📴 disconnecting

As you can see by my GitHub contribution graph, my commits over the past four months have been lacking. There was a lot of organizational changes at work and I was struggling to find projects that excited me. In short, I was bored. I wasn't feeling motivated to code after work hours, so I took a break.

Instead of spending my free time coding, I took a bunch of trips, made some home improvements, and dove into some old and new hobbies.

✈️ trips

After not traveling for a few years due to COVID, taking so many trips back to back felt like a whirlwind of airports and hotels! A few of the trips were with the family, and others were for work.

First we went to Sayulita, Mexico for a wedding. It felt like a beach trip combined with a family trip. Sayulita is such a cool little town, and we were golf carting around the whole place.

Then I headed to California for Reactathon. I got to hear some great talks, but the highlight of the trip was meeting so many online friends in person!

Our next trip was a friends trip to Port Aransas, the coastal town we have to Austin. We had a fun few days playing on the beach and visting the aquarium.

A week later I was off to New York City to meet my Trello co-workers in person for the very first time! We ate at some awesome restaurants and got some planning done that made me feel much more engaged at work.

The last trip we took was to my family's farm in upstate New York. This was probably my favorite trip, because I felt so disconnected from everything that was bogging me down. The weather was perfect, and we spent a lot of time outside driving four wheelers, petting newborn calves at the barn, and playing in the corn fields.

🏡 home improvements

When we weren't traveling I was pretty invested in doing some repairs around the house and making it feel like a great place to hang out.

In addition to fixing about a million things, we built and refinished a used swing set, and rehabilited a used grill. Then we spent our evenings on the patio, grilling and watching the kids play.

I also invested in a cable machine for our home gym, which I now consider one hundred percent complete. Putting it together took way longer than I thought, but now I'm more excited about working out than ever!

📚 hobbies

Without coding taking up all of my time in the evenings, I found myself revisiting old hobbies. I started up a World of Warcraft account and leveled up a bunch of characters. I also got really into learning Spanish with Duolingo. At the moment I'm almost at a 250 day streak!

I had a goal to read six books this year, which I've far surpassed with all the newfound free time. I've been very interested in productivity and self improvement books, and some really cool creative books like the ones below.

And finally, I bought a very expensive new toy that turned out to be the most fun thing I've purchased in years. I got a OneWheel! I picked it up pretty quick, and now it feels like snowboarding down the street. I've had it for a little over a month and it's got 100 miles on it already. It's been so much fun taking it through the neighborhood, into downtown Austin, and on bike trails!

👨🏼‍💻 back to coding

I'm not sure what it was, but I felt compelled to start coding again about a month after our last trip. Maybe it was my birthday, or the opening of the new Atlassian office, I don't know. But now I'm back, coding a little each night. As of today, I've already released three new projects, and updated an old one.

When I tweeted about my break, it seemed to resonate with a lot of people. Some are disconnecting right now, and others want to take time off in the future. I can tell it did me good, and I recommend taking time away from the keyboard as often as possible!