What I Did
PRODUCING:
I’ve been unemployed lately, though I’ve been poking around with TechSplained and pushing a few pages out. As far as what I could get out the door:
- Robotics: How Do You Get Robots to Move?
- Battery: How Does a Battery Work?
- Quantum Computers: How Do Atoms Compute?
- Gleaned Axioms (a TechSplained version of the Gained InSite version)
I’ve also written an essay for TheoLogos: A Large Upward Trend.
BACK-END:
In the mix of all the work, Raindrop has been insufficient for the task. A collection of web bookmarks will sometimes elicit a stray idea or pattern, and that thought is often so fleeting that it’s difficult to capture.
While I am a diehard fan of an open-ended mindmap (and open-source, like TreeSheets), I needed something with better link management and a little bit more ability to quickly move around and categorize ideas as they form.
And, I finally settled on Notion. It’s pretty much everything I need. I had heard of issues regarding how its flexibility makes it difficult to scale into an organization, but why think 15 steps ahead when I can simply export it to HTML when I need to someday?
IDEATION:
I’m running out of steam, partly from What I Learned #2 below, and partly because I’m running across the challenges of knowing where to go from here. I have many ideas, but the timing is wrong to pursue 90% of them.
What I Learned
A two-parter:
- In the scope of an ambitious project, it’s better to iterate and build smaller and then make larger later. My project has caused me untold grief from the enormity of it, and I should have made smaller efforts before zooming out. Unfortunately, FOMO runs strong when you’ve found your tech career calling two decades late.
- The effects of stress are profound, and there’s no real solution to it. To quote a piece of wisdom I heard, “conflict deferred is conflict magnified”. When you go through a set of traumatic experiences and don’t work through them, they can accrue a type of “emotional interest”. Most forms of escapism (including games, apparently) are self-soothing mechanisms to mitigate trauma’s effects, but the only solution is to directly confront it.
And, with that said, the temporary state of being unemployed while having a family compounds stress. The irony of this arrangement is that job-seeking requires the same image management that exists in dating.
What I’m Doing
I’ve become terribly depressed trying to find work. When I have energy, I devote my efforts to the following:
- Working through a writing project of ~7,500 articles, e-books, video tutorials, and guides about the entire domain of the tech industry.
- My wife and I raise two small people with a nurturing home, at least until they’re legally allowed to vote.