"Holidays In Lockdown"

Posted: 09 December, 2020

We're living through strange times, and I'm sure I'm no different to any of you in having had a bit of a struggle, at points, with the restrictions. My github page tells the story; most weekends I've done some form of work, and in total, I've managed 5 actual week days off since March.

To be fair, I normally work a lot as I'm fortunate enough to have one of my hobbies as a career, but work's normally punctuated with trips abroad (teaching in Finland, mostly) and weekends away. That's been impossible this year. To compound things, our little 2 bed terrace house (in the south east of England) isn't designed for two people to work in. The lounge is my partner's pop-up office, the spare room, mine. Which leaves exactly no where for either of us to go and just "be". Things could be worse, though.

I've noticed the signs of burn creeping in over the last few weeks. Motivation's waning. I'm not happy with a lot of the things I'm making, and I'm spending a little bit longer faffing about, putting things off. So... I decided to take the rest of the month off. But how the hell do you have a holiday when you're self-isolating, and your house is basically converted into tiny offices during the day?

I'm only a week in, but it's turned out to be a bit harder than I expected. I'm refusing to work on my main project, but I have (technically) done some work, helping out with one of the mobile ports of Lumo. I bought a load of games in the Steam sale, and I'm slowly trudging through my backlog (hey! Prodeus is A.MAZ.Ing...). I've also started learning how to play the guitar. Thanks Rocksmith!

I'm still in my office, hiding away while my partner works, but the change of routine seems to be helping. I can kinda feel the ideas starting to flow. I'm not quite as knackered. But a month is a long time and I'm scrabbling around for projects (that don't feel like work) that can be done in a small room.

Next week I'm going to rebuild my A1200 and bounce that up to 3.1.4. After that, not sure.

On the plus side, this year has been the final leverage we needed to start planning some serious changes in how we live and work...

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