Coding slump

I have been in a bit of a coding slump lately. I have had them before but they lasted a week or so at the most, this one is different though as it has lasted over a month. Truth be told I have been a little distracted with some epic fishing, kayaking, and endless projects on my land.

When I do not feel like coding I try not to force myself to continue - I do not want to burn myself out. I read a lot though that coders need to code everyday - even if they do not feel like it. Personally, I think that is important during someone first year coding but I have been coding for going on three years and a half years now. So, I just tell myself that everyone needs a vacation and that I should be okay with it and not be too hard on myself for my lack of motivation.

Right before the slump I was building a NextJS front end site utilizing GhostCMS to manage the content of a novel I wrote. The idea was to charge a small fee to hopefully generate some money as most of my projects have been personal or open source that cost me money. Then I uncovered a bug in the GhostCMS Admin-API and everything ground to a halt.

Uncovering the bug came at a time when I was really questioning my direction as a web developer. My son is about to wrap up pre-school and start kindergarten next month. I had always intended to start my career when he went to school - but kindergarten is only five and half hours out of the day. So, if I get a job I am going to need to find an after school program for him. For me that is a hard decision...

Then I started looking at part-time web development jobs and I was surprised to see how many openings there are for developers at 20-30 hours a week. However, a lot of them were seasonal - which is also a bit of turn off for me. When I was in my early 20's I worked for a temp agency and it was hard because you never knew if today was your last day and then if it was how long until you get placed with another job...

So, the last month or so has been a perfect storm that forced me into a longer than expected stasis. And what better thing to do when you do not know what to do than write about it… Deep down though I know that I have had a long enough vacation. It is time to buckle down and brush the dust off my machines and get back to doing what I love.