We used Cloudflare where I used to work for everything ranging from the main website to several smaller web apps. I only really got to scratch the surface with the platform as during my tenure within the systems team, I didn’t get to deep dive much before I was let go.

I decided I’d try get my head around the platform and a few other pieces of the puzzle.

A bit of history

I’ve come into software and platforms from a bit of an angle. I started out as a Civil Engineer, in particular focussed on flood risk management. At some point I realised this industry was far too slow for me. A senior once took me out on a “site visit” and explained the reality of the job. He told me the designs on his desk had been sat there fore 7+ years and never been implemented. We never visited any one site, we just drove the A57 up and down, occassionally crossing over the Mersey but never stopping. He took me out just to get some space to talk - and I really appreciated it.

I was about 22 at the time. Seven years was a long time. I had a snag though - my final year of uni was funded by my employer so I had to stick it out for a minimum of 2 years but, surely enough, after 2 years and 1 month I shifted to a different industry that was a bit faster paced.

Where I’ve been

I’ve always been a generalist - I don’t particularly like diving into the deep end with any one technology. I’ve always claimed that it’s because it’s where I sit best. But at times I’ve struggled with the idea that actually I’d like to understand it better but I’m a bit scared. Self-compassion isn’t a strong suit of mine so when I try something out - a bit of code, a script, some new tooling - and I don’t understand it, I usually hit the personal self-destruct button and have a wonderful time tearing myself to pieces and getting myself back in my lane. Even when I do get something to work like a blog, I often don’t let it stand for long - I get strong feelings of shame and worry so I descontruct things until there’s nothing left to show.

I recently read this great post and it hit me hard. I had the wrong purpose associated with a blog for so long - it’s for me, not for the world, but if a byproduct of me writing is that other people benefit then that’s wonderful. Having spent the last few months on garden leave, I had to spend a lot of time on sites like LinkedIn looking for new roles. On there I fell for the trap that it sets you up for - junk content and doom scrolling - and got very het up about why I couldn’t produce content that tickled the algorithms in the right way. And when I say couldn’t, it wasn’t that I couldn’t produce sharable content, it’s that it wasn’t something that resonated with me - producing content that got shared isn’t something I feel comfortable with.

As a side point, I also started journalling again as I recognise that there’s a lot of content the world probably really doesn’t care about and/or I need to write more personally. In either case - blog or journal - the point is I want to write more, learn, and rebalance my relationship with putting content out publicly.

I have familiarity with web technologies, code (primarily Python), networking technologies, API design, architecture - I’ve spent the last 13 years of my career being in one of a number of generalist roles. Combining a few things above I wanted to:

• take more of a step into the technical
• not shit the bed doing it (read: work on self-compassion)
• use a familiar set of tools combined with some I don’t know
• put it out there and leave it be
• set an example to my kids that learning happens all life long

Posts will probably swerve between insight-driven monologues, and technical step-by-steps of the “how” I’ve done something. It’s primarily for me, but if you find it useful, you can use it too.