My sports habits continued in June and I have been going to the climbing gym throughout the whole month. As a result my climbing problem skills went from the simple 1-3 (using French grading system) to starting doing 4-grade problems. Each session is followed up with some fitness excersizes. It helps to train with a buddy as you are constantly pushed to rest less, train more, and climb increasingly more complex routes.
I also started taking my child to climbing this month. The progress has been very striking in these four weeks, similar to myself. A four-year old went from being bored and not wanting to climb to solving most of the problems on the children wall, and now trying some very simple adult routes. During the last session we took several toys with us which I put on holds in various places. We then discussed the routes to use in order to “save” the toys, and she climbed them well and very enthusiasticly.
For the next book to read I picked up Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. This edition is by Gregory Hays which has a comprehensive introduction that gives context to the book, the times it was written in, and also some historical events. I am still halfway through it so not going to review it now.
Throughout my career I changed companies and jobs multiple times. It was never a problem for me to explain the reasons why I quit, and it never felt bad. After all, I was going for something better, with more room for self-development, better salary, better location, better everything. But I never put myself in the shoes of the manager whom I was leaving without a team member. This month a colleague of mine, a very bright young engineer has quit. This left me pretty much a solopreneur (with my two partners still helping me a bit).
It is a bizarre feeling. It is sad because being alone is always tough. You’re also left without someone to keep you accountable. She was a frontend engineer while I did everything else: backend, some frontend, marketing, sales, customer support. It was also easy to just throw a problem at her without considering how big or how complicated it is. This freed me to work on other things. Now I have to do everything myself. And I think I started to adapt:
- the first part of the day (from ~8:30 until around 12:30-1:00 pm) is spent on hard programming problems. I started to cut off all distractions, including my phone and any messenger on computer. Also listening to some long loops, be it on YouTube or Spotify. Nils Frahm is a great choice for that. (Brain FM is a good one) to get into some form of meditative state.
- then I have lunch and can spend time listening to podcast, reading articles and social networks
- the second half of the day I spend doing the rest: programming, customer support, emails, marketing, talking.
When working solo routine is what saves you from procastination and going insane. It is still developing and I am trying to incorporate either quick naps or training during lunch time. Will see how it goes in July.
A huge milestone has passed: we have acquired our first paying clients in June. After more than a year in development and 10 months being public, the first customers have arrived and they love the product. This helped to push my motivation through the roof.
I feel bad for not reading much, and another reason for that is I bought myself a RetroStone. It’s a pretty neat device that resembles Game Boy. It runs RetrorangePi with various emulators for game consoles. I’ve been playing Nintendo roms from my childhood: Chip & Dale, Felix the cat, Addams Family, and many others. Such a joy. It supports hdmi and up to 4 players, so can play with friends. I didn’t buy to play every day but rather something to do during travelling, while on a plane or on a long bus/train ride.