Since my heart attack back in early December I’ve felt like I’ve been perpetually behind. While my body has been healing up I don’t think my psyche has quite recovered.

We’ve been struggling for a while with bills. I was out of work for a while after my last job closed and I took a pay cut when I started my new job so that I could take a step back and learn some of the newer dev techniques that I needed to brush up on. Then I had a heart attack and then covid hit. I haven’t really had a moment to think much less do anything about any of these things. And covid really tanked our side business over at Makers South adding even more stress.

I’ve gotten behind at work and on side work. My personal projects have gotten almost zero attention and I feel bad if I spend anytime on myself with all this going on. But I’ve been busting my ass to get caught up and I’m finally there!

I’ve made a lot of changes lately and feel really good overall but now that I’m getting caught up it’s time to refocus on a few things:

• My health – This is going to be my top priority. I’m going to be focused on really mastering how to eat well and making sure I get my exercise in every day. When I’m stressed out working out and eating right are usually the first things out the window. Not anymore. The heart attack was a real wake up call (in more ways that one) and my health is going to come first. Everything else will be secondary. If I’m dead the rest don’t matter so this is the one thing that I don’t want to fuck up.
• Mental Health – I know a lot of people are struggling right now. I had no idea how much not being able to go out to do simple things would effect me. I’m not willing to risk getting covid, especially being higher risk since the heart attack. Plus all the other stress added to this I’ve definitely been struggling the last few months. I’m going to focus more on doing things I love to relax and unwind like drawing, photography, painting, making dioramas, etc. And yeah, I’ll even do some coding for fun. But I plan on taking a lot of me time over the next few months.
• Finances – We’ve been working hard on this and made some tough decisions. I’m not going into a lot of detail here but like the others, the next couple of years are going to be very me focused. I’ve helped other people to my own detriment most of my life. I’m trying to get to a good spot where I can help again but right now I need to focus on myself.
• Personal Development – My long term goals is to be a Senior Engineer. I’ve got nearly 30 years experience in computers in general but it’s spread out over a wide variety of skills. The last several years I’ve been focused on software engineering with a speciality in back end development. I’m pretty good with servers and devops as well. My front end skills have grown quite a bit too but I’d still say it’s my weak spot. I’m going to be learning a lot more about JavaScript and React the next several months too. I’ve never been more excited about being a software engineer. My work is tough but I learn something new every day. There’s tough parts about the job too (racing timers, ugh!) but it’s probably the most rewarding job I’ve ever had.

I hate that I let myself get so behind. It’s not my nature to cut myself very much slack. Between the financial debt and the “I feel so behind” mental debt I’ve felt pretty crappy for months. But by this time next week I’ll be caught up. This coming week I should be caught up at work and same goes for anything I owe anyone else. That means I’ll be guilt free to focus on myself.

I can’t wait!