MakerSquare Week 4: Mental Fog
February 01, 2016
With the close of week 4, we have now been immersed in MakerSquare ATX for a month. Last week was a blur, diving in to the server side, and databases. In the interest of focus and brevity, here are some highlights from the week:
Pair programming.
I continue to have a profound appreciation for the concept of pair programming. It’s never easy, and far from perfect, but is always illuminating. Especially when feeling completely drained (spoiler alert: the schedule makes it nearly impossible to ever feel fully rested), it’s so helpful to be driven by the desire to be a good partner. It’s a huge motivating force every day, and I continue to be wildly impressed with, and enjoy, my MKS30 peers.
Switching it up.
We had the distinct pleasure of having one of our project sprints led by Kyle Simpson. In past self-teaching adventures and in the pre-course work, of course I had previously come across and referenced You Don’t Know JS many times. (And especially after last week, I plan to spend a good amount of time cuddled up with Async & Performance). In internet wandering, I ended up scrolling through Twitter, and appreciated the currently-pinned tweet.
Non-MakerSquare.
Life still exists outside of MakerSquare. (Huge revelation). Having furniture (!!) will probably help with feeling more rested.
But seriously.
On the note of life outside of MakerSquare, even with trying to be actively conscious around self-care during the program, I still hadn’t been making time to do one of my regular meditative, destressing activities– knitting. So, a general goal moving into the new month is to hold myself more accountable in finding that balance. (Burnout is good for no one…) To start, I cast on for the beautiful Qwist Hat this week, and finding little pockets of time to work on it has made a huge difference already.
Goals:
- Accessibility blog post. I didn’t meet my goal of writing the extra blog post last week. That’s ok! Resetting for this week.
- Decompress time. Find 15-20 minutes every day for project knitting. Onward to week 5!