2024 Winter arc

Situation overview

It’s early october, it’s been one week since I came back from vacations and instead of feeling pumped or energized, I feel a bit ..lost?

In the last months, I’ve been working a lot. On side projects such as the weekly algo arena, my first steps trying to earn some money through the internet with my paid app DonkeyCarrot, my http server in go, one chrome extension, practicing some algo exercices, learning more about ML, and I must forget some stuff. I’ve also been working on a side business, more serious than what I play around with on my own. Without forgetting my 9 to 5.

Putting all of this down, I realize it’s quite a list! And to be honest, I’m proud of what I’ve done.

But I was expecting to come back from my trip, and start grinding again right away, however this week I had trouble deciding what to work on, and why I was even working on it.

Maybe I needed a bigger break, or no break at all. But I can’t do the former, and it’s too late for the latter, so, what the fuck am I doing ?

By writing this post, I hope to find or more precisely, recall, what really matters to me. I’ll define some targets for the next few months, or as I’ve seen it mentionned online lately, for my Winter Arc (orchestral music starts - I really like this name).

What really matters ?

I’ve only been talking about work and code in the first paragraph, but that’s not at all the only things that are important to me. I love board games, and I didn’t get to play a lot of them in these last months. I’m also enjoying bouldering, running and reading and need to keep time for those activities. Finally, I’m picking up piano again and aim to practice a few minutes almost every day.

I know it sounds like a lot, but I feel like I waste a lot of time everyday. With less scrolling and binge watching, this should be very manageable. And besides, what’s the point of working hard if it’s not to be able to do the things I love more?

Now regarding my last and main hobby, or maybe I should say passion ? Programming and building things. I love doing new stuff and learning about anything, but I didn’t just code aimlessly! There was two important side quests:

• Make money
• Create a record of completed projects

The good part is that I can do pretty much anything and as long as I document it, it will help the second quest. The bad part is that despite what I’ve been trying to do, I didn’t try that much to make money..?

It took weeks to launch DonkeyCarrot even though I coded it in maybe 10 hours. And I’ve had more plans for the last two months and barely started them. I’ve also had other ideas for apps, extensions or websites to launch, most of them silly, a few intriguing, and one or two more serious, but I didn’t start anything? It’s like I don’t even want to make money, despite the fact being that I truly do. I need to, I’ve got a mortgage to pay, I need to put money aside for security, I want to make sure my parents will be ok and I want the freedom to work on what I want.

Goals

For the next few months, I want to:

• Play board games and role playing games

• Play piano

• Do sport 3 times/week

• Read more books

• Focus on the side projects that have the potential to make money

  • This means hardcore marketing of DonkeyCarrot on Instagram && TikTok
  • A second project with a paywall shared with the world

• Try to tweet once a day (== do something interesting once a day?)

Final thoughts

I’m posting this post maybe ~one week after I finished the first draft. As soon as it was done, I had more motivation and energy to keep doing things. I guess this was what I needed, some time to self-reflect! I might make similar posts more often then, and hopefully, I’ll have more to share soon on one of my multiple side projects.