This is my first actual blog post. I’ve written before, and written to myself on more private topics that may never be shared, or a couple of times about tech topics, but this is the first post in the real spirit of blogging.
And it would make sense to start with an introduction. But, life doesn’t really make sense does it?
I have 20 minutes. My days lately are whirlwinds. I was up at 7am, had a cold shower, tried some yoga, made myself a bowl of porridge and a cup of tea. Then, fell into YouTube, and managed to climb out in time to make it to work by 9:40. I was working until 17:45, and then off to kickboxing from 18:20-19:20, and just arrived home at 20:00, cooked dinner, ate dinner and here I am. But I only have 20 minutes to write. 17 now. Because tonight is a Monday and Monday is Salsa night, 21:00- 23:00. Home before 00:00 if I’m lucky, and straight to slepe. (I feel funny using 24h clock, but when in Europe, do as the Europeans do.)
So, it wasn’t going to start with an introduction. It was going to start with all the things I want to be doing with myself at the moment.
Yoga. Meditation. Kickboxing. Climbing. Guitar. Meal prepping. Macro tracking. Learning Swedish. Gym. Dancing. Finding my niche. Developing a cross-platform app. Applying for jobs. Preparing for job interviews. Working on my voice. Working on my smile. Finding love. Reading. Learn reinforcement learning. Start blogging.
What do we do with that? 8 minutes left. We’ll start with the easy ones.
Yoga. It’s probably worth doing every morning. Trying to be present in the flow, and finishing with meditation is a good idea. At least 30 minutes.
Kickboxing. My 6 month card ran out today, so I had a choice between buying 1 month or 6 months. Since I don’t know where I’ll be in 6 months’ time, I opted for 1 month and it was £130. It’s too expensive, and I’ve decided I want to get back into capoeira instead after this month. Until then, I should make the most of the classes I bought and go to 3-4 sessions a week. 4 hours.
Dancing. It’s a passion. I want to go twice a week, usually 21:00-23:00+. 4 hours.
Finding my niche. This is vague. It means: What can I sell? What am I good at? What differentiates me from other software developers? What can I offer to clients? Hardly something I can dedicate regular time to. But I’d like to figure it out. At the moment, I am rather generalist. That’s good for managing teams or projects, so perhaps I should start a company. I enjoy leading a project and chipping in with technical advice, patching things, contributing my ideas but also not bogging myself deeply into the code. I like the overal application design process.
Finding love. Who knows, they say it comes when you’re not looking.
Working on my voice. This is important. I mumble. I don’t speak confidently, and there’s no reason not to. I should find a nice voice and cadence for myself, and have no shame in the way I speak and my accent. In the mornings…? I was going to record myself to help this. I can use my phone for that.
Applying for jobs. Can fit it in as and when. Perhaps I should spend 30 minutes each week searching.
Preparing for job interviews. Many aspects to this. There are those coding challenge websites, HackerRank etc. Those will probably be useful, since the questions are asked. It also means I need to figure out what my message is. And prepare answers for my nemesis: competency based questions. 1 hour a week. Fine.
And I’m out of time. In the spirit of the blog, I guess I have to stop. Perhaps I can continue tomorrow morning. If I have time after yoga. But it will be a new post. At least I’ll avoid YouTube.
p.s. Is this postscriptum going to take more time than the rest of this post?
p.p.s Just write something.