Organized and led 5 algorithms lectures, once each Saturday. I tallied my time. One lecture takes 10-16 hours of my time per week. I make slides in emacs, curate problems for the lecture, find real life applications, (re)solve problems so I can decide whether they're suitable, and dry-run my lectures.
I have recorded lectures, but I only uploaded the most recent one to youtube so far. Yay binary search. I definitely had a choke moment. Wish it was shorter…it's actually in two parts.
Getting started took a lot of time too: deciding on the technology to make slides, rendering to PDF, fixing bugs/tweaking things in the export.
I also have been doing individual reach outs to students but I haven't gotten much of a response.
Started a book club and finished a book. And genuinely, I think the people that participated got something out of it.
It was Supercommunicators by Charles Duhigg
Went to an open mic, bombed, and met people that I later talked with outside of the event. Got 5 people's numbers, and I irregularly talk to 2 of those people now! Connected with one person in tech on linkedin but he isn't responsive.
A complete stranger in the crowd went out of her way to tell me they enjoyed me going up there (they were being nice, I had no material).
Got invited to another event by someone I met there, to attend a lesson on standup in LA. I ended up going and was able to listen and give my time and attention meaningfully to others.
Wrote a prototype for a game based off of someone's idea from the open mic. Met up with them to show them. Made short video to show them what I built. I'm glad I learned enough Godot last year to just execute. This could be a deadend, but building it was cool anyway.
Published the first npm package of a sequence heap, added CI, linting, coverage, tests, creative writing, and images. I had working code already 5-6 months ago, and all the things outside of pure execution took more than 2x the time. Learned enough Krita to do some image editing using masks and different brushes. Storyboarding the gif and the subsequent video took a nonnegligible amount of time as well.
Learned enough Krita to make a simple gif for the sequence-heap project. Embarassingly, it took me a long time to make the proofs of time complexity.
Learned enough KDEnlive to do the video editing to explain the sequence heap. Video editing took an immense amount of time. Re-recording is painful. I also don't have a GPU to help me out when rendering.
Had a huge headache because the way it was built for my OS made rendering not work. So I had to find a specific older version to use.
Uploaded my first youtube video on a sequence heap! I sped it up so the speed is 1.2x because I felt I talked too slowly. It might say it was published today, but I had it unlisted for a while.
Published 2 articles on this blog this month (this is the second one!).
Meaningful losses:
A lot of hair ☹️.
A relationship I don't want to repair; a living situation where I am increasingly uncomfortable.
Lost budding relationships with people because I cannot reach them. A car-centric way of life is Southern California. I cannot build familiarity with other people with my lack of mobility. I am absolutely sure I can benefit others, but that means little if I do not show up.
Looking ahead:
Open myself to couch surfing around other people's places. A friend thinks I can use this situation to network. I am not so optimistic.
Or leave America. And live somewhere cheaper for a while. Still unemployed. There is no one who will help me until I can bring enough value to them.
Do an in-person seminar at a community college in July. Two people are interested. I do want to connect better with students, and help them where they are at.
Continue lectures every Saturday in July even if no one shows up. I can at least practice my communication skills, video/audio editing skills, speaking, and problem solving skills. When I will one day need these skills for something else, I can show up for those situations.