What is Linus up to right now?

This is my now page. I treat it as a checkin with myself, revisiting it every so often to see if I have the right focus.

Last updated July 28 2023. Related to, but not the same as, my life todo list.

There's family, of course

I'm trying to find balance. Lily is five months old, Sam is almost six years (starting school after summer!). I love my family, but it's hard to find a good rythm that doesn't leave me and Jule drained at the end of the day. Still, we're in that part of our kids' lifespan - they take a lot of energy and we don't get to sleep much.

A friend of mine said it so very, very well: without kids the good is pretty good, and the bad is moderately bad. But with kids everything is amplified. The good is heavenly, and the bad is excrutiatingly horrible. (Mostly because you're sleep deprived way more often.)

Work takes up a lot of time

I'm currently on "summer holiday", if you want to call it that. Four weeks of vacation, and four weeks of parental leave. It's amazing. So much quality family time. It also brought me an insight: work has consumed more of my mental resources than I would like. Glad to slowly get it under control.

Other than that it is chugging along. The past months it's become clear where I need to lead my current team. That will be the focus until winter, when I go on parental leave. Getting into this team (and Engineering Management) hasn't all been smooth sailing, but I think I'm doing a good job. Been at it for a year in September. Time flies. Not sure if I want to continue doing management, do more of it, or less.

I still want to be creative

Been working on You're a dad more and more lately. I intend to get it done this year. I should be able to achieve that deadline. I hope. I'm confident in the writing and tech side - it's probably the graphics and sound work that might drag on.

Trying to adapt a new creative moniker for myself. In current internet terminology I'm what they call a "maker". I'm using #bohmanbuilds to get into the habit of sharing what I do. Also rebuilt this site to explore who I am from this point of view. The goal is to go to a few maker faires in a few years, without feeling I don't belong. I'm eyeing Maker's Central in the UK and potentially WorkbenchCon in the US.

I'm building out my home office/studio. It's a lot of fun, and the space feels more and more like a creative sanctuary. Working on some small stuff for the room: planning a new desktop out of fine wood, making two signs with logotypes for the wall, and trying to make a Mondrianesque mosaic with LEGO typography. That reminds me - I finished the LEGO Brickheads for my family's current DnD campaign. I should take pictures of those.

Other than that, the usual: learning more tools, building and fixing stuff around the house, having more project ideas than time.

Other personal stuff

I'm reading a lot about ADHD at the moment. I don't have the diagnosis, and I would not get it if I was to be examined. To be diagnosed you need to exhibit strong symptoms that become a hindrance in your daily life, and I'm not there. It is a spectrum though, and I certainly have some symptoms. The book is helping me understand and think about the restless part of my personality. I've only recently realized that not everyone has this itchy crawling feeling if they're sitting still. The current book I'm reading connects ADHD to a dopamine center that works differently. For some, lower levels of dopamine are bound in this center than for other people, leading to the affected person finding the world "a bit more boring" and looking for more highs. Nice perspectives to be had.

I was hoping they would give examples of what people do to minimise the restlessness, but instead they seem to be saying you should guide the restlessness into creative endeavours. Which - surprise! - is what I've been doing my entire life. But it also makes sense that I'm feeling the restlessness more now, when I've explicitly told myself to not have a "big" project (y'know, to have time and energy for a career shift and a toddler). Will continue reading about this for a while. I'll at least finish this book.