I’ll do a quick “Christmas Card” summary of how my 2017 year went.

• Still living in Texas and really enjoy it overall compared to Los Angeles. Sure I miss the food, the scenery, my friends and the road trips to wine country. But living is Texas is a much easier way of life.
• I left my contract position with a major financial institution as a UX Researcher in April. It was a tough decision, since I liked with job and my co-workers. But the (previous) manager made working there unbearable and I needed to find a healthy environment for myself personally and professionally.
• I moved on to a security company, which sounded like a golden opportunity. But as the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And in this case it was. I was promised opportunities that did not come to fruition. The company (and some superiors) were not ready for a UX Designer and wanted me to perform duties that were not in my job description (like front-end development). Though the work was challenging, and my co-workers were great and eager to have a new product designed, my superiors did not see the value of UX and properly designing a product. I could tell it was time to move on, so I did. I was there for five months.
• Now I am working from home, and adjusting to remote life has been a challenge. I work for a major managed cloud company as a UX designer. Though we have dedicated UX researchers on our staff, I can see how my professional experience in that field is helping me immensely in my new role. First thing about working remotely is that I work way more hours than your standard 9-5 job. I think that this has a lot to do with my newness on the job and often feeling lost. I am devoting a lot of extra time to learn about my industry and products we work on. But I am hopeful in the new year that things will settle down for me and I will work more appropriate hours.
• My vacations were on the small side this year with all of the job changes. Of course we took the usual trips to Indiana and Vegas.  We even managed to go to New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Paso Robles and New Orleans. No international trip this year so I am hoping that can come about in 2018.
• Overall, I was a happy year and I am pleased with my professional accomplishments. I’ll be coming out with a new 2018 goals write up soon. Until then, keep on, keeping’ on.