Holiday Break Projects

I’m returning to work today after a nice little break between Christmas and New Year’s Day. I always try to do a few small projects over the holiday break, and this one was no exception. Here’s how those went.

Celebrating Christmas with Family

This is less of a “project” and more the whole point of this break. But I tried to keep my goal of being present with family front-of-mind. It’s far too easy for me to become overwhelmed by everything happening over the holidays and end up missing out.

We had a wonderful time celebrating. With it being Noah’s first Christmas, it was a special one for me. Being a parent on Christmas is just the best, including the work it takes to put things together and make sure all the toys have the right batteries. I wouldn’t trade the look on my son’s face that morning for anything.

Several family get-togethers were had, including a dinner and gift exchange at our house with Katherine’s mom’s family. Hosting is not naturally in my wheelhouse, but it really was a blast having everyone over.

It was a merry Christmas for us and ours. I’ll consider this break a success based on this “project” alone.

Blogging

A break from work meant I had more creative energy to spare for my writing. When I woke up on my first day off, the ideas just started to flow. I ended up with four different articles I wanted to write and publish the week of Christmas, a pace I’d never even considered trying before.

But I went for it, and the ideas actually turned out. I published four days in a row last week:

I’ve never dedicated that much time to writing in a week. It felt amazing to just let my creativity flow. And to actually publish these ideas and get such positive feedback from people who cared enough to read them… I was blown away.

Aside from time with family, this was the best use of my break by far, and it left me itching to write again. (Spoiler alert: I got another article out before the break was over, making this my second blog post for this week.)

Website/Social Media Research

This was the project I was most looking forward to going into the break, and it turned out to bear the fewest results. After thinking about federation, the importance of owning your content, and what I want my space online to look like, I decided to look into different options for hosting my website and social media presence.

The main contender was Micro.blog, a site I have immense respect for. (I even controbuted to Manton’s Kickstarter project to help get the site going back in the day.) I’ve noticed a few people I follow on Mastodon who use their Micro.blog sites for both longform writing and microblogging, and I liked the idea of doing both from a single site that I own.

Upon further investigation, though, I found that the social features of Micro.blog aren’t quite what I’m looking for. Although the site is part of the social web, it isn’t fully feature-compatible with Mastodon. You can’t log in to Mastodon clients with a Micro.blog account, and several key parts of Mastodon, including reposts and favorites, just don’t exist on Micro.blog.

I fully respect the approach that Manton and the team are taking, and I understand the reasoning behind their decisions. But I’m not willing to give up my favorite Mastodon app or features I’ve grown accustomed to, even in exchange for fully owning my social media posts. It’s a shame, but Micro.blog just isn’t the solution for me.

I also did research on some other blog-hosting options and ways I could run my own Mastodon instance. But after looking into all of the options, I came to a very boring conclusion: The setup I already have is the ideal one for me.

Squarespace is a great place to host my website. There are a couple of oddities on the backend that I don’t love, especially when it comes to editing my site on my iPad, but they aren’t dealbreakers by any means. And I’ve put a lot of work into making my site look exactly the way I want it, so I’m going to stick with it.

As for social media, I’m planning to stay on mastodon.social for the time being. I’ve had this hope for a while that Threads joining the social web will allow me to consolidate my social media presence into one account. The more I learn about their approach to federation, though, the more skeptical I become of my utopian fantasy. I’ll probably wait until that shakes out and reevaluate then.

All of that is a long way of saying nothing is going to change. I wouldn’t consider my time wasted, though. At least now I know for sure that I’m running my website and social media the best way for me.

Jetpack Joyride 2

My favorite game on Apple Arcade hosted a Christmas event that I couldn’t resist. I haven’t missed out on any of the game’s limited-time prizes so far, and I wasn’t going to start now. I finished the event in plenty of time and finally filled in the last few missing spots in my sticker book.

I’ve still yet to finish Boss Rush mode, though. It’s my white whale; I’ll keep chasing it.

A Little Bit of Work

It’s funny how giving your brain a break from work can help you subconsciously solve problems you’ve been stuck on for a while. We’ve been without remote access for some time now, which isn’t a huge deal because I was the only person who really used it. But I’ve been wanting to get it going again.

Tailscale has been my stopgap solution. It’s surprisingly simple and works great, but there’s a limit on how many people and devices can use a free account. I wanted something that could potentially scale if need be.

Our network runs on UniFi hardware, and I started digging into their backend to see if I could set up remote access that way. It turns out that they have a very simple VPN offering that I was able to get up and going in just a couple of minutes.

It’s such an obvious solution that one might wonder why I never tried it before. The answer is that I did, but I never had any success with it. The UI did get redesigned recently, so maybe the new look just clicked with me somehow? I’m not sure, but I’m thankful to have remote access at work again.

I wasn’t planning to work over the break, but this project was quick, easy, and enjoyable, so I’ll give myself a pass.

Christmas Cleanup

Everyone has their own answer to the question, “How long do you leave your Christmas decorations up?” My answer is, “Until right before I have to go back to work.”

I know I won’t have the time or energy to deal with it once I’m back in my regular routine, so there’s a short window of opportunity to get the house back in order. Katherine and I got all of our Christmas decorations boxed up and put away in the attic Sunday afternoon, and now our house is a bit more tidy, if a little less cheery.

We also finally put away some maternity clothes and a bunch of newborn stuff that Noah can’t wear anymore. Those piles of laundry were taking up space in my mind—and under my bed—for weeks, so it feels marvelous to finally have them sorted.

Looking back on it, I actually had a productive break. I did everything I set out to do and then some. It was rejuvenating, creatively satisfying, and fun—a beneficial time for my heart, my mind, and my body. I’m thankful for the time away and glad that I used it wisely.

Now I feel ready to dive back into work full-force and with renewed energy. But there will always be a part of my mind planing my next vacation… and all the projects I’ll try to tackle then.