Fri Jan 10
harder // better // faster // stronger
🪩 And we’re back from winter break: happy new year! And welcome to my new Winter 2, 2025 batch-mates.
❄️ RC’s return coincided with about 6+ inches of snow here on the Maryland side of the DC suburbs - quite a lot for this area nowadays. The trade-off of suburban life versus our old Brooklyn life became crystal clear when I found myself digging out our driveway on Monday evening.
🚼 Three (3!!!) snow days in a row for daycare meant lots of unplanned quality time with my 10-month-old! Still getting used to this working + childcare dance. Having flexibility in our schedule is such a blessing, even if I forget that all the time and grow anxious about “productivity.” I am looking forward to next Friday’s hub visit: we are planning to make a too-quick, weekend trip up to Brooklyn around some family birthdays!
🎯 The mid-batch reflection workshop in December helped me set some goals for this second half of batch: (1) push through the mental barrier I’ve built up around the next iterations of this site (this will also help with working at the edge of my abilities
); (2) pair more (combines working at the edge of my abilities with interview prep); (3) blog and stream more content; (4) nature of code: redux and keeping up on creative pursuits; (5) next company hunt and practice interviews. Roughly in that order.
📝 Finally published my first project write-up of RC: batches of batch: visualizing RC interests. What was meant to be a “warmup” has turned into much more time and many more words than anticipated, but getting it out there feels like finally clearing out the mental space for new projects.
⏰ The Artist’s Way morning pages have been an interesting challenge. It turns out that they are meant to be written first thing when you wake up - which is tricky as a night owl with the aforementioned 10-month-old who usually wakes around 7:15am. But I managed my first 25-minute session before he woke up on Friday morning. Now to keep my 1-day streak alive, heading into the weekend…
📊 Put together a small visualization that I am proud of called days left at rc. It is a modified version of Rory Flint’s “Day by Day”, which was itself inspired by Wait But Why’s “Your Life in Weeks” - although I like to think of my version as less morbid and less presumptuous (assuming 85 years of life?! I could get hit by a truck tomorrow). I might update the name to “days left/spent at rc.” It attempts to capture this strange relationship with time that I have right now at RC, being hyper-aware of batch’s finite nature (as discussed in my last reflection). I find myself revisiting the viz in a perpetually open tab, sometimes finding it unnerving, but more often finding it comforting. I plan to write up this micro-project in a slightly longer blog post.
🎮 Finally took a step to get over the mental block around my main batch project: this site! Started looking at game assets and sketching out what I want the home page to evolve to. I know nothing about developing a game interface like the one that I am imagining. But as Angelou said, ain’t nothin’ to it but to do it.
🟩 Time-blocking has made its return to my daily routine, which helps me stay on track throughout the day (even if forever behind on the actual timings). The idea of refreshing my family app for time-blocking has re-emerged, sparked by discussions of home-cooked apps and software this week. There’s something wonderfully cozy and empowering about building tools for yourself and your community. I just might not have the time to return to this particular well this batch!