It Happens Every Day

Time to cut the corn maze

The past few weeks have been busy. You may have even noticed that I went from five posts per week to three and more recently down to one or two… this posting business is seriously getting into the dangerous territory of not being frequent enough.

Here is the deal. I’ve sat down to write things several times and just can’t make it work. I get past the first couple of lines and then realize that it sounds practically the same as what I’ve posted before. Finding a job is basically a job…

While I do spend a lot of time looking for jobs, writing cover letters and then actually applying for those jobs… I continue to try to do some actual development work. Why? because if I don’t I start to feel really rusty and besides, I have a few ideas that I’m hoping to build out minimal viable products for.

Atmospheric Pressure

I’ve been amazed recently how much difference the place that I sit down to work can affect how I work. I was thinking about this and reflecting on the months at the Iron Yard… the surroundings there were simply really conducive to writing software.

Everywhere I looked people where working on something, the companies around us in the building, my fellow students, even I was building stuff really regularly.

Now that I’m home my surrounds are quite a bit different. It simply isn’t as conducive to writing web apps. I say this not as an excuse, but rather as an observation.

I’m currently trying to find a few ways that I can invest in the atmosphere for myself right here…. maybe I’ll figure it out and tell you about it in a few weeks.

Focusing Elsewhere

Now, maybe that last section makes it sound like I’m not writing software and basically just sitting here waiting… let me assure you that this is not the case. I reckon it’s best said that my focus has shifted in some ways.

Instead of focusing on learning how to build things with Ruby and Rails… I’ve been focusing more on finding a place to continue learning and building on what I know. A place with a team of developers who are awesome and will allow me and help me grow.

I’m also able to focus more recently on family, friends and a few projects here on the farm. I think, and hope, that being able to shift my focus away from just writing software is a good thing. Being able to enter into the “real world,” allows me to see things more clearly, both related to what matters in life and even in how a web app should be build/designed.

Oh The Things I Could Build

One of my family members mentioned that it must be great to be able to build cool things with code… I thought about it a moment and agreed!

It is great to know that I can understand a lot of how apps that I use every day could be built. It’s great to know that I could build something that could affect peoples lives the way that some technologies I use every day affect my life.

Another thing that I’ve noticed recently is that I am continually noticing things that I could build applications around. Not all of them are practical or worth pursuing but knowing that I could build an app that would allow a person to do some particular thing more succinctly or easily… that’s pretty cool!

So What Am I Doing Right Now?

Well, right now I’m getting ready to go to bed. I’m tired.

Part of the reason that I’m tired is that we’ve started cutting our corn maze for the fall season here on the farm. This involves me carrying a backpack with a battery pack in it, a gps on top of it and a laptop computer. I carry this contraption and my brother comes behind me mowing the pathways out.

My biggest project though is still trying to find a job. I’ve applied for 17… I believe I’m supposed to average about 15 per week till I can find one.

Beyond that I’m working on some ideas for my Farm Findr app as well as another app that I’ve not talked about publicly yet. These are the things I do in my spare time, which ends up usually being when I should be sleeping. 🙂

And that my friends is it for tonight. I need to get back into the regular schedule of posting because it’s good for me to have an outlet like this… even when it’s hard to find something to write about… and now I’m done!