Another week of RC complete, another blog post!

Overall

I’ve moved into a room at Founder House. It’s been a week there and I’m feeling settled in.

During the week I was reflecting on my feelings. A lot of feels are just things that take time to resolve.

Time to go through the thought buckets and get it all out!

Emotional 😂

I feel more relaxed
Having my own space has been awesome.

I can grocery shop. I can cook. No more worrying about buying/storing food I won’t be able to finish.
I can banter with housemates or sit in silence.
…I can do what I want.

It’s not that I didn’t have freedom before… I just restricted myself. No more of that!

I’ve been impatient with life
When I was in South America, friendships were instantaneous. After a few hours, I could be having some pretty intense conversations with people. Activities were also instant and endless. Every day could be an adventure.

The real world is not like that. People take time to warm up to each other. Finding things to get involved with is harder than sight seeing.

I need to keep reminding myself of this.

Social 🙌

RC is the center of the universe
This past week I spent the majority of my time at RC. There’s always people there to hang out with. The social default has become organizing things in Zulip and hanging out at RC.

I used to dream about having a group of people who were down for anything and always around to hang out. Being in RC is somewhat like that…and it’s a bit intense.

Needing to explore the rest of the universe
After 2 weeks in New York I’ve mainly seen the inside of RC, the grocery store and a variety of metro stops.

I’m not used to being so integrated in a group and I miss having a bit of transience. Most of my social life has been spent having close relationships with a few separate people, and jumping between their respective friend groups.

Founder House has given me a bit of that. People there are pretty swell as well.

I want to know others on a more personal level
Getting out of the bubble could also just be getting to know RCers on a more personal level.

It’s hard to form personal connections when everything happens in large groups.
It’s hard to feel like a friendship isn’t RC dependent when you’ve only interacted within the context of RC.

I’ve started trying to reach out to individuals about doing stuff outside of RC. My lack of NYC knowledge makes that a bit hard though. I don’t know good places to go or activities to invite others into. All I really have to offer is my time.

I feel weird saying:

Hey! I think you’re really swell and would love to get to know you outside of RC.
I have no clue what is going on in NYC that could serve as a context for that.
But we should look into stuff and figure something out!

That’s sort of how it is now though.

In all honesty, contexts aren’t that important to me.

I’m happy to go for walks.
I’m happy to grab coffee.
I’m happy to go for pedicures. Or manicures! (Let’s get our nails did! 💅)

It really doesn’t matter! I just want to know who you are.

C’est la vie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

Exploring more of my interests
I’m starting to focus on building up my external RC life so I have more to invite others into. Next week is a bunch of events external to RC. I’m excited to see a bit more of what the city has to offer.

There’s tech events, sex-positive events, dance classes, improv classes.

I keep reminding myself how long it took me to feel integrated when I moved to Vancouver. Trying to enjoy the exploration process and not over focus on the destination.

Intellectual 🤓

I’m more focused
Last week I was jumping all over the place looking for people to pair with and projects to work on. Now I’m trying to prioritize things rather then spreading myself too thin.

On Monday I was supposed to pair on a code generator idea. It was overwhelming to try and start something new when I still had so much half started. Instead I had a chat with Rose about my projects. That helped me focus.

That focus has gone towards updating the EpubPress server, javascript client and chrome extension. My goal is to fix server timeouts and add a progress bar. After that I’ll port everything to Firefox.

Once that is all done I’ll jump back into the wonderful world of Haskell (I’m going to understand you IO Monad!).

I’ve felt slow
The features I worked on this week didn’t seem that ambitious. I know exactly how I want everything to work… I just need to do it.

Yet by the end of the week I was only about 1/2 way there. A lot of time went into refactoring/testing old components.

It got me wondering if I’m being too much of a perfectionist. Maybe if I wasn’t worrying about backwards compatibility, testing and architecture it would be done already.

At the same time I’m at RC to be a better programmer. I’m finding the more I think about decisions, the less I worry about them when they come up in the future. Experience cures indecisiveness.

I’m going to continue using EpubPress as a place to experiment with different ideas and not worry how that will effect timelines. There will be tons of time to produce rushed work another day 🤑.

I’ve had more collaboration
I reached out to the RC community and got some feedback on my test suite and server design decisions. Another RCer patiently went through some backwards-compatibility testing with me.

In turn I also got a chance to learn about things others have been working on. Virtual Doms, Chess AIs, Tree Splitting Algorithms, HTTP libraries and Compilers - Oh my!

The more progress people make on their projects, the more there is to see! I might be getting too sucked in and have to isolate myself soon.

Physical 💪

I’m cooking!
I started reading The Food Lab and it’s been really interesting. The grocery store is a bit of a commute from my apartment, so fully stocking the fridge has been a slow process. But getting there!

Need to look at a gym…
Supposedly there’s a gym 15 minutes away from my house. I’ve heard it’s a bit rough though…will need to go and investigate…

The </End>

I’m excited to see my needs alternate and be all over the place in the next coming weeks. Balance is an art! ⚖️