Unemployment is both a curse and a privilege. One is cursed with economic uncertainty and the lack of basic human needs like health insurance (at least in the United States), while at the same time privileged with a wealth of free time. The question is what to do with this wealth?

For a while, my time was spent participating this educational retreat for programmers called the Recurse Center. Now that I’ve completed the retreat, my days are once again completely unstructured, my calendar free of obligations. For the first few days, I visited some friends from the retreat in Portland (during the record heatwave nonetheless), a rejuvenating experience, but the days since have been less mindful than I’d like. This is a complaint I often have with myself, and I want to try having a better relationship with time, and perhaps through it, I can do more and feel better about myself. (This mentality is dangerously related to one of the many lies fed in society today… more on this another time)

I’m thinking about drawing inspiration from a video game tutorial, of all places. I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch, a popular team-based shooter game, and particularly enjoying this one character called Mercy (who is super amazing wow). I wanted to improve my gameplay with her after having plateaued, and the tip I found the most helpful was not one related to game mechanics, but rather around one’s mentality when approaching the game. The streamer Niandra suggested that one should be more intentional, focusing on just one aspect of her gameplay each play session. The focus can be as simple as dying less (not actually simple), or try to get more use of her specific abilities like guardian angel. Having the focus has been extremely helpful: the specific goals help concentrate my attention into just a few aspect of the rather chaotic gameplay, and also gave myself the license to fail. As a result, I found myself both less frustrated at losing (very common in competitive games) and also improving at the same time.

I want to replicate this intentionality for life in general. Most immediately, I want to try to structure my days into smaller, intentional blocks. Blocks like: sort out health insurance PCP, securing Home Assistant to make the iOS app work, or setup automated testing for a personal project. I’m basically just making calendar blocks for myself, and maybe it’ll work, or it won’t. Either way, I’ll try different techniques like pomodoro and share my results. Thanks for reading.