And so we’re at the end of yet another year!

2023 was a year of changes and new beginnings (in many cases returning to passions I’d long given up on, so re-beginnings?)

The biggest of these was starting a new career.

No, I haven’t left Automattic…

If we can quickly rewind, I joined the company behind WordPress.com (and Tumblr, and Woo, and Simplenote, and Pocket Casts, and Day One, and these days the list is getting really long) eight years and a month ago as a Happiness Engineer, initially providing live chat support before finding my way back to the public support forums where I’d started out as a volunteer over a decade ago ( 😱! ) as part of the public support team.

I really enjoyed helping people make the most of their sites on WordPress.com, but over the years the requirements of the job changed, and so did I. That’s normal. People change, their needs, interests and priorities change. That’s just life.

But in my case that change left me feeling deeply unhappy and unfulfilled. That’s also normal. Countless people go through this each year. Typically you have two options: tough it out, or leave. Companies that value their support staff the way Automattic does, with all the explicit and implicit benefits of working here, are few and far between, so leaving wasn’t really an option for me, so as a breadwinner I had no choice but to tough it out.

Except, Automattic is an amazing place to work, and one of the more unusual opportunities we have here is to make a lateral move to a different team, or even a completely different role. For a role switch this usually means applying for a position and going through a trial similar to a new hire, and like with any job you must make sure you’re qualified to do the job in question beforehand. Sometimes this requires further study or training, and many people here study part-time, and some even leave and reapply for a different position once they’re ready.

But I was fortunate to make it into an apprenticeship program where, for the past year-and-a-half, I received on-the-job training for the new role I wanted to move to. And so, a month ago (and exactly eight years after joining Automattic), I officially made the switch to the role of Code Wrangler (what we call software engineers) as part of the team that builds and maintains the Woo.com marketplace.

So it was a year of challenge – I had to learn a lot, about code and the practice of coding, but also about communicating and collaborating in new ways. I became comfortable with imposter syndrome and embraced the power of “yet”. And at 42 years old I embarked on a new career (my fourth if you don’t count my aborted attempt at being a post-graduate student…hopefully this one sticks).

That’s not the only change of 2023:

I joined the leadership of my church (in a way even more terrifying that starting that new career…my last stint in church leadership and ministry left me wounded and cynical and it’s only through grace that it didn’t cost me my faith), and preached again, did a live puppet show, and played in a worship team, all for the first time in over a decade.

I bought a piano and started playing again.

I got on a plane for the first time since the pandemic, and visited a new country (Vienna, Austria).

I saw my first ballet (we took the minion to see The Nutcracker the week before Christmas).

I started learning to sail.

I got a new dentist.

Yeah, I’m sure you have questions, especially about that last one 😉. Suffice it to say 2023 was a good year, full of challenging, but positive changes (perhaps all change is positive, and it all comes down to how you choose to view it?)

As I’m writing this it’s softly raining outside, and I count myself blessed and looking forward to what 2024 will bring.