November 2024, milestones and activities

Two months into a transitional period on the way to my goal of working full-time in sustainability, I’ve been keeping busy with calls, reading, research, and other projects.

Selected milestones and activities during November 2024, by the numbers:

• I registered an LLC for my consulting business, built a new website and email newsletter for it using Ghost, announced it on November 6, and have fielded lots of positive feedback and encouragement on the idea. (Thanks!)
• 11 calls or in-person meetings with former colleagues, friends, and in some cases, folks with active consulting businesses who gave me great advice on starting my own.
• 3 Job Search Council meetings with my team from Never Search Alone. It’s been fulfilling to have some collaborators and a community where I can give help and ask for help, too.
• 9 webinars or networking calls, mostly about climate, with some AI mixed in, too. Did I watch a livestream of a local Green Software meetup taking place in Brighton, England? Yes. Yes, I did. It was excellent.
• 2 calls with people looking for jobs at companies where I have connections, plus some DMs and other related messaging.
• 3 calls with web development agencies that could become sources or destinations of referrals for my consulting business.
• 2 calls with career coaches – one of these was probably the most important 30 minutes I spent on video with someone this month, with a climate career transition coach who more or less told me to stop hedging my bets and commit.
• 1 soccer game, 1 cross country banquet, 1 football game bake sale, and a handful of soccer and swimming practices. Winter is going to be a little quieter in this category, but there will be some busy moments with pre-season high school morning workouts and club evening practices happening on the same day of the week.
• 4 blog posts on my personal site, including a riff on some grad-school-level frameworks to apply to thinking about AI, plus the posts on the Overt Impact site, and a few LinkedIn posts that were short versions of those.
• 15 job applications, up 25% from October. 5 were already rejected. 5 others are climate-related, an increase from last month. Ideally, 100% of these applications should be climate-related.
• More podcasts, with Founders and Acquired being new favorites, including 3+ hours on IKEA for road trip listening on the way to Thanksgiving in Asheville.

What’s next for me:
Finishing some reading, taking a Green Software Practitioner course to see how much I’ve learned, and continuing to get familiar with the wide range of open-source green software projects out there.

A question for you: 
What’s the best book you read this year? I just started Dilla Time, Braiding Sweetgrass, and The Grid. 

(Email is a fine way to answer, unless you want to leave a public comment on this post or the LinkedIn version.)

Previously: October 2024, by the numbers