Nick Frostbutter

First week off in 2022

Nick FrostbutterNick Frostbutter
Mar 10, 2022

I have been working non-stop for the past 2 months. I needed a week off. From coding, from Twitter. Just time to relax. Take a breather.

After pushing hard the first 2 whole months of 2022, publishing the first version of other.link, I am ready to take a bit of a break.

So I decided to take almost all of last week off (from my indie hacking). It was really nice. Life seems to go by slower. I'm focusing on lots of thinking and doing some low key writing. In fact, I finally wrote up the article on the 24 things I learned deploying to Vercel the first time. (I have been meaning to write it for almost a month now)

I am glad I decided to make the smart mental health move and taking this week easy. I have been grinding these last 2 months, almost without a break. It was a good two months, but it was mentally tiresome.

I understand why loads of smart people work in a "cooldown" period as part of their project/business plans. So this is my cooldown.

What's next?

During this "cooldown" period, I have been thinking a lot. Mulling over which project I am going to focus on next.

I have been considering a few different projects, with very different timelines and feature sets, for my next project.

  • log.fm - a fairly ambition podcast themed app, with a goal to make people’s podcasting experience more personalized and social (for both hosts, guests, and listeners)
  • boomerang.link - the simplest and likely fastest to complete a MVP. Basically just a large refactor
  • a blockchain game (no clever name for it yet) - I am VERY passionate about this project at the moment. But it would have the largest technical and time hurdles for me to tackle
    • I have never made a game. I have never made a blockchain product.
    • But, I have broken ground on a game. shhhh. don’t tell anyone.

Which should I do? I would be happy to hear your thoughts. DM me @nickfrosty

A real vacation coming up?

On top of all of these thoughts, I am taking my first travel trip since moving across the country (for work) back in Jan 2020 (aka right when COVID hit the US). The wife and I will be driving a few hundred miles to see close family. Nothing too major of a trip, but something I am VERY much looking forward to.

As I right this, I have under 2 weeks until that trip. Which I will be nearly completely disconnected for ~5 days. And knowing my brain, I will really struggle to get forced out of a groove on a new product. Even worse, I will struggle even harder trying to get back into a groove after.

So this is my plan until then: keeping thinking about future projects. Start the refactor on boomerang.link. I am fairly hopeful that I can get the new version live before I start my 5 hour drive.

So that’s the plan.

PS: When I get back from my trip, I will still have almost 2 weeks of time off the day job to make hella progress on product!