Morning pages

Missus and I have managed to “Atomic Habits” ourselves this week, so I feel pretty well balanced. I’ve been getting into a bit of a swing: wake up, meditate, drink tea and write; the day is pretty busy, then after the kids go to bed, I code, then off to bed at ten, read for an hour, and out. It’s a good routine if I can keep from interrupting it.

I get my first COVID shot today. I’m actually kind of impressed that I was offered it so quickly, I figured it would be May before I did, but I registered with my state weeks ago and got the invitation and confirmed my appointment for this afternoon.

My dad came by for several hours yesterday while he got his truck worked on. I finally convinced him to take a Lyft over here and he hung out. I put him through the ringer with the kids, I made him take them to the park and had him help Younger with her reading practice. I think it was good for all of us. I ran him through updates in the family business, mainly about cash reserves and trying to explain our BadgerDAO holdings. I told him about PoolTogether since he’s a lotto guy, but I don’t think he really got it.

I’ve completed two of the outstanding projects that I have left for work. At some point while we were on the phone my coworker asked me about bitcoin. We’ve talked about it many times before, but I don’t like working with him so we don’t really converse. Anyways I opened the firehose on him and told him what I’ve really been doing the past few months, as well as my retirement plans. He’s got bitcoin, but I don’t think he’s been staking through the bear market. I told him we could talk more about it later, but I doubt I’ll want to keep in touch with him in any capacity after I leave.

With these projects nearing completion and my cash reserves more than half full, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I need to finish working on my retirement announcement this weekend and get it released before the end of the month so that there’s no turning back. I want to spend the second half of 2021 just working on my on project, helping out with other projects where I can, and basically be able to focus on managing the house and helping Elder get started with her self-directed education.

I sat down to work on my new coding project and decided to get my butt in TDD mode before I got any further with it. It’s amazing how much I’ve forgotten. Just trying to get pytest working took me a half hour it seemed, and I had problems working through things properly. I did manage to get it working, and started on the process of trying to properly mock out API calls to Alchemy so I don’t overuse my call allotment running tests. Even though I got my degree last year, I still don’t feel like much of a programmer. I’ve got one program I wrote that I use every day, my value averaging program that buys stocks in my IRA brokerage, but I haven’t touched the code in probably two years. It’s very fragile. I never completed the Ether Auction either, the smart contract code should be code complete but I got hung up on a front end library and never went any further.

I spend so much of my day staring at charts and checking things in spreadsheets that I just kind of ignored the programming part of things. I’ve never been as proficient at it as I’ve wanted, never able to build a complete program that I’ve been proud of and willing to release unto the wild, so to speak. It’s a craft, and I am not at the point that I am a very good coding craftsman. I’ll have to work on that.

Cutting myself loose from the MSP space is going to be a great change for me. I’ve got a lot to learn in DeFi and Ethereum, and all these other L1 and L2s that are coming out will ensure that I’ll be busy as hell for the foreseeable future. We just got to get through this bull run. It’s hard to work when you’re making money hand over foot. Maybe I’ll get used to it, or maybe it’s going to take a downturn and another extended bear cycle to get me properly motivated.

Maybe, but I’m hoping that I’ll be able to stay properly motivated working for myself this time.