Almost spring, despite everything

I've been trying to get out and see people I don't know well more, because I think the coming decades are going to be a political nightmare and "community", or the ability to more or less get along with relative strangers, is going to be key to making sure my country doesn't become the fourth reich. On a related note, Mags attended her first community board meeting tonight virtually which was cool. I'm becoming very enthusiastic about boring, slow-moving, respectful government operations. I've spent my whole adult life being more of a fan of the idea of community than its practice, so I'm just trying to take baby steps where I can now.

I attended Side Project Saturday the last two weekends, and it's been a lot of fun. I got my map post done during the first one, and basically finished up v4 of my website during the second (I wrote this post about that afterward). Sitting down with my free time and reading and writing has felt rewarding this month.

Free time is scarce because of the two major commitments of my life right now: my app and my puppy.

We got Waffle in October and raising him has been Hard. He's a good dog, they can just really be all-consuming. I've felt scattered and under-rested since we got him really. A big change came this past week when we made the tough decision to give up on crate training. I feel torn about it, but Waffle just likes to switch between his little bed and the floor a few times throughout the night, and now he can do that without asking us for permission. I'm actually getting a solid night's sleep again.

The app is getting there. We have to get a product that users are willing to pay for out there, and we're having to let go of so many things we wanted to get in before a V1 product launch to get there in a reasonable timeline. I'm enjoying spending time squashing bugs this week. I'm muddling through our feature tree editing flows, relying a lot on the great work of my teammates like Jon and Pierre to figure out this new pattern. It's all very hard, and I am eager for the days when we understand the system we need well enough to really run wild with it. It feels great breaking new ground on hard problems, but it's almost a joke on our team how many hard problems this company is trying to tackle at once, and it feels less fun trying to invent a plane while you fly it than "just" trying to build one after a while. I think I'll particularly enjoy the V2 phase of Modeling App, should I get to see it.

- frank, 2025-03-05