After 10 years of sea level science it’s time to move on. I’ve been thinking of doing something new for a long time now and having the option to take voluntary redundancy from NOC is just what I needed. Time to explore and money to do it!
So what next? Over the past couple of years I’ve mainly looked for other sea level related posts. These days, things are different. For some reason it never occurred to me that I could really go and work for myself. I love programming, particularly in Lisp/Clojure and AI/Machine Learning. I’m used to statistics and use R almost every day. I have experience running small businesses (even if they are charities). So why not do something useful with those skills and make some money while I’m at it?
Time will tell how successful I am. I’m trying to do this in the most scientific way I can and follow Lean Startup methods. Hypothesis testing suits me very well and being prepared to fail in order to learn is OK with me too. From now on this blog will follow my adventures in trying to work out what to do next.
Simon Holgate's Blog 
All the best on your new adventures Simon – it’s exciting and I’m sure you’ll learn a lot about yourself in the process x