The plan was to make this an elaborate and detailed overview of my year, how it went, and so forth… but when I think about it, that’s also why I haven’t written a single word yet, and have not progressed at all with this. Personal blogging specifically.
I’d like to change that for 2024.
And if that means dumping all my unfiltered and unedited thoughts without being so detail-oriented like I always am, on the first go, and then hitting that publish button, well… let’s GO. Will try. This post from Matt is what nudged me in this direction.
Career-wise, what happened in my 2023 worth highlighting? Here’s what comes to mind.
I work for a fully distributed company known as Automattic, for those who may not know me 🙂
Wrapping up my interim lead role
September 2022 – April 2023
In September of 2022, I took over as an interim lead for another team based in the APAC timezone. The experience and role did not come with anything I had not already anticipated.
Being lead is a lot of work! It requires discipline to stay on top of important tasks, care and attention to team members’ needs, initiative for moving projects along, and grit.
In terms of professional development, I would say I benefited immensely from the experience. Of course I was not perfect, and there are some lessons learned that would make me revisit how I’d approach certain situations and issues differently if I were to step up to the role again in the future.
The experience was fulfilling and largely positive, and would consider doing it again.
I transitioned back to individual contributor in the latter part of April and did that for a couple months before heading off to a long deserved break…
Sabbatical
June 1, 2023 – August 31, 2023
Working at Automattic provides numerous opportunities to learn new skills, grow in your career, and have a significant and positive impact on the lives of millions. It also offers rare (and juicy!) benefits, including a paid, three-month sabbatical every five years.
How does it work? That’s easy. Every five years, you’re encouraged to take three months off with full pay and benefits. What will you get out of it? Let’s ask some Automatticians – Read on!
https://automattic.com/benefits/sabbatical/
After five years of being with Automattic, my sabbatical was finally here! To say that this was the one thing I was looking forward to during the year would be an understatement.
You’re now probably wondering what did I do while on sabbatical. Well, … I actually “worked” lol.
I did write an internal blog post summarizing my experience so if we work together and you saw that post, then what’s to follow may sound familiar.
I didn’t work in the traditional sense. This is about the passion project I embarked on during that time, launching my whiskey blog: DRAM.JP
This was me enjoying my time writing, and appreciating whiskey while I do it.
Starting this blog was always on the horizon; it was never a question of ‘if,’ but ‘when.’ The challenge was finding an uninterrupted chunk of time to plan, create, and launch it — a luxury my regular schedule didn’t afford. Enter the sabbatical: a golden opportunity to finally bring this dream to fruition.
And within just three months of launching my blog, I successfully ranked multiple posts on Google’s first page. Achieving that involved leveraging WordPress.com, quite a bit of strategic planning, Yoast SEO, multimedia integration, a suite of creative and analytical tools, and AI-assisted writing.
I never expected to see such promising results so quickly, and it’s been both educational and encouraging.
Diving into the nitty gritty of how I did it is something I would love to get into, but in another post. For now, here are some of my takeaways and tips.
- Faster Indexing is Possible – Contrary to the common belief that it takes weeks or months to get indexed by Google, my experience shows that with the right strategies, faster indexing is achievable. While it’s true that Google’s indexing process is beyond our control, my own results have made me more confident in advising others on how to potentially speed up this process.
- Consistency Pays Off – For instance, I discovered this post was already showing up in search results within just five days of it being published, which underscores the importance of sticking to a regular posting schedule.
- Don’t Sweat the “Readability” Score – Yoast’s “Readability” analysis often flagged my posts with a red score, but this didn’t seem to negatively impact my search rankings. The issues were mostly related to formatting rather than the actual comprehensibility of the content.
- Content Creation is a Full-Time Job – Even with AI assistance, crafting a high-quality post is time-consuming. From writing and editing to photography and video production, each post requires a significant time investment. While I initially aimed to batch-produce content, the level of detail in each post made this very challenging.
- Multimedia Enhances SEO (Indirectly) – Incorporating audio and video assets into my posts likely contributed to longer user engagement times, a metric that can indirectly influence SEO. These multimedia elements offer alternative ways for visitors to engage with the content, potentially boosting its performance in search rankings.
- The Role of AI – Tools like ChatGPT have been invaluable in refining my content, making it more concise and well-organized. This has allowed me to focus on the creative aspects of blogging, knowing that the technical details are well taken care of.
- Analytics and Adaptation – Monitoring performance through WordPress.com Stats, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console has provided valuable insights into what’s working and what needs tweaking. The data has shown that consistent posting and a growing content library can potentially speed up the indexing process.
- Niche Focus and Strategic Planning – Focusing initially on a niche — reviews of Japanese exclusive bourbon whiskey — has likely contributed to quicker rankings. This strategy has set the stage for expanding into more general whiskey reviews in the future.
Perhaps the most significant lesson has been that SEO is not a static field; it’s dynamic and ever-changing. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow. Therefore, the key to sustained success lies in continuous learning, adaptation, and a willingness to innovate.
Team Meetup in Sapporo
October 10, 2023 – October 16, 2023
It was refreshing to be able to catch up IRL with my colleagues. I had not been on a team meetup since pre-pandemic, so I was very much looking forward to this, even if it meant I wasn’t traveling anywhere and it was based in my city.
Vlog — I created short little vlogs of our meetup highlights, and that currently exists on my Twitter (X). Check that out if you’re curious: Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6
Dotcom Division Meetup in Munich
November 14, 2023 – November 19, 2023
The Dotcom meetup was for one of the larger divisions of the company – WordPress.com. Not just Happiness (support), but teams from all around including systems, product, design, marketing, legal, and more attended.
The week was jam-packed and consisted of workshops, flash talks, a hackathon, learn-ups, and of course fun times with colleagues.
While unfortunately I wasn’t able to see the city much, I did leave the meetup feeling excited to get back to work.
I wrote a little bit more about my time in Munich (pics included) on my whiskey blog. Read More
Heading into 2024
The new year is already looking to be quite busy!
The one big thing to kick me off into the new year is that I’ll be transitioning into a new role with a new team as a site designer/builder! With that switch, I’m already slated to hop on a plane again and attend the team’s meetup in Costa Rica for a week. That’ll be in February. Cannot wait!
In March, I’ll be traveling to Taiwan for WordCamp Asia 2024. However, this time my whole family will be coming with me, which I’m quite thrilled about. Normally, it’s usually just me traveling solo on these company business trips. But since WordCamps are public events, anyone can attend. It’ll be a nice change to have my family with me 🙂
And on the personal side of things, as cliche as it is, one of my goals is to start exercising more (again) – no excuses! I want to of course continue with publishing whiskey content on dram.jp. And I also want to publish on this blog more as well. I’d primarily use this blog for personal, work, and WordPress related content.
So yeah, that’s what my 2023 was like in a nutshell, and a little bit of what’s to come this year.
Cheers to 2024 ~
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