/tinyletter

The Programs of the Week I Broke My Streak

This Week’s Program: June 20 - June 24

After last week’s joyous celebration, this week feels like a clunker. For the first time since beginning I unwillingly broke my code streak. Previous breaks were conscious decisions. This week was harried and sloppy. It’s frustrating. I have to fight back an immature urge to throw my hands up in the air and say “This is all fucked” and use this slip as an excuse to abandon the entire practice. That would be my tendency. A deliberate, repetitive practice like this is designed to overwrite the typical tendencies of the practitioner. Therefore it’s important that when the practice slips not to fall into the all too familiar and comfortable habit of avoiding the work.

The coding practice has, if anything, reinforced other parts of my life. When I feel like a failure and I want to throw my hands up and admit defeat and say “This is all fucked” and go back to a comfortable sedentary existence it’s important to reflect on the practice. Making a deliberate habit of writing code has taught me to make a deliberate habit of living. Accepting the breaks, carrying on, taking each day as a new opportunity to improve. Some weeks are shit. That’s no excuse not to keep shipping.

That got heavy for a weekly coding newsletter.

I’m not going to link commits today. The code I wrote wasn’t all that intersting. Mostly I’m just reading a little bit of the CloudFormation docs each day. Each day I learn a little bit more and add some fields to the JSON template. I removed the Packer and appspec.yml templates, and am devoting all of my energies to CloudFormation, learning a ton about AWS in the process.

Thank you for subscribing. I appreciate that you dedicate a chunk of your inbox and your attention to my practice.

– Mark