E18: Side Life Balance Issues Have Popped Up

10/07/2024, duration: 10:25

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In this week's episode of Debugging Dan, I discuss my newly coined term, site-life balance instead of work-life balance. I've been not doing that great in my site-life balance and my site projects are suffering. I'm not progressing. And in this week's episode, I discuss why, how that makes me feel, and what I'm going to do to change that. Let's go. Welcome to Debugging Dan, where I share weekly my journey balancing life, a full-time job and site project. I'm Dan, your host. Let's dive in.

Well, let's start with the bad news. There is no Get It Done update this week. The schedule is one week of Get It Done, then another week with a different topic, and then the update for the Get It Done, and then a new Get It Done episode. So, last week, we ran along with Aaron Francis' article on Finish Your Projects, so this week we should have an update to get it done for, but there isn't. And I'm taking this episode to explain why, and with that, I'm coining a new term, site-life balance, which is a pun on work-life balance. And for me, my site-life balance is wacky, for the last week at least, so I've made little to no progress.

I did some social networks investigations, but that was only a few queries to JetGPT creating a table. And I started on my robots.txt crawler project I set up Next.js, and some progress was made there, but at some point, I struggled for an entire evening to create a bottom drawer component, so something that would sit at the bottom of your screen, show some information if you clicked on it at the bottom, it's supposed to pop up, and then show more. And I spent almost an entire evening on it, and it still didn't work, so that was a big indicator for me that something wasn't really right. It's not flowing at the moment for me right now.

And the feeling that I have now is different than what I highlight in episode 5 of the podcast. I'll link that in the show notes, where I was really stuck, and there I was more overwhelmed. And the tips that I have there, amongst other things, is creating a very detailed to-do list and just checking off one item at a time. I have a detailed to-do list, and I'm not able to check off the items. So I spent some time thinking, why is my site-life balance not in sync?

And I think it's because my intention is spread too much. So I have several side projects going on. I'm doing the podcast. I'm trying to grow that. I'm trying to do SaaS. So I have three SaaS projects currently going on, Observalize, Datastore, and Teletron, which are getting little to no visitors at all. And I've started working on an SEO project to get more acquainted with SEO. And what I'm feeling is that that's too much. And besides that, I have a family, which is very important to me. I have work, which is also important. And so I need to make choices.

And I've thought about it. And I think that one of the reasons that I'm feeling out of balance is that I haven't really developed my content creation skill. So I started doing this podcast in May, and I just figured I'd wing it. And it works. I just started doing it, and it's been slowly been improving. I've slowly been upgrading it. And that's good. But I'm now getting to the point that I'm not really improving anymore. I do want to do a lot more stuff, like clipping parts of the podcast and creating new parts of content of that during the week that I can share and have other people engage with it and hopefully inspire people. But I'm not getting that off the ground because I have too little time, but also because it's a new world for me.

I'm not familiar with it, so I'm not sure how to approach it. And that's something that isn't working because I'm not able to progress. I think that's one of the things that's blocking me. And what I need to remind myself of is that these are side projects. These are things that I have fun doing. There is some ulterior goal in getting multiple revenue streams, less income dependencies on one source. That's the same thing. But also having fun, meeting people, socializing, getting in contact with like-minded people. Those are the goals. But short term, there are no real deadlines. It's just about having fun.

And for the past week or past two weeks, there was less fun. And I'm going to change that. And by doing two things, I'm going to continue playing Zelda, the new Zelda on the Switch. So Echoes of Wisdom, which I've been playing for the past week because I really felt I don't want to force it. I don't want to sit down behind my computer and just stare at a blank screen for the rest of the day or the evening. I'm just going to pop down on the couch next to my wife, play on the Switch because things are not really going for me.

Also, not only with side projects but also with the chores around the house. Because I'm not able to get around to all of them. I'm not able to finish things. I'm just not feeling it. So one of the things is decompressing. So I'm going to play, just play video games. And currently, it's Zelda Echoes of Wisdom, which is a very awesome game, which I really enjoy. I'm a big Zelda fan, have been since the Super Nintendo. I've played almost every game that there was. I haven't completed them all, but I enjoy playing games.

And the other item I do want to progress on my side projects is I want to get my content strategy in order. So I want to learn more about the different social networks, how I can create content for it specifically, and also derive content from the podcast, from this video recording, from the audio. So I want to know how I can improve that. And for those that are watching the video, I haven't switched to my desktop view. I'm just, for me, this is also new that I'm recording an entire podcast with only my face camera, which feels kind of naked, I guess. But that's what I'm doing because I feel it's also important to share when things are not going as great.

But I have found a path forward. So it's not, I'm not in a dark place. I was just not able to progress, but I think I found a strategy to do that. So I'm going to get my content strategy in order and that's how to create the content, but also automating because that's something that also combines with coding. I'm also going to look into completing my SEO project for the robots, the THC crawlers.

And what also helps aside from sitting behind the desk is every morning or at least the mornings that I'm not working, I'm taking a walk very early, like a quarter past six or 30 minutes past six, half past six. I think it's called. And it's now autumn, and it's getting darker and colder outside. So I've been walking around here in the neighborhood and around the time that I walk through the fields, basically when I, outside, outside of the village that I live in is that's when the sun starts to come up.

So there are some pretty pictures there. You can see them now. You should be able to see them if I'm able to edit them in, which is also stuff that I'm still learning. And I find it a really calming experience. So I like the cold. So it's like five to 10 degrees Celsius out there. I don't know what it is in Fahrenheit and I walk, up until today, I walked there with my, in my shorts and my short sleeve t-shirt and that's fun. And it really wakes me up.

It's a refresher in the morning. Sometimes I listen to a podcast. Sometimes I listen to music, but I find that that's for me, that's a really good start of the day. And yeah, that's that together with getting my content surgery in order and just decompressing, spending time, gaming, but also with my family. Let's get back on track. If you want more fine-grained update than the podcast next week, follow me on, on Twitter, Instagram, whatever you'd like. Oh, it's not Twitter anymore. It's X, but follow me on YouTube. I might even start sharing some shorts. If I get my content strategy in order, just follow me and I'll publish a new episode next week. Bye.

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