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Journal 5.17.2023 – Join me on an inspiring journey as I navigate life after coding school graduation, embracing new paths and pursuing personal projects. In this video, I share my experiences and insights into the exciting world of non-traditional work opportunities. Discover how I have evolved my career, explored unconventional paths, and found fulfillment outside the confines of traditional employment.
From *delving into the realm of entrepreneurship to redefining commuting and urban infrastructure through my vision for micro-mobility and personal electric vehicles, this video offers a glimpse into my unique journey. Whether you’re a recent graduate seeking inspiration or simply curious about alternative career paths, this video will provide valuable insights and motivation to embrace your own passions and forge your own path. Don’t miss out on this engaging and thought-provoking exploration of life beyond the conventional!
Transcript
All right. let’s knock this out. So I’m my kitchen, getting ready to go lift some weights. Got on got on my gear, weight lifting stuff. But I want to talk about what’s on my mind. And, you know, for some reason, I’ve been more comfortable with doing video than I am writing. Also, I hope I wasn’t talking too low that I have to turn up the volume in this video [in post-editing].
Transcript, Journal 5.17.2023, michaelpwright.com
I’m only doing one take, by the way. So this morning,
let’s talk about my situation. So right now, I’m in a program called the Veterans Readiness and Education Program. And basically they help you get training in order to and also help you get a job, full time job. And I had a lot of luck trying to get that back.
this is the same program as Chapter 31 is another, you know, like the the name and whatever veterans programs book there is, this program is called Chapter 31, also called Veterans Readiness and Education Program. Or is it Veterans Readiness and Employment? And I know it’s been changed twice [correction: changed once] since I’ve been in it, but this is the same program that put me through Nashville Software School’s(NSS) Front-end Web Developer Program.
I had a phone call this morning with my counselor for that program, and she said that I’m an like my employment. There’s a there’s different phases and I want to go into all of those. But that the phase that I’m in after graduating from NSS is the employment ready phase. You get 18 months to be in that.
So what’s happening is in June some day in June, I will be eight months out of that program. And so we’re going to be closing it out and getting my counselor and it doesn’t have to take 18 months or, you know, for someone to find a job. That’s what that period is for. And, you know, the best I did was I found part time work as an adjunct, as adjunct instructor for other ideas, which I haven’t had any classes yet, by the way.
I put my name in the hat, but I think that there’s just a lot a lot of us anyway. So, yeah, I am. I got some thoughts about being about my period VR&E ending basically just means if I want help with a resume after that point, if I held a job placement, like getting emails about job fairs and things like that, I have to go to the VR&E and kind of reapply.
So all the resources that I have now, of course are still available, but what I really wanted to talk about is I thought maybe I changed my mind about wanting to work full time. You know, over time maybe, you know, seeing my my peers with their job celebrations and stuff like that, I felt like, you know, maybe that maybe I look into financial situations or advantages and I want to, you know, but but, but I don’t I don’t want full time work.
And I was looking at, you know, remote only. But even then, from what I’m gathering, because I haven’t done it, it seems like, you know, there’s still my business hours still I’d be like, clocked in. And so I have wanted to do that. I consider some jobs. I got scrambled eggs here in oatmeal. You. I see. Can I make it?
See it? I mean, you’re not tracking right now, is tracking on my face. So if I turn it off, yeah. You see my breakfast? Mm hmm. All that orange stuff is nutritional yeast. All right, So cool. All right. Yeah. I haven’t wanted to do full time work, and, you know, I’m. I’m okay with that, and it would benefit me.
Financial. I could, you know, kind of meet the. The small financial goals that I have a lot quicker. And honestly, it’s just one financial goal, really. It’s enough. My getting a zero balance on all my two credit cards and that’s that’s really it that’s kind of financial goals I don’t really think is a benefit of paying off cars early.
So I don’t care about that. Well, there wasn’t any benefit to paying off cards early until the interest rate hikes. I bought the 2021 CRV in October [2022], and the best I can get was 4.9%. That was the best. Which is yeah, that’s that’s tragic. So anyway, what am I going to do? Well, I have one project that I want to make open source.
I’m building an API to talk more about it. At some point when I’m, when I’m, you know, when I actually have something that’s tangible. But I am going to make that an open source project. I’m going to ask for some help with it. But I’m doing that to to kind of educate myself on APIs. And I think the best way to learn them and understand them is just to build one.
