When I think of 2016, I think of a busy year. Not only professionally, but personally. I started a new job. Our daughter had her first birthday. I competed in more BBQ competitions. We had a lot going on.
It was a good year.
Some of the highlights of the blog:
I noticed my page load times were a bit sluggish. I was having issues with images. Everything was going wrong. I started shutting down old plugins and cleaning up my setup. It all triggered a thought about performance. My SEO plugin was squawking, I decided to try some things out and ended up on CloudFlare.
I’ve been working on getting our new website moving quicker. We have a large catalog and some semi-fancy functionality that slows things down a bit. I tried installing redis and turning that on. It works well, but for page caching, it just wasn’t quite enough. I have now turned my attention to varnish.
Lately, I’ve been feeling like a slave. Its gotten me down, made me cranky, and changed my outlook on my job. This change wasn’t positive and it started to cause rifts in aspects of my life. I found myself snippy, more irritable, and borderline ungrateful. I had no hope in sight, and accepted my dark path.
Today I was reminded of something Paul wrote in Colossians. He tells us to work hard, work for the Lord, and don’t consider yourself a slave to human masters.
Colossians 3:23-24 says ” 23 And whatever you do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not to men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the reward of the inheritance; for you serve the Lord Christ.” (NKJV)
It doesn’t matter what situation you’re in with work. Low pay, long hours, or stress. Just turn your eyes to God and the things of this world won’t matter. At the end of the day you’re doing the work for yourself, your family, and for God.
-Dan
