Issue 1
It's the inaugural edition of this newsletter! That means I get to tell you a little bit about myself, share a couple of thoughts on things I've been checking out this week, and generally set the tone for future editions.
No pressure. But the G key on my keyboard is responding intermittently out of nowhere, so I've got to hit it two or three times to register the keystroke.
I'll do my best, but apoloies in advance for any missin letters (like in this sentence).
Who?
Right. Who’s writing this thing, after all?
My name’s Angelo, and by day I’m a mobile platform engineering lead at a fintech company. I’ve worked in bizdev, support engineering, and small business consulting and bookkeeping, I've implemented and audited ISO 9001 quality management systems, and for the past ten years my focus has been mainly on software development.
By night, I run my own little software consultancy, called Dropped Bits. I love running my own little business, and writing about what I do and how I do it. I publish an article twice a month at Two Common Cents Club about how I'm trying to grow my business, in the hopes that it's helpful for other indie devs.
I live in Montreal, Canada, with my wonderful wife and mostly-not-annoying cat, and I love writing, the outdoors, avoiding small talk, and music. I used to play piano as a kid, and more recently taught myself guitar, but haven't really been practicing as much as I should.
Moving on!
Around The Web
Some things that made an impression on me this week.
“Technical” skills
We often dismiss skills that are not societally valued by pretending they are not skills. […]
You reinforce this idea each time you say "soft skills" instead of working to enumerate them. Perhaps you mean "interpersonal skills," "leadership skills," or "communication skills." These are all technical skills, and they all have names.
Sasha Laundy’s dive into just what we mean by “technical” skills is a masterclass in showing how we use words to elevate or erase status based on arbitrary definitions of value. “Maker movement” as “arts and crafts for boys” was a particularly deft turn of phrase.
Petty Country
- On Apple Music
- On Spotify
A friend shared this tribute to Tom Petty by various country-music artists. Typically, I’m not into country, but I really enjoyed this.
This Week's Thought
"If you're not actively working to make things better, you're actively working to make them worse."
I’m still forming my feelings around this, but it hit me while I was kayaking in Mont-Tremblant earlier this week. About two-thirds of the way in our journey, by a campground, an empty plastic container was floating in the otherwise pristine river.
Now, I haven’t kayaked in about fifteen years. I was sitting in a few inches of water that I took on trying to get through Class 1 rapids. I was tired, my lower back hurt, and my fingers were cramped.
So I paddled on, past the garbage.
And I kept having this guilty gnawing feeling in the pit of my stomach that I should have tried to fetch it and dispose of it properly when we got to the end of our trip. “Leave no trace” is a general rule when you’re enjoying the Great Outdoors — keeping things the way you found them.
But when it’s someone else’s mess, maybe “leave no trace” isn’t enough.
I think “leave things better than you found them” is a better rule. If you can do something about a suboptimal situation, and you choose to do nothing about it, then you’re choosing to leave things worse than they could be.
And I’ll be the first to admit: I’m not great at this. I often fall into “not my monkeys, not my circus” mode, or get physically ill if I need to confront people.
But leaving things better than you found them is a noble pursuit, one greater than me and my comfort. So I’m trying to do better.
(But first, let me fix this od-damned keyboard.)