As our pandemic takes it's second revolution around the sun the list of things to occupy the surplus of time has taken a hit. Here are but a number of things I spent time with in 2020 in an attempt to keep busy.
Grow a Beard
In the spirit of the 'decade of the unnecessary beard' I stepped forward and extended the traditional facial follicle growing season from the normal Nov-Dec to Nov-Feb, two additional months of woolly cultivation.
Culinary Activities
Like most home-bound folks, I took a crack at baking my own bread, with modest success. Gone were the Sunday morning breakfast outings, replaced with DIY breakfasts which got better in time. Crepes and french toast made a play into the rotation with hashbrowns and waffles/pancakes taking front seat most pretty frequently. Our love for asian cuisine, particularly Thai, still satisfied by take-out from our favorite restaurant occasionally still left a gap. It's genuinely surprising how a few ingredients can enable homemade Thai, Korean and Chinese dishes. We started making Mango Chicken, Bulgogi and Thai Basil Chicken at home to satisfy the asian cuisine cravings with modest proficiency.
On-Line Learning
The State of Minnesota offered the DEEDS program, subsidizing on-line learning for the past year. With a surplus of time and interest in a variety of subjects I hammered out 54 courses, ranging from 4-hrs to multiple weeks, in a variety of tech topics.
Podcasts
One luxury of working from home this past year has been the ability to take an uninterrupted walk over the noon hour, often accompanied with a podcast. With an increase in sitting time, this activity helps my body remember that it's natural state isn't the seated position.
Started a Book
Like many folks, I've occasionally been drawn to 'write a book', despite a real need for it. Mid 2020, I had a couple inspiring computer science majors contact me via Reddit for advice, mostly involving 'what is CS' and 'How do I get into CS', but one exchange left me puzzled. A young man from Ireland, just leaving high school was accepted into university but later rejected as a result of Covid reduction in campus actions. He asked what he could do to get a head-start in self-study or prepare for the industry in the event he never gets in. My suggestion was simply; "go to the university bookstore, find the CS textbooks, buy them and begin self-study". I heavily encouraged going to university, and stressed that I doubt I'd be a professional in the industry had I not done so, but as a plan-B aligning your self-study with the university curriculum would be better than adhoc YouTube, influencer offerings, or code camps. To my surprise, I quickly found I'm out of touch with how universities teach as of late. Many no longer have physical textbooks, or virtual ones for that matter, instead they teach via interactive websites with automated grading. Restricted to university students closed the avenue to my suggestion. So, over a few days I got a bug to write a book, a collaboration of my CS university teachings in a manner I had wished it was presented to me. Worse case, after spending some time on it, I'd know how lofty an effort. One chapter completed'ish, and it was clear it'd be a substantial effort with likely a limited (or non-existent) audience, so onto the back burner it went.
Created a CS Mentoring Website
Still amp'd from a desire to help folks into the industry, a frequent contributor to Reddit posts, there seemed a real need for guidance/mentorship for those interested in CS. Personally, I'd have never made it into the profession without some highly dedicated and patient teachers and mentors, so with ample free time I thought the timing would be right for assisting however I could. I was always puzzled when I attended Minnebar (or other conferences) that recommended mentorship but never offered any facilities to connect folks. So I created a mentorship proof-of-concept website, unpublished, to get a feel for what I thought would be beneficial. Then, I reached out to local communities (e.g. Twitter) to gauge interest and I found non-existent interest in the subject. Onto the back-burner it went.
Woodworking
I've always enjoyed woodworking, but mostly focused on 'big' stuff.....decks, sheds, firepits, stairs....but always wanted to get proficient in high-detailed work. Garage Therapy over the past year allowed me to build my first indoor furniture piece, a variety of small trinkets (spoons, trays), cutting boards, bird feeders as well as a variety of failures destined for firewood. With quality wood prices skyrocketing, and it becoming a more popular hobby over the year it's likely less expensive to take up cocaine as a recreational activity, but in the meantime I hone my skills on big-box-store cheaper lumber with hope of one day using quality woods.
Cleaned House
Dozens of boxes of donations have recently bid adieu, hopefully finding their way to a someone who could better use them. Our house, considerably lighter, partly due to thousands of papers being electronically scanned before being recycled. I'm a self-professed hoarder in some regards, especially with respect to tech information. Some of the most inspiring training I had early in my career really set the stage for my success in the profession, I've always felt fortunate for such a investments and retained them for reference. Kinda like old family photos, there is reassurance knowing you have them despite rarely even looking at them. Now, they virtually sit in a backed up repository never to be lost while freeing cubic yards of space in the office(s). Similarly, boxes of old family photos were scanned in the same manner and distributed to the family for similar reasons.
Meetups
I've always admired proficient tech speakers and genuinely miss the days of attending colloquiums held by passionate and knowledgeable speakers. Like 94.7% of people (a statistic I just made up) who would rather face a rabid grizzly bear than speak in front of an audience I figured what time better than to dive into the pool of fear and uncomfort. Four presentations under my current belt, including ones that I intentionally didn't rehearse to death, an attempt to address my fear of being asked a question I wasn't prepared for. A patient and understanding audience really makes all the difference, each time being easier than the last.
In My Humble Opinion
I've had dozens of 'passion projects', software projects you do in your spare time in an effort to provide something useful to the world. This project, a distributed survey community, combined cloud computing, Android development, security, and a butt-load of interesting technologies into something I thought would be interesting and useful. To date, this is the last significant project I've worked on, abandoning it after it failed to generate any real interest. Learned a ton of new tech and knocked off the rust on some old skills but back-burnered it as it didn't appear to have a real track in interest.
Blogging
I've been blogging on-and-off for years now, most recently a solid 2-year weekly contribution here. I feel I gave it a solid try and accomplished what I originally set out to do, but disappointed in not feeling it's really of value beyond myself. For the past couple years, I established a queue of 'waiting to publish' articles and published weekly, releasing all unpublished articles in one fatal swoop a few months ago. Awaiting inspiration to return for another 'go'.