And this one won’t be anything too fancy. It’s just going to be it’s going to be a list. It’s going to be a list list of something that that I’m very much involved with who left this list of versions of things. So I own a I have a thing and there’s other versions of that thing made by various manufacturers.
And I want to kind of catalog, catalog all of them and keep it running, you know, keep running updates, add vectors, come out with different versions and stuff like that. And it’s something that I haven’t seen out there right now. And when I start talking about it because you guys just sound more and more vague, there’s a amazing until you want to build, but that that’s basically what I’m going to do.
I’m going to look for open source projects to contribute to. And and, you know, I still slowly update my my resume would permit completing projects. And I still, you know, one of those projects that I want to finish is my portfolio. I still want to rebuild that. I don’t think there needs to be a rehab thing, which, you know, I originally was building and then react when I was in coding school.
But that’s that’s kind of where I’m where I’m going to be for a while rebuilding my personal brand website. MichaelPWright.com is on my list and I am going to get that done, you know, hopefully this year. But I’m not sure what platform I’m going to use for it, most likely WordPress, but I want to experiment with I want to understand more about headless WordPress going from just a performative manages in Nashville, which probably they’re going to use as a test pilot there.
But you know, whatever I use will be something that I want, that I want to make live. I might actually use PEVHuntsville.com That’s a project that I’m going to be, that I’m going to be leading up. Basically, I’m going to use that website. [my loud HVAC turns on] I’m going to use that website as a hub of resources and then collection of people who are personally electric vehicle enthusiasts in Huntsville
Madison areas. One of the first missions is going to be to just get people to register so I can have a directory of people who are, you know, people who have these forms of micro-mobility another term for more personal electronic devices. But I know people who are writing them, people who people will use to write them, and then people who are enthusiasts, people who want to right now.
And so I’ve got these grandiose dreams for what we can kind of do with with what I want to do. But I’m just tell you, here’s what I want to happen. I want there to be a lot more lanes available for personal electronic vehicles, a micro mobility devices of any kind, even, you know, if it’s gas powered or it’s electric, you know, it’s just good old fashioned pedal bicycle.
I want it to be more bike lanes. But specifically, I want the bike lanes to be made way more wide than they are now. That’s twice as wide as they are right now. Right. I think I have to look at the numbers is going to be part of what I have listed in there. But I think of the lane of the the width of a vehicle lane and I want to I think bike lane should be at least half of that that’s out.
That’s how wide I think they should be made. And there’s so many areas that that don’t that definitely need bike lanes and if they were wider then you know the people who are slower would have room to be like, you know, towards the right. And then people like me who ride electronic electric unicycle that can do 34 miles per hour, we have room to be able to pass, you know, I mean, and to get back over into the bike without like disrupting people who are already in there, basically, you should be able to pass them on the bike lane without having to go into traffic.
And that’s not what the bike lanes are right now in Huntsville. There are some wider ones, you know, like downtown and stuff like that. But even the ones that are downtown are really existing just like, I don’t know, but I know what the system is for picking the roads that are going to have bike lanes, but it’s just a great system.
So, you know, I want there to be a movement that that makes more trails that are dedicated to micromobility. And also I have this vision of kind of like these parking go park, park and ride places. You overseeing those those those parking lots. We had too many of them. They had a lot of them in Jeremy. Jeremy. But there would be a parking lot like right off the kind of like a rest stop, like right off of the highway or like a state highway and it was basically a place where people were parked their cars and then they carpool to work.
You know, I want to see those. But in addition to being a place that people can meet and carpool and those have trails that lead to and from there where people can park, get on their unicycles or electric scooters and just ride to work, you know, in a way, this same rush hour stop and go stuff that happens on 565 every weekday, every day, like clockwork.
It’s like stop and go and stop and go with I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. I mean, it’s like sometimes there’s not even an accident. I guess it’s just, you know, whatever doesn’t matter. But I see Huntsville growing really, really, really fast, faster, and hospital in Madison growing fast. And if they can keep up with it, I think main residential areas have to have a way that people can get to their homes and work without only a car like that.
That’s how they’re being built right now. These gigantic apartment complexes. You know, there’s one that’s like right off the university right now and and and it’s gigantic. But, you know, like, they need to have a crosswalk so they can walk over to the other side of the street to go to Target, you know what I mean? And like, there’s just not planning for pedestrian and and personal electronic and micromobility vehicles.
