A Walk in the Woods

I’ve recently schemed some very large changes in my life, and I have been trying to figure out how to blog about it. It all starts with quitting my job at Urban Airship. I sent an email to the staff announcing my departure, and I can’t think of a better way to remember this moment in time than to include it in full in my blog. So, here is the letter I wrote to everyone at work when I left the company.


All,

It’s with great anticipation and mixed feelings that I announce the end of my ride upon the Airship.

For I am leaving to face a greater challenge and a personal life goal. I will be attempting to walk 2650 miles from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail starting in the spring. Doing a thru-hike of the AT or the PCT has long been something I have wanted to do, and I am in a place in my life where the responsibilities I have are minimal, so it seems like a great time to go walk in the woods for 5 months. The approximate timeline is from April 15~September 30.

Pacific Crest Trail

Pacific Crest Trail

I will be starting training for the hike immediately, and that is hard with a full time job. Luckily, I have been offered a contract gig to work on my side project Read the Docs for as many hours as I want until I leave. This is another life dream come true, the ability to get paid to work on an Open Source project that I have created.

With this confluence of fortune, I leave the Airship for what should be one of the most amazing years of my life.

I would like to thank everyone who I have had the opportunity to work with here at UA, because it has been the best job of my life. Watching the company grow from 15 to over 100 people has been a formative experience in my professional life. I can only hope that I will get another chance to watch such an amazing group of people build such a great company again.

My last day will be Friday, Jan 18th. So, feel free to come accost me while I’m still here and ask me questions, or call me crazy, or give me hugs. I’ll also be kicking around in Portland until April, so I should still be around for the PDX Python meetups and other bits and pieces.

My personal email address is eric@ericholscher.com if you want to keep in touch. I will be blogging about my experience on my website at http://ericholscher.com, if you want to follow along. There isn’t anything there yet because this wasn’t public knowledge, but I will start posting about it soon.

Cop High Five

Cop High Five

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Cheers, Eric

tl;dr:

  • I’m leaving Urban Airship.

  • I’m going to be hiking 2650 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacfic Crest Trail starting on April 15, hopefully ending near the end of September.

  • I’ve gotten a contracting gig to work on Read the Docs (my open source side project) for as many hours as I wish until then.

  • How much I love you: lots

tl;dr gif:

Oregon Trail

Oregon Trail



Hey there! I'm Eric and I work on communities in the world of software documentation. Feel free to email me if you have comments on this post!