The lockdown has been a huge learning opportunity for me and I'm extremely grateful for all that happened to me. Here are some of my observations, opinions etc..
Personally I find happiness in learning new things. The joy of learning something and then being able to apply it to make cool stuff is inexplicable. I started learning web development and programming. Now I feel like I have in my hands, a power that I didn't know I would ever have.
Starting 100 days of code on Twitter urged me to cater time (at least an hour a day) to create something. Giving a name to this venture and giving that space for my creative muscles to grow was one of THE BEST DECISIONS I ever made in my whole entire life and I'm not even exaggerating.
100 days of code taught me discipline, at least to a reasonable degree. I cannot say that I'm a 100% self-disciplined person all the time. I'm actually talking about the order and meaning I had in my 8 months at home, more than I'm talking about following a strict time table.
Experimentation is a life line to keep me going in WHATEVER IT IS I do!! If I'm not experimenting and challenging myself, I'm probably going to stop doing the thing altogether. The adrenaline rush that I get knowing that I'm working towards something different, something that will make me proud in the future is unbelievably amazing! I started experimenting with myself. I started learning new stuff, started experimenting with different mediums while making art, started dancing daily, started experimenting with various different time management and organization techniques, started looking for ways to get my life back together(in academics), started going to meetups and gave my first talk at one, started collaborating with other devs on Twitter to create useful stuff.... Looking at this list, I never could've imagined doing all this 8 months ago. It all feels like a dream that I do not want to come out of!!!
One big change that happened to my daily routine was using Social media and interacting with strangers. I started using Twitter in April when I started doing 100 days of code. In the beginning there were just 3-4 people who interacted with my tweets, but then slowly more and more people started noticing my regular tweets and started to encourage me with their kind feedback on my work. Slowly I formed a good circle/community there. It was via Twitter that I got my first speaking opportunity at a meetup. It was via a kind person on Twitter that I got my first freelancing opportunity. It was because of one negative person that I understood how to stand up for myself. I can't tell how insanely helpful majority of the people there are!
Because of the courage I got from learning in public and speaking to more people on Social media, I also got the courage to put my thoughts out there and that's one of the reasons I could start my very own YouTube channel and also write so freely in this blog. Here I filter my thoughts out a little bit so that I don't talk much about a few things that I've decided not to talk about, but at least I'm doing something to encounter my fears every day.
I've also learned about freelancing from people on Social media. I'm not very experienced in it, but I've at least let that idea of uncertainty and experimentation enter my head. Otherwise, I never entertained so much uncertainty into my brain since I'm an avid over thinker. Also I've been learning about Indie hacking these days. Sounded to me like another fancy idea that I might dismiss, but the more I hear about it, the more I'm getting convinced that it might be a direction that I want to go in, at least for now. I'm not here to talk about the future, "five years from now" or "ten years from now"...but at least for now, I'm fascinated by this idea. I actually have a special idea to start my Indie hacking journey too, not that a lot of people know about it, it is still in the beginning stages, more on that on another day!!
Another thing that I learnt that I'm interested in is Economics. This is very weird to me, since I never really liked it or explored it before. But the subtle touch of human psychology and Mathematics was enough to keep me going with exploring this lovely subject.
The last thing that I can think of from my experiments in lockdown, is contributing to Open source. I finished making 4 pull requests to 4 Open source repos and all of them got merged on October 9, 2020. Open source was like a beast to me that I never thought I could tame :D But eventually I put on a brave face and started with it. It resulted in me having a really good time on GitHub. I'll talk more about it in this week's YouTube video.
Book highlights
From today, I'll start this new section to record a few noteworthy moments while reading a book on the previous day. I started re reading "The 5 AM Club" by Robin Sharma yesterday night. Here are a few lines and quotes from it that stayed with me.
Living the same week a thousand times and calling it a life.
Many of us die at 30 but are buried at 80.
The celebration of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings started only after his death. His drive to produce was not inspired by the ego fuel of popular applause but by a wiser instinct that enticed him to see just how much of his creative power he could unlock.....
....the part of you that clings to fear must experience a sort of crucifixion so that the portion of you that deserves high honor undergoes a kind of reincarnation. (Pure beauty in this sentence!!)
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die......
Closing thoughts
People reached out to me yesterday after reading my post and said some really beautiful things. Thank you so much for that. Means the world to me! I'm not so negative always but those words were buried inside my head and thought why not let them out. That's it. This post was a good remedy to yesterday's negative rant I guess. Feels good after writing this. Fine then. See you tomorrow. Bye!