There’s just not there’s just not planning is just always kind of an afterthought. So anyway, there’s this this grandiose mission with PEV Huntsville and I made the first the primary goal is just to get the numbers. Let’s see how many electric scooter riders and see how many electric unicycle riders, including one wheel, technically has got one wheeler that makes it a unicycle electric bicycle riders.
There’s a lot of those too. I can see it quite a be on base[Redstone Arsenal] and you know, well, I’ve seen at least three commuters, you know, like they have backpacks, they got saddle bags and stuff like that. You know what I mean? What I think is really brilliant, don’t you know? But anyway, one of the other dreams that I have about, you know, kind of this micromobility movement is I like to see a I like to see it like a bridge, a lane, a two lane kind of a bridge that’s built in the median of the highway.
And I don’t know if it’s something that is designed to sounds very Jetsons.
When I think about it.
But just think about it. An elevated and elevated road[platform] that’s wide enough where, you know, scooters and bicycle wheels and stuff like that, you know, so people can actually kind of follow the highway a little bit.
Without having to worry about in a being with cars.
I haven’t seen something like that before. So, you know, it probably won’t fly. But, you know, I don’t know. It’s always got to be the first. But I think I think there are enough people that get upset by the traffic that they have to endure, especially now that people are going back to work. A lot of these tech places that are continuing to grow, I’m seeing more and more Teslas, by the way.
I see. I see multiple turns every time I leave home the out here. And I’m thinking there’s people who actually lived somewhere where there’s a lot more charging stations, moved here and brought their cars. But anyway, the point is I think that there are enough people out there who want to support more lanes being created, more opportunities to ride a small personal electric thing to one for two and from work, even if they’re only doing, you know, partially driving to work.
Like I said, in the case of the the parking lots, which is carpool and parking lots. But that’s sort of thinking about I’m not to be entirely I didn’t find a full time job, actually, I found a bunch. But in the end, I just I don’t want to work then I don’t want to do any of them. So.
So that’s about it. That’s what that’s about. And it’s not a big mystery or anything. I’m not you know, I’m not ill equipped to find a job.
I just don’t want to do it.
You know, there’s probably some stuff out there, you know, that that would never work well for me. But I got burned out on looking really early after I was able in that first six months after graduating from USC from Nashville Software School, I was burnt out. On looking and then I got burnt out from getting emails and LinkedIn DMs from people saying, Hey, I think you’d be a good fit for this job.
You know, it’s primarily Java. You know? Or they mentioned some language that I’ve never touched some languages, not in, you know, in the in my resume. And then I have to reply to the email, I reply to the message saying, hey, I think I’m definitely under qualified. I don’t have this programing language on my resume because I don’t have any experience.
And, you know, politely telling them like, Bro, why don’t you look at my damn resume? Like, why are we here? And why were you wasting my time in like, this notification? So anyway, I got burnt out on seeing on, on kind of telling people like, Hey, I’m not qualified for this, you know, that kind of stuff. It was going to sound like a lot of ranting, but that’s what I’m thinking about.
The next month I’m going to officially not be in the VR&E program. Not much changes for me day to day, but I’m primarily focused in on open source projects and then my own personal projects. Right now, that’s what I’m doing when I sit at the computer these days, I do. Eventually I’m I am going to get back into, you know, design work because that’s what you know, that’s that’s something that I still see I want to lean heavy into.
I’ve got a lot of projects and I think, you know, if I if, you know, just kind of building them, prototyping them make it easier to pitch to people who can help me, you know, much better coders and much more knowledgeable people. But at the end of this month, I’m going to Render ATL. It’s a tech conference. And as I was out in Atlanta, somewhat in it can kind of connect with some people who are so interested in some of the projects that I’m doing, or at least one of them.
I just I want to find, you know, at least one person who’s interested in doing one of the projects that I have. I didn’t mention all of them in this video. We’re saved short version. There’s a handful. So yeah, I’m looking forward to that. Yes, I’m thinking about it. Thanks very much. Thanks for tuning in. That didn’t work.
I got gestures turned on, but I guess the gesture only starts it. Interesting when I see anything on the screen. When I was recording. Now I just want to try again.
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delving? LOL ChatGPT totally wrote that description for me. I gave it my video’s full transcript and asked it for an engaging description for YouTube. The AI never disappoints.