This time last year I was navigating the world from a wheelchair. Degenerative osteoarthritis had eaten away all the cartilage in my hip joints, leaving them bone on bone and near collapse. I was preparing myself both physically and mentally for two hip replacement surgeries scheduled just weeks apart from each other. I had one goal: to take my grandsons trick or treating later in the year.
I’m happy to say both surgeries were successful, and after months of physical therapy I was able to accomplish that goal. Halloween in the Chicago area was cold last year, but the skies were clear and I was able to walk around the neighborhood with my pregnant daughter and two grandsons with the help of a cane. My eldest grandson dressed as Mario, and all of my neighbors greeted him with a hearty “Mario!” in that quasi-Italian accent as he approached their front porches. It was his first official trick-or-treat and he filled his pumpkin-shaped bucket until it was overflowing. I don’t think I’ve had that much fun on Halloween since my daughter was a kid.
While none of this was an earth-shattering, world-changing accomplishment, my surgeries and physical therapy had given me something to work toward, and they helped me mark time during the year.
In the midst of it all, we faced some restructuring at work. While I was becoming physically stronger, I was emotionally thrown into turmoil. I’ve been steadily building my tech comm career since 2016, and for the first time in nearly nine years I may have to start all over again. What happens if I lose my job? Are my skills marketable? Where should I focus my upskilling? What role will AI ultimately play in tech comm? How do I leverage AI in my job? Are Salesforce certifications still valuable?
At times, if I’m honest, these questions have been almost as crippling as my osteoarthritis. And they’ve set the tone for 2025.
The TL;DR: Live with the Uncertainty
I’ve come to the conclusion that “uncertainty” is going to characterize much of 2025. The best solution I can think of in this case is to live a cliche: take everything one day at a time, and don’t worry about potential problems (like a job loss) until they happen. Also, create a roadmap plus some strategies for dealing with unexpected events.
Start by Defining Career Values
In 2019, technical writer Sara Moir posted about defining her career values on the This is important blog.
A couple years ago I was comfortable in my position at work. After four years in my career, surrounded by talk of the importance of having a growth mindset, I thought maybe I was too comfortable.
I know my post here is mainly about uncertainty, but being too comfortable in a job and uncertainty can go hand in hand in an almost causal relationship. That is, if you become too complacent, you stagnate. You lose your agility.
So whether I’m at risk of a layoff or not, I want to review my career values and goals in order to keep growing. I feel like this is a good place to start, and I plan to explore this topic in a separate post.
What’s Next?
Other than redefining my career values, what are some concrete steps I can take to improve my skills? This is where things get a bit trickier for me, because I’m afraid of “choosing the wrong answer” or wasting my time following the “wrong path.”
It helps to define actionable goals that are within reach. With that in mind, here’s a list of achievable milestones I’ve identified for the year:
Certifications
- Salesforce Admin I Certification
- Salesforce AI Specialist Certification
- Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM)
Upskilling
- Incremental improvements in JavaScript
- Deeper dive into DITA/XML
- Advanced web/UX design techniques
Each of these bullet points is doing a lot of heavy lifting (i.e., there’s a lot of professional study and homework involved), so I think it’s enough of a focus for now.
A Clunky Roadmap
So there it is, my developing roadmap for 2025. I’m only just starting to think about these things and my direction may change during the year depending on circumstances. Ultimately I have to start somewhere, so this is me, starting.
