What I'm Doing Now
My last /now update was just after I had returned from living in the Canary Islands for the first three months of the year. I'm writing this one from the beautiful island of Lanzarote once again. Unfortunately this trip is only a short one, but it's a nice reminder that there's a blue sky and awesome weather somewhere in the world.
Having returned from the islands back in April with far more memories than money, I was in need of some interesting engineering work. Luckily I found an awesome role in London, which is a perfect mix of training and support for various engineering teams within the organisation. I'm now four months in and I'm really enjoying the diverse set of challenges, as well as spending more time in the capital.
I'm very grateful that my job is enabling me to focus on building an exciting plan for the next nomadic adventure, but predictably time has now become my main bottleneck.
I'm having to say no to lots of things in order to keep a strict routine that balances the various priorities in my life and enables me to continue to make progress with my current goals:
- I've been building a language learning app for a while now. It's a big project and I'm getting very close to a stage where it can escape the clutches of only my own (and a few close friends') feedback. I'm excited to reach that point, but at the same time I'm balancing any expectations of rapid progress with the fact that I'm spending lots of my time elsewhere at the moment.
- I started taking Spanish (and Salsa) classes at the weekend. Both have put me out of my comfort zone and made me feel stupid again, which is exactly what I wanted. It's cool to see that my Spanish is improving, and I even got a few unexpected compliments the last few days, which is always super encouraging.
- The gym has always been my playground for self-discipline, so this one is a bit easier to keep in check. That said, it still takes a good amount of my time and energy every single week.
I'm considering the next 6 months as my “boring phase”. The boring phase is when I show up regardless of the weather, irrespective of if it's fun, and put the necessary time into the things that will accrue and make me better. For that reason, routine and predictability are important to me right now.
One of the few things I am saying yes to is this weekend's Retoso – an online gathering of Esperanto speakers packed full of talks and online social activities. It brings together Esperanto speakers from all over the world and will run in tandem with another major event, the Virtuala Kongreso – an online version of the largest annual Esperanto event that has run since 1905.
Between the two events, there are already almost 1300 people signed up. It's going to be great to see some old friends, make lots of new ones, and spend the weekend speaking one of the most enjoyable languages I've ever learned.
Lastly, I've (re)joined Mastodon as a result of the vast numbers of my early Twitter friends deciding to have a presence there. So far I'm enjoying the small community vibe, and I'm considering using my account to share more development and project updates with you guys. You can find me at @martinrue.