Go Big or go Broke

Alright I suppose there is a good amount to chat about, as I have skipped a recap or two.

Focus with progress but not perfect

I'm really doing my best to work things out as to what the most important things to focus on are. I haven't been as strict on tracking ALL of the time on specific tasks on the kanban flow now that I've broken up some stuff into features. The main thing I'm working on is just focusing, and the Focus@Will app really helps with that.

I've been going much slower with the finance app and I suppose a lot of it is that I've made it more complex than necessary by adding in all of the requirements such as x-editable etc. Either way it's okay in the end, but it's causing me to have a pushed back timeline. Something to learn from for sure. At least I am learning a TON and I'm very happy that it's finally getting resolved.

More pairing!

I've done quite a bit more pairing and it has been extremely helpful and FUN. The more I do it, the more excited I get because it's very enjoyable to work out problems with other people. I've been creating Google hangouts for people to join into via Codebuddies.org, in addition to offering to pair on challenges in various Slack chats.

I have enough leeway to cover my butt for about 1-2 months, and it would be simple enough to also apply to some other 'easy to get' or part time jobs as a 'just in case' for the mean-time.

My plan going forward

I've begun to ramp up the amount of job apps I'm putting in, as I KNOW I am 100% ready for a large number of positions and so I just have to get in front of people and interview. I've gotten to the point where I want to take the risk of just leaving my current job and making a final push to getting hired in a dev role. I think I am slowly losing my sanity trying to spend 40 hours a day doing something I absolutely despise after ALSO spending another 35-40 hours beforehand working my ass off on other things.

I'm going to try and be very disciplined and stick to some hard habits and techniques to keep myself running with high energy. My day should look something like the following if I leave my day job and do this job search full time:

1. Wake up between 6-7 hours of sleep via Sleep Timer app
2. Downstairs to get pre-brewed cold coffee from frig, and heat up / eat breakfast.
3. 20 minutes of meditation
4. Some quick exercise such as squats or pushups etc to get blood pumping
5. Write out my daily standup, (what did I do, what am I doing today)
6. Hot/Cold shower
7. Start working on project (inside a hangout if it makes sense)
8. Around Noon - do a workout. I haven't planned this yet...but maybe a bike ride or otherwise a guided exercise like Insanity / P90X
1. Also I would do this first thing in the morning, but I'm too afraid of having siezures in the first couple hours of waking up...I've had too many bad experiences with working out in the morning and injuring myself.
9. Continue working on project
10. Around 3ish, start doing networking stuff and filling out job apps etc. Need to get at least 5 completed ideally.
11. I'm not too worried about what happens after that. Most likely I'll either continue working on whatever I choose, or doing a blog post, or just pairing and doing learning at night. Can't force myself to be SUPER productive for more than 6-8 hours and expect good results.

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind, Happy Life

Now that I've been meditating twice a day for 10 minutes each, I do feel a bit
more calm and less stressed out. Even though the job hasn't let up on it's
shittiness, for some reason I've just begun to be mindful about it and not get
bothered so much. It really seems to be helping!

It's funny and a bit weird too, as I've been listening to podcasts all week (as I have been for months) and like almost ALL of them are suggesting doing meditation in the morning and many talk about the Head Space app that I've been using also. Guess that's positive affirmation too :)

In addition to the meditations, I've decided to go biking/running (mostly biking b/c it's really fun) every other day. It's an easy way for me to get in the exercise I need since I enjoy it so much.

Social feedback

I'm really happy about the reception my Kanban video is getting. Apparently a lot of people have great things to say about it, and also some of my articles are getting complimented too.

After talking to Linda from Codebuddies.org last night, she suggested doing a 100daysofcode challenge, where we blog or tweet about something learned each day. Sounds fun, and I might do that.

Feature Creep

I've been continually adding tasks to my money project, so it's getting a bit of feature creep. Mostly I need to remember that to get it presentable and out I just need to focus on core functionality and not adding a ton of bells and whistles at the moment.

Other than that, I did my first pull request yesterday adding user roles and security to the Meteor Club Podcast website. I have another pairing session for that tomorrow also, so I'm glad with where that is going.

FOCUS

I just really started to use this Focus@Will app a lot more, big time yesterday and even changed the size of my pomodoro upward and I felt like I was really able to focus way more.

I wasn't really paying attention to it earlier, but I'm going to watch how much more I can focus with it as it does seem like a huge boost and I've been hearing more about it lately also.

That's all for now, peace yo!

Pairing for the win!

Alright so I did a small bit of work on my website and it's slowly getting where
I want it to be. I didn't really do any work on making it responsive as that
feels like a pretty good chunk of work and I was looking to relax on my day off
(which I really did).

