One week ago today was my last day as a Craigslist employee. After a 15+ year adventure involving Perl, MySQL, Linux, MongoDB, Sphinx / Manticore, and various other homegrown and open source technologies, I decided it was time to take a break from spending 8-9 hours a day at a desk and/or computer. (We also had a friend develop a very serious medical condition late last year. Helping him has consumed a lot of time and energy–it also motivated my departure a bit as well.)

While I’m still setting into this new life and working on new routines (and projects), it feels good to have a lot more freedom in my schedule and time to attack things on my stupidly long TODO List.

How long am I stopping for? Is this permanent? That’s hard to say. I’ve been telling people that I want a good 9-12 month break before I really decide “What’s Next?”

So far it seems like I’ve had about 4-5 Saturdays in a row and that soon vacation will be over and I’ll be back chatting with my coworkers on a regular basis, but I know that’s not the case. They definitely were a big part of my life and what I’ll miss most–well, them and the paycheck. 🙂

Seriously, though, Craigslist was and is a very unique company with an awesome charitable fund. We often referred to it internally as simply “the list.” Now that I’ve begun my “life after the list” I’ll probably be writing more here about what I’m up to.