I officially quit my job. (Over these next two weeks, I’m transferring knowledge to people and preparing for the time after.) I scheduled my last day to be December 31 - it seems almost artful, to take a break during COVID, and figure out what I want to do from here. Coding, programming, etc. - these have all been useful things for me to learn. And it’s possible - maybe even inevitable - that I’m going to be doing it sometime in the future, for a fairly long time. It’s a job that pays well and is engaging, where I can be creative and an expert at once. But one of the things I really love about new beginnings is that it gives you a new chance to remake yourself, and figure out who you are. Life is like this, constantly - the push and pull between wanting to be a certain way, and being a certain way; and then how you live your life makes up for the difference. The hope, I think, is that how you live eventually becomes as close as possible to who you are - that you live authentically, but also conscientiously. It’s definitely swung for me - I lived too authentically, then too conscientiously, and there’s likely a balance there somewhere, but it requires experimentation in order to find it. And maybe that experimentation takes a full life to do. But you have to keep trying to get better, to be more secure in who you are and what you’re doing. So I’m trying to do that. :)

I’m having a break of at least a month, and possibly longer depending on what happens. And … I’m going to spend this time both working on my physical form to make it adhere more to what I’d like it to do (I’ve been dieting for the last three months, actually, and this process continues: I also had surgery in July, but this was just a part of a larger process I’d like to continue), and working on what I’m actually spending time on to make it more productive. I’ve told friends and colleagues that the first thing I’m likely going to attempt is an EP of sorts - I’ve been making music for years, but never really with enough dedicated time to actually finish a track. With the brainspace freed up from not having a day job, I think I can do that. And it’s exciting. I’m also very excited to be learning new things, in a coding sense. There are so many options here - if I pick up a job, it’ll be because it appears to provide new things to work on. Otherwise, I may do the 2020 advent calendar (it’s always been next to impossible to do it during work), and also would like to learn Unity programming - if for nothing else than to intuitively understand the algorithms that underlie much of games at this time. There are other programming things I’d love to learn as well (Go, JS …). My hope is that with the time afforded here I can take deeper dives into these things, and feel comfortable. Usually … It appears to me that in order to feel really comfortable in a thing, you need to immerse yourself fully into it for a month or two. (At least, I do. It’s like learning a language, only I can actually learn how to code new things.)

There are always so many things to do, and such little time to do them in. If you’re reading this, my advice to you is: make sure you’re prioritizing these things as well as you can. See you all in 2021. Hopefully it’s a better year for everyone, and everything.