Yesterday was good fun as I did some pairing on a few exercism.io projects after
completing javascript koans. Even though I felt pretty good about my javascript
knowledge, I learned a ton! Pairing is great, because you can talk out the
problems and one person can look something up while you are trying to write out
the problem.

Mindfulness

I picked up the Head Space app to help give me tips and guide me along on
meditations. I figure I'll use the app for 1-2 weeks to soak up any good ideas
and practices from it, and then move back to self directed again.

I'm pretty much thinking that I have to get back into exercising even more than
I have been. I'm doing the bike riding and really light moving around, but it
would be good to really make sure I'm doing some stuff to get my heart pumping
each day.

Overall, the more stress I release through meditation and exercise...the more
work I will get done and the more productive I can remain. That's the thing to
keep in mind.

When will it end?

What did I do?

The past few days were mostly spent working through getting a good grasp of iron router, and how to have it internet with my app. I feel so much more competent now, but it sucked that it took so long!

No probs, I've got it now. Another big part of it was that I was also using it for a more uncommon thing I suppose, which was actually going to another route (a transaction detail) with just a modal, which meant I needed to KEEP the data behind that modal popup while still being on another route. Took several hours but I got it working and now it's awesome!

Productivity

My productivity was so-so. One day was rough because of bad sleep (which I have data to prove, this sleep app shows I didn't get many REM cycles) and then I had seizures, and I felt like poop blah blah.
Whatever it's all good. Mostly I'm doing okay with not getting WAY distracted with chats. I still use the chat, but now it's for sharing my thoughts of what I'm currently coding and asking for help which gets me moving quicker in that sense. Still working on it though!

Health Stuff

I'm not really working out like I would want to. I haven't decided exactly how I want to approach this. I could start doing P90X but that takes up SO much time.

I guess just doing the running was alright, but I was demotivated to do that due to some heavy rain lately, and I'm too big of a wimp to go run in that crap.

Perhaps I'll just try to make it one of those gradual habit things like, "I just have to walk out the door and across the street" habits...and then if I still don't feel like walking or running I can come back. Lol, sounds odd but that's how successful people keep so many habits going. Just small things that are almost impossible to fail.

Going forward

I realized I haven't been applying for jobs recently, and this other one has seemed to fall through so I decided I certainly want to get maybe 1 app in a day. I am SO FREAKING done with my current job. It's so stressful at the moment because the volume of calls has increased to the point where there is LITERALLy 9 hours of back to back calls with zero downtime.

I just feel so exhausted every day, and plus the type of calls I take now as an SOS rep are getting ridiculous. If it was simple stuff, I'd be less bothered by it. I would have applied and got some of the promotions they offered recently, however I decided to decline those due to really wanting to push myself into a programming job. Blah, just taking longer than I want.

There is my rant, and now it's time to get rolling! I'm excited to have this app finally come together soon and start being usable, and for the next few days I'll be working on content creation. I really liked the articles and videos I put out recently, so I know it will only get better going forward.

It's such a good feeling to get feedback

Now that I've been creating content again for a short time and getting feedback, and seeing the retweets come in I am really stoked. It's a great feeling being able to see someone ask a question in a chat or forum, and have a video or post to link them as an answer!

Another cool thing I'll have to keep in mind is the amount of feedback that I get through Youtube. There are some great questions that come in there, which can be turned into posts as well.

I added comments and analytics to my actual website so I can start to see how people interact there. I definitely need to do a better front page though. It looks 'okay' on desktop but for some reason it gets all wonky on mobile and the view blog link isn't even clickable!

I had a chat with Josh about figuring out if I am ready for jobs or how to know, and he gave me the opportunity to work with him on one of his projects and list him as an employer / job experience so I took him up on that. I'll be doing some work on his upcoming podcast, which I chose to do since I want to eventually start my own podcast as well. I mean, I do like talking and all haha.

And...some health related stuff

So I recently went back to the 6 hours of sleep, but last night I grabbed a sleep timer app which is supposed to detect your cycles and wake you up at the right time. It actually woke me up at 5 hours and 21 minutes. AWESOME! I feel great too, unlike previously. I'm super excited to see how it does going forward.

I tried some transcendental meditation, which...apparently people try to market as some secret bullshit where you have to pay a guru a thousand dollars for a "word" but in reality you just...repeat some nonsensical phrase over and over for 20 minutes. Really simple haha. It actually worked out great, I HATED all other types of meditation, but this one was simple enough. I'll have to keep trying it out longer and see what results I get.

For some reason I've been feeling more hungry lately, like I just want to eat and eat. Seems a bit odd, but something to think about.

Yep, that's about it. Nothing else exciting going on lol. Time to focus!

