir stack undoubtedly fulfills all of these criteria.

From sedentary life to kickboxing

I’ve tried various sports and martial arts in the past. I even pushed myself to go to the gym 2 to 3 times a week for cardio and weightlifting for a while – which, to be honest, always felt more like an obligation than a pleasure. As a result, my life in terms of sports and health was always a rollercoaster ride of fleeting motivation that would spur me to start practicing something, followed by deep lows that inevitably led me to quit and return to a more sedentary lifestyle.

But in the last year, I’ve discovered how great it is not only to do a sport you like and that is great for your health, but it is even better when the people you do it with become almost like a second family that you respect and want to spend time with. Kickboxing is a great combat sport, and I’m enjoying every single bit of it. I enjoy watching other people fighting, I enjoy sparring with my teammates, and I’m grateful for every single bit of effort and “pain” my trainers put me through during practice because that is what makes me evolve. But what I treasure the most is the amount of respect we have for each other and how everyone works together so that all of us can become a little bit better every day. That camaraderie and sense of belonging are priceless.

This post is already becoming quite lengthy, and when I reflect on the past two years, I’m certain there’s more I could add. However, let’s not dwell on that for now. I am genuinely delighted that I found the time to write this and I sincerely hope it marks a fresh beginning for this blog, with more content to come, whether it be about technology and programming or other musings like this.

Regardless, it feels wonderful to be back.