Until we meet again Durango…
Life has a funny way of working things out.
Six months ago I made the decision to accept a job offer at GitPrime (Now PluralSight, whoop!). At the time, this was probably one of the toughest decisions I had to make. See, I was just coming off the end of a seven-year relationship, and I had decided at that point in time to also stop pursuing the start-up I had been building for the past year.
December of 2018 turned into arguably one of the roughest times of my life.
I knew it was time for a change, but I didn’t quite know if I was ready. My family and best friends were the best support system I had. Was I ready to leave all of that, especially after everything that had happened? There were days when I honestly didn’t know. Even after accepting the job offer I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Where was my support system in Durango? I would be moving to a town of fewer than 20,000 people (which is fewer people than the number of people living in my sub-division in Houston). How would I make friends? What would happen when I was stuck with my thoughts alone at night? Would I even like Durango?
In lieu of all these questions, I decided that at the end of the day not going would have been a bigger detriment than going. I didn’t want to be stuck living in the past in Houston. Might it have been easier emotionally? Possibly. However, I knew that I had always wanted to live in a town surrounded by mountains and nature and Durango was all of that and more. The fact that they also had an incredible tech start-up located in downtown was pretty difficult to pass up on.
So I did it. I decided to take a giant leap of faith and see what Durango had in store for me, and more importantly, what I was made of.
This turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life.
I instantly fell in love with the town when I moved here. It was everything I had dreamt it would be. Giant snowcapped mountains, incredible nature trails, beautiful sunsets, and a population of people who shared the same love for it all like me. Durango had done a great job of making me think about all that I could do, and not all that I had gone through. I could go on and on about all of the cool, amazing, and fun things I’ve done since I’ve been here, but honestly, it’s way too long to write about. I also don’t want my mom to have a heart attack reading about them :).
While Durango is everything I could have ever dreamt it would be, the people I worked with during my time at GitPrime are greater than anything I could have ever dreamt of.
I’ll start with leadership then get to my co-workers.
I cannot speak highly enough about all of the leaders I met during my time at GitPrime. From the founders, down to the sales and engineering leaders, there is an inherent simplicity in the way they operate that breeds overwhelming success. Even though I was there for a relatively short amount of time, I had done all I could to soak in how they operate from a strategic point of view, how they treat their employees, and their desire to build the best product available.
It’s this type of leadership that led to them being acquired for $170 million while I was there, and it’s that type of leadership that will enable them to keep building upon the great success they’ve already had.
Now on to my co-workers. I guess the simplest way to put this is, they changed my life. Seriously.
Remember how I was worried about not having a support system while living in Durango? Well yeah, they blew that fear straight out the water. Arguably, they became one of the best support systems I could have ever imagined.
These are some of the smartest, most caring, most fun, most understanding people I’ve ever met. With most of them, the relationship evolved from being just co-workers to becoming great friends to now becoming like family. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t thank God for introducing these people into my life. I had thought that when I came here I had lost so much. In fact, they taught me that I only had so much more to gain.
To my friends, thank you all so much for everything. I don’t know if you all will truly ever understand how much of an impact you made on me.
When I look back 6 months ago I thought that one of the hardest things I was doing in my life was uprooting my home in Houston and taking a leap of faith by moving to this mountain town of fewer than 20,000 people. In fact, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is actually leave this dream place with my dream people. Why would I do that?
Well, I’ve been blessed to have accepted a Product Specialist role in San Francisco working for Facebook. I will get to end up building and working on products that impact over 2 billion people worldwide. Working with an incredible company that allows me to build and maintain products at this scale has always been a life-long goal of mine. For achieving this, I have to give a shout-out to my great friend Matt Tucker for believing in me and recommending me for this role.
While this is extremely bittersweet, I am excited about San Francisco and my role at Facebook. It is because of the people I’ve met, the lifelong relationships that have been developed, and the experiences I’ve received while living in Durango, that I am able to be so excited about what is in store for this next chapter.
From the bottom of my heart, to everyone that has been with me during this journey, thank you! Until we meet again Durango…