Feeling Like Crap is No Fun, Let's Fix That

Adjusting my sleep

Man, I have to say that perhaps 5 hours isn't working so well for me any more. It could be something different, but waking up yesterday I felt like I was smacked by a truck and I was NOT productive at all. I eventually felt so crappy I just had to take a nap for an hour and a half before work lol.

Today I did 6 hours and I feel back to my usual motivated and excited self. I've already written two articles today within an hour and  a half and I'm excited to do more! It sucks because I'd love that extra hour, but if getting up an hour earlier causes me to LOSE a day then that isn't very useful to me.

So, about that new schedule

So I am coming up on the end of my first week of the new "schedule". Overall I feel good about it, however the timing was a bit off on me thinking I could squeeze in learning, challenges, and busy work towards the final hour and a half before I go to work. It ended up that I take a bit more to wake up, mostly due to feeling so crappy in the morning lately. Also I was extremely non-productive feeling for a bit. I still got stuff done and I'm happy with what I accomplished though.

I think next week will be better, as I'll be going back to 6 hours which worked great before. I still want to have time allotted to actual learning via reading etc, so I may put some of that into my days off, or just cut down a coding day or creative day and turn it into a learning day.

I'll keep working through this schedule for the month of April, and then I may try out something where I block an entire week to coding, a week to creative, a week to...etc. Overall, the more I can chunk things together and focus on something the better and faster I can do it. That is my thinking with eventually doing a whole week of writing at a time. Who knows maybe I can eventually get to where I'll do like a whole month of content creation and just queue up a ton of stuff, and then I can do a month of project work etc. That's all future thinking of course.

Shitty Job is Shitty

I've been getting more and more annoyed at work. Perhaps I am just 100% ready to get out of there and move on to the next part of my life. Yea definitely lol. If I look back at my goals from the end of December, I really did want to be in the position I am in now, looking for jobs at the beginning of May and have something by the end of June so I think I'm still in a good spot, I'm just more impatient than I had planned for.

Oooo, that feelin'!

Lately I have been getting this little excited butterfly feeling in my stomach, because I am so happy about all of the ideas going through my head. I want to do so many things, and I just have to let time play out a bit and keep doing the right activities but I really am interested to see where everything is headed. I want to help people out with my Youtube and blog, and I have over 100 ideas brainstormed out, but I just need to get them written and recorded!

I'm almost really excited about all of the people I have been meeting in the Slack groups and Gitter chats that I've joined lately. The programming community is a really great one to be a part of, and I think I made the right choice to make the shift away from gaming even if I did really enjoy it and did a great job in that space.

Anyhow, today was a word vomit so I'll stop there. See you around!

Feeling Recharged and Moving Full Steam Ahead

Better Organization

Now that I am back into work mode, I'm feeling really good about the progress I
get done in the mornings. I have split out the large sections of my main kanban
board into smaller trello boards such as things I want to learn, my money
project, website, and personal fun stuff including dreams goals want to get
stuff.

Overall I like this a lot better, I'm still adding small tasks and working
through them with time tracking via the kanban flow, but now I have it organized
with mostly "category" sections that link out, and as I go through the week I'll
refer to the more detailed board to pull tasks, since there are quite a lot and
those need to also be individually organized.

I've gone and done it!

I ended up splurging finally and buying an iPhone6+. I had been thinking about
doing it for quite a while and it was bothering me. I thought I would be able to
split it onto payments but apparently I read wrong, and that isn't available for
prepaid plans. Oh well, I bought it in full for like 900 bucks after the case,
and it is unlocked so w/e. Great thing there is I can always sell it later for
an upgrade since it isn't carrier locked.

Job soon maybe?

I'm feeling pretty good about my recent meeting with Lance from Big Astronaught.
He is saying he should be able to bring me on in a week or two depending on the
go ahead from a big client of his. I'm hoping to learn a ton about meteor by
working with him on that.

Making dem connections yo!

I've also got a chat scheduled with Saron tomorrow about ideas for helping
newbies like myself and people who have gone through my self learning struggle
to find content easier and not get so lost figuring out what to learn etc.

Overall, I've been happy with the amount of interactiveness I've had with other
website and content creators so far. I look forward to meeting more people like
that, such as Linda from CodeBuddies.org website who I've been chatting with as
well. I'm finally starting to feel like I'm going to be in a position to be a
big help to the community, especially once I get some of my content rolling out
this month.

Easily distracted

The only thing right now I find that might be slowing me down is that I do
easily get distracted by jumping into these chats and what not. I've never been
huge on facebook and twitter, but the live chats are addicting and even though
I'm making some good friends and connections I'll have to monitor myself and
make sure I don't let it distract me too bad if I am in the middle of some
pomodoro cycles etc.

So, other than wishing I had 10x more time to get things done I am happy with my
progress so far, and feel that it's only going to get better soon. See you
around!