Now - July 2021

Mid July already. Continuing my pandemic “recovery plan” by focusing on the things that make me go hell yeah and cutting out other things by saying no.

Hell Yeah #

Fasting <- Alternate day fasting, to be precise. I’m really freaking proud of the consistency to date - three 36+ hour fasts every week and taking the weekends off. Eating every other day has meant sacrificing social outings, sleep (fasting insomnia is real and painful), and battling some depression and anxiety - but my gosh feeling in control and making progress again is unbelievable. I hadn’t even planned on going all out with the ADF - I picked up an online weight loss challenge and had planned to do one 36 hour fast to kick it off, then do 18-6 towards OMAD. That first fast felt great - so I did another - and that felt fine too - so I did another one after that and before you know it, two whole months have gone by. It’s still early in the process, I’m only 25% of the way to my goal weight (280 -> 180 lbs), but early progress is pushing me forward.

ffsimulator <- I’m on the cusp of wrapping up the first version and submitting it to CRAN 🎉. One of those unicorn projects that has seemingly walked out of my brain and into the world almost exactly as I envisioned it one day while talking to Joe. Along the way, I’ve learned tons: linear optimization, improving programming efficiency, adding autoplots and more. I’m excited to get this one into the world, and the early feedback has been nothing short of fantastic - I’ve got people trying to use my bleeding edge version already, so it’s pushing me to really get this to a stable and published state - for them, if not for anyone else.

Twitch streaming <- I find myself championing R and data science Twitch streaming, and I love it. I love having people on in the background as I work on other stuff, and I really enjoy helping them out of R pickles when they need it. Watching the joy as someone’s programming problems are solved makes me really happy - whether it’s them solving their own problems, or me solving it, or someone else. It’s even more dopamine than hanging out on R4DS Slack and helping out there. Beyond that, having four hours a week of committed dev time has been great for getting projects off the ground - I have a group of people I don’t want to let down by not showing up, and I think ffsimulator would have taken way longer than it did without the consistency and motivation.

Scott Fish Bowl 11 <- Finished drafting my SFB team - really glad with how it went, to be honest, and I love the idea of having SFB as a challenge for ffsimulator to process. Running the simulator over 1920 teams takes it from the usual 20-30 seconds to a 30 minute process, which I’d love to make even faster. It helps that my team consistently shows up in the top fifty out of the 1920 team pool! 😂

Forza Horizon 4 <- Picked this game up on Steam Summer Sale and it’s been awesomely relaxing and brain bleaching. I’m still terrible at turning corners and still play on the inexperienced racer settings, but the sheer scope of the open world, changing seasons, feeling of flying down the road, and awesome soundtrack have me coming back to it again and again. The soundtrack in particular has been an obsession in itself - so many great upbeat songs that I hadn’t heard before. Can’t wait for Forza Horizon 5 to come out this winter.

Chili lime <- Flavour obsession. I’ve been mixing chili powder with fresh lime zest and squeezes of lime into so many different things - chicken, shrimp, vegetables and more - and it’s been amazing.

Charcoal grilling <- It’s summer and I eat every other day, so I don’t mind taking the time to fire up the charcoal chimney often - have been having tons of steak, chicken, fish etc over the grill. It’s delicious and I can’t get enough of it.

No #

Rowing <- It’s weird, but I’ve cut rowing out of my life for the first summer since 2013 and I feel…relieved? I think the anxiety of coaching a group I didn’t love was too much, especially when I feel like I lost the reward of being able to row for myself as well. Combine that with living over an hour away from the club at the moment and I can’t seem to find any desire to spend six hours of commuting a week (60 minutes roundtrip, 3x per week) to donate eight hours of on-water time actually coaching + whatever organizing pains I needed to do on top of all of that … for a place that I felt didn’t value my time or efforts. I miss my friends, I miss the camaraderie, and I miss the zen of reaching the rowing flow state. It’s in consideration next year, if not later this year.

Local friends <- Between not rowing + avoiding food-related socials on 50% of my days + blocking out Saturday night for streaming, I’ve been a lot less available for my local friends. I miss them. I’ve been making new friends online and on-stream, and maybe I’m becoming more “global” than “local”? It’s little consolation for the feeling of growing a little apart from the group, but I’ve been trying to meet with them when I can and they’ve been extremely supportive and when I’m back it doesn’t feel like any time has passed. Signs of a great group of friends.

DLF <- I left DLF at the end of June because I felt like I hadn’t been able to make time for developing for them - my attention was being dedicated to open source and stream-related work and I didn’t feel like I could dedicate the time DLF deserved. No regrets about my time there, and what a fantastic group of people. I wish them absolutely the best.