Start of the Week Update - 005

By A.A. Lopez

    Been a second, huh? Well, I'm finally back from a well earned vacation. One that wasn't tied to any family tragedies, mental/emotional breakdowns, or happenstances beyond my control. Just a relaxing time away from work and focusing on just being with family and sleeping past 6 in the morning (which is honestly very hard to do no matter how late I went to bed).

    So what does that mean for me and these next few weeks? Well if you read the previous "Building Up" journal entry you saw all the things I'm trying to learn to show off to actual hiring managers, with 9 roles in total to try my hat at. Then on top of that we still have all the other projects I have going on, so I think the best thing before we layout what this week will entail is layout what's pulling me in every which direction.

The 9 Roles: So I have 9 roles that I'm trying to emulate with the help of AI being my boss and giving me items to work on. These roles are: Creative Lead, Production Designer, Copywriter, YouTube Strategist, Podcast Producer, Creative Director, Game Narrative Designer, Creative Technologist, and Researcher.

Right now the ones with the most work done has been Creative Lead and Production Designer, and I still need to figure out the best methods to tackle the other roles. But for now I think I'll stick with those two.

Workplace Projects: Not the best name for them, they're more like projects that will help in the workplace, but I digress. These are the Caps Cleaners (2 now), The On Screen Detector, Multi-Spreadsheet Parser, and the Logger Extension.

All of these took a backseat when I went on vacation, so I'll need to take my time and look back on what is what, and how best to approach them. Most likely starting with one of the Caps Cleaner and with the Logger Extension.

Personal Projects: These would be the ones that I'm doing for myself, and for the wider world with no intention of just being portfolio fodder. This would be Project://JUNO, the two audio series, the Bob Ross inspired horror video game, and the wedding officiant business.

It's nice that a few of these are pretty heavy in their workload, though part of me thinks it's too little. Until I realize that I'm saying that about making a dating app and a full ass video game, on my own. Scale is not something that comes easy to me...

    So those are the projects laid out. No wonder I always feel burnt out, look at how much I'm trying to do on my lonesome! I really got to start giving myself some slack on those days where I do nothing. Sure I could argue that, "No! You sitting on the couch scrolling TikTok and YouTube doesn't help anything when you could just have it as background noise as you work on any one of these NINETEEN projects." Seriously, do I think I'm Superman or something.

    Anyways, let's go ahead and get into the week and see what might be the best way to use my time getting readjusted to work and self improvement:

• Monday
• Adjust Logger to export CSV files, that currently is a dead button
• Adjust the IMDb scraper in the Caps Cleaner Reduced to show the list of names and allow you to delete them
• Check IMDb to see if the scraper tool is still functional or if that might need a rotating update
• Tuesday
• Record the lines for the Creative Brief for "Voices in Transit"
• Organize desktop folders [REMINDER - Make sure any items that connect to anything currently being edited is updated in their associated software]
• Wednesday
• Office Day - Just do your best
• Watch the latest ep of Cloudward, Ho! [Get a bag of salad as a snack]
• Thursday
• Check out Project://JUNO [UI mockup is looking good, might want to finish up pseudocode]
• Work on the 3d Modeling for the Botanist's Study
• Friday
• Edit the lines for "Voices in Transit"
• Watch the new eps of Dan Da Dan and My Dress Up Darling
• Play a video game (maybe get BitCraft Online)
• Saturday
• Have fun, need it when the world feels like it's always ending

    Honestly, this feels like a good way to put this list together. It's not keeping me to much of a schedule, but the outline helps, and makes me feel like even if I don't accomplish everything, at least I know I'm trying. We're getting closer to how this should look.

    With everything going on that I really don't want to think too much about right now, making these small wins, these small tasks, gives some type of agency I'd probably feel lost without. So I'm going to keep trying, and let's see if it's worth doing. See you in the EoW Update.