It's been a full two months since I left my full time job at Block as a software engineer. The first month included days where I didn't even look at a computer screen and did what is essentially the capitalism version of "wasting time" but it helped me recover from some burnout. I also had people visiting which helped me not feel like I was only talking to myself and Kristen.

The second month has been more interesting in what has come about. First, I have been trying the projects I had ideas for over the past year and finally attempting them, experimenting and realizing some are good and some are garbage.

The amount of time I'm spending on the computer has shifted from being just on it for work and meeting many hours of the day to doing something productive and / or necessary instead.

When I was younger, I did spend hours every day on my computer just browsing the internet and playing video games but that has gone away. One because I have a mac and that doesn't play many games and second because the internet is boring now. It's full of walled gardens of information that don't allow searching and sharing as the internet did in previous years.

A relatively tough thing has been managing my time properly. It's easy to browse social media on my phone like Instagram and Tiktok and easily lose hours a day. This combined with no real schedule has resulted in quite a few days during the week where it seems like I didn't "do anything" which is a harrowing feeling.

Nothing sticky, yet

So far I've worked on a few projects to try to learn a new tech or to just try my luck at making sure an idea I had is worth pursuing. Some projects that I've put out there are either for my own learning like the Bikes page or for very niche purposes like the Rose Template. Other projects haven't seen the light of day like the dog playdate website which is still very much in the development stage.

Another project I'm currently brainstorming is a marketplace for connecting service providers with potential jobs which seems to be pretty saturated but still not well executed. It's something that will require a few weeks, if not a few months, worth of effort so I'm hesitant to dive head first into building it and first trying my hand at validating the idea.