Week 2-4: Hitting Pause, Finding Focus

It’s been 21 days since my last update, and if I’m being completely honest, I’ve made zero measurable progress on my cloud journey during that time.

Part of it was life: personal responsibilities, work commitments, the usual real-world interruptions. But another part of it was something less tangible - mental overload. I was absorbing tons of information without a clear path to apply it. And when you can’t practice what you’re learning, it’s easy to get discouraged.

Today, that changes.

I sat down and built a new “essentials tracker” in Notion (with a little help from GPT, of course). It breaks down my cloud learning roadmap into smaller, manageable chunks. Each section ends with a practical task (something I can actually build or configure) to solidify what I’ve learned. I’ll report back on how that system works in practice, but already it feels more grounded.

Until now, I’d been writing progress notes in a physical journal. Romantic in theory, chaotic in practice. Flipping through half-scribbled pages trying to find what I did last week wasn’t doing me any favors. From now on, all my notes, thoughts, and resources will live directly in the Notion tracker - organized, searchable, and future-proof.

On a brighter note, even if I wasn’t progressing in the traditional sense, I’ve still been surrounding myself with tech content. Lately, I’ve been deep-diving into videos about home labs - and it’s sparked something. The idea of building my own mini data center at home, testing servers, playing with virtual machines... it sounds like exactly the kind of hands-on playground I need right now.

So while the last three weeks haven’t been productive in the way I planned, they weren’t wasted either. Sometimes, stepping back is what helps you move forward with more clarity.

Here’s to resetting, rebuilding, and staying curious.