Updated: July 18, 2026

What is a Now page?

I like to think of a Now page as the things I’d share if you were an old friend and we saw each other and were asking, what’s going on? What are you working on? What are you excited about?

You can find more info here too: https://nownownow.com/about

What I’m Focused On

• Finding consulting work, part or full time, and I’m open to full-time roles too.
• Publishing more, plus the side project development and reading that feeds it (right now, observability and domain-driven design).
• Getting the house sorted for some unexpected construction.
• Moving LocalCents (educational side project) forward.

Personal

The big thing right now is some serious construction I just found out about on Wednesday (7/15). It means emptying the bedroom completely, and possibly opening up the kitchen ceiling. It’s really unknown whether I can stay in the house while the work is happening. In the short term, I’ve been cleaning up, making room in the loft where the bed will probably go, and collapsing some of the other bedroom furniture into my office. It’s a bit of a mess. More news will come later.

I’m also trying to stay connected with old friends, a mix of in-person happy hours and virtual coffee chats. Trying to be more intentional about it. I can stay to myself kind of easily.

Work

My part-time maintenance contract is now part-part time (about 30 hours a month), so I am pushing to find more work. I’m open to part or full time consulting, and even considering full-time job opportunities. Given how tough the market is right now, it’s a bit stressful.

My general (and historic) pattern here is to reach out to old peers and publish more. The other half of that is the educational projects and book reading that fuel the writing.

Side Projects

I’ve been keeping up with maintenance updates for Flick, but no real feature work. I do want to study up on observability and use Flick as a test bed for it. So far that has mostly meant reading about it rather than any hands-on movement.

Most of my side project energy over the last six weeks has gone into LocalCents, and I’m feeling good about it. I’m just about through the foundational pieces, which means I can soon get into the more interesting Automerge conflict logic. I’ve also started to slowly extract some blog posts from the work along the way.

Not Doing Right Now

For the next four to eight weeks, I’m intentionally not thinking about any serious commercial product development. I’ll keep tinkering on educational and blog-post projects, but the real priority is finding consulting work.

Currently Playing

I finished the Red Dead 2 storyline, epilogue and all. I might chase the remaining achievements, but the last stretch gets monotonous (re-picking every herb in the game, grinding out randomized blackjack hands), so I’m not sure I want to do it all again.

Otherwise I’ve mostly been playing MLB The Show and a bit of Final Fantasy VII Remake. I also played a session of Civilization VI and might pick that back up. Stardew Valley seems temporarily dropped.

Currently Reading

Still working through Art and Fear.

I read the first part of the second edition of Observability Engineering and plan to hold off on the rest until I get more hands-on time with observability tools via Flick.

Still making my way through Learning Domain-Driven Design little by little.

Also started Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon, whose Keep Going I loved.

If you use Goodreads, you can follow me at: https://www.goodreads.com/zorn711

Currently Watching

Mostly Phillies baseball and various YouTube things. I grabbed a Netflix subscription for the Home Run Derby, so I’m starting to poke around there. I watched an episode of Derry Girls on a recommendation, and I’m considering Ozark.

Upcoming Events

• Family birthday party July 25.
• Depending on construction, I may try to get away at the shore for a bit and avoid the house noise/dust.