New things are happening today. Is it the new moon? The solstice? The cusp of Cancer? Who’s to say, but I went into this weekend exhausted and confused and came out with a new burst of energy that is going to carry me somewhere new.

On the homefront, I’ve had trouble fitting in a routine for doing nourishing things for myself. This includes lots of stuff that falls into the “spirituality bucket,” but more importantly the basic things that are necessary for baseline physical health. I have been prescribed a dizzying array of movements, stretches, muscle releasing exercises, and equipment to battle Plantar Fasciitis, and it’s extremely demoralizing to have not made much progress since it first reared its head last summer. I need to carve out time for this stuff, but I procrastinate constantly through work, childcare, household chores, and leisure activities.

Waking up early is a good trick, but our household routine revolved around Kid’s wakeup time, which varied wildly. The breakthrough happened when we solidified our morning schedule, which gives me a guaranteed “off the clock” window until 7:30, when I wake up the family and make breakfast. I was inspired to join the local community center gym based on this guarantee, and was able to spring out of bed this morning at 6, hop in the car where my gym bag awaited, and do my stretches and whatnot, plus some bench presses, while the local clientele took potshots at the news. This feels very good.

Also, I am cutting loose the idea that I am trying to be a DevOps Guy, even temporarily. My soul recoils from the endless business bureaucracy that creeps over any technical work like poisoned molasses. I’ve barely written any code! And by releasing myself from the expectation that I’ll be working here for much longer, I can avoid feeling like I should learn how the specifics of this megacorp’s team structure actually work.

I am also speaking aloud a dream I’ve kept safe for some time: one day I want to own my own software consultancy. There’s one of those brick suburban office buildings like 6 doors down from me and I want to rent a space there and then walk 50 feet to work. I want to be able to take on a gig for a lot of money, or turn it down and do nothing. I want to own my work, and be proud of it.

Nothing about my present circumstances gets me closer to that, so I need to change things up. But for the past 3 years I’ve also been content to sort of passively gain technical experience. Having a kid made work seem very unimportant, but as she gets older, optimizing for loafing seems to be more of an excuse to not try hard than an earnest plea for work-life balance. Wherever I end up next, I want to kill it and I want to be rewarded for killing it.

Maybe doing some learning in public will help grow my network, or maybe the work itself will be valuable to my resume, but I am going to have fun in the coming weeks testing the limit for how little work I can get done at what is ostensibly my full-time job.

Should be fun!