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EDITORIAL NOTE: I WROTE THIS QUITE AWHILE AGO BUT NEVER HIT PUBLISH. IT’S NOT REALLY DONE BUT THERE ARE ENOUGH BEAUTIFUL WORDS AND WELL-THOUGHT THOUGHTS, I figure I’d share it. - Mark 2012-August-26

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything out loud here. I’ve been writing and thinking in a thousand other spaces that it seems I’ve neglected this specific space somewhat. In a sense, that’s life’s paradox: in the temporal nature of ourselves, we are bound to finite possibilities and in such moments, our decisions do matter. So I write to speak the fact that I want to try to connect them. I want to connect those spaces with this space.

Let’s begin the story that goes with every memory.

A Year In Code, Dreaming In Drupal

I’ve been writing a lot this past year. In notes, in email, in forums. I’ve been search a lot too. Searching for answering to various steps that meet a need for something I’m building.

It’s somewhat hard to say when I went from hobbyist to amateur to obsessed. But that tends to be how I go about things in life.

As such, it seems that I’ve written words and ideas in different spaces and a different languages outside of this personal blogged space. So the question opens on: how to

for anyone that’s followed the strange trajectory of my blog writings, you’ll notice a tendency to deflect from personal ramblings; at least personal ramblings for the sake of just being personal.

So many thoughts and adventures, so many changes and challenges have occurred to me over the past year or so, that I’m not quite sure what to write now. For anyone that would read through the evolution of my blog, you’d notice a tendency to avoid making it into something of a personal statement of my life.

It’s not that I haven’t had things to write; but instead, it’s more that I had so much I was doing that I didn’t end up writing at all about it publicly.

In a different sense, if you look at my “gitub” life (or my Drupal alter-ego) you’ll see that I have indeed been writing but in a much more functional sense than  a philosophical one. In fact, for people that have known me a long time, this new evolution might come as a surprise: I’m a full technologist and developer.

If I would try to summarize the last year or so into a sentence it would be: trying to find and create human solutions using Drupal.

For the last year or so, I’ve seen such an increase in demand for people looking for Drupal customizations that I’ve made that business, at least for the time being.  I’ve been building modules, complicated customizations, designs, etc. Previously Drupal and other technologies had been more a tool for me to deal with various personal or business situations. In fact my dive into Drupal was a side effect of looking for a solution to a non-technology specific need.

While I have done computer stuff off and on for much of my life, there have also been times when I’ve been completely disconnected (literally no computer at all!). At the same time, I was also that kid building basic html websites for various companies when I wasn’t even fully into high school yet.

It’s not that I haven’t had things to write; but instead, it’s more that I had so much I was doing that I didn’t end up writing at all about it. It’s been a great and positive year for me as business man and programmer. I’ve grown and learned and added new facets to myself that I never knew I would have.