Sabbatical Plans

This week is the first week of my 16-week ✨ u n p a i d ✨ sabbatical from my full-time job. I have many grand plans on what I plan to do with this time. And truthfully speaking, I don't have high expectations that I will accomplish all of them, but I hope to make some progress on most of them.

If you're reading this, you probably already know who, how, and why I am. But just in case you don't know me personally, or don't know me that well, here's a quick summary:

• My name is Josephine. At the time of writing this, I am in my early 30s.
• I am a software developer, technically full-stack but I specialize in frontend. I have been working full-time for nine years and I am always tired.
• Outside of work, I like indoor rock climbing, taking naps, and taking pictures of my cats.
• I kept a physical bullet journal for about 5 years. I migrated to Notion, then to Obsidian, so I can access my journal from my phone and can aggregate stats on things like who I eat lunch with the most at work.
• I am a very casual gamer. I prefer games with stories and an ending. But I also like playing TFT when the set includes pink-haired magical girls (or other cute skins).
  • Favorites: Omori, Spiritfarer, Magic Research, Dave the Diver
  • Most recently played: Cult of the Lamb
• At the end of 2023, I achieved one of my life goals of becoming a homeowner (a very modest 960-sqft condo, which is not what I imagined my first home would be, but the housing market was not on my side). I have since spent a lot of time on home automation.

Now that you know a little more about me, I'll get back to detailing my sabbatical plans.

A lot of coworkers have asked what my plans are in the past few weeks, and I've told them:

1. I want to sleep.
2. I want to make a computer game.
3. I want to do some minor home DIY projects, like painting and putting up shelves.
4. I want to learn woodworking.

Sleep

This really encompasses my general health and well-being. I don't think I eat particularly well, and I don't exercise much, and am somewhat burnt out from work, which contributes to poor sleep. Ideally, I get better at feeding myself (this doesn't have to be cooking, but that is the most economical option) and actually exercise (because going to the climbing gym 1-2 times a week for 1.5 hours with lots of sitting is not sufficient or consistent).

Game Development

I have always dreamed of making a game. In 5th grade, I wrote in one of my school projects that my dream job was a video game maker. Once I got to college, I learned that the video game industry is awful and honestly not that interesting to me. But that just means I didn't want to pursue it as a career.

Over the past almost decade, I've had various ideas for games, usually inspired by other games that I played and enjoyed. My old housemate can attest to the many times I've said, "I have an idea for a game!", then proceeded to do nothing about it.
The closest I've gotten is creating an Uno clone during the pandemic to play with my friends because one of them had never played it before, and there was no free no-signup version we could find.

My current plan is to use Love2D and draw my own pixel-ish art. Like the games I enjoyed playing the most, it will be story-based and have things to upgrade. I would say it will probably be somewhere in between a visual novel and an incremental clicker game. I don't expect to create the entire story in the next four months, but I want to at least setup the game framework and implement "chapter 1".

Home DIY

One of the things I looked forward to the most about being a homeowner is being able to make more permanent changes to my home. Instagram reels have deluded me into thinking home DIY is very easy. I'm sure it is not. But it couldn't be that hard, right???

My main project will be painting most of the interior walls. They are currently a beige that sometimes looks yellow and sometimes looks pink. I want something whiter. But not too white. Some might say white is boring with no personality. Maybe they're right and I simply have no personality. But I like white, and white has always been part of my home color scheme. It's simple, and I can let my extensive plushie collection, posters, and other wall decorations add more color. (I might paint the doors different muted pastel colors, but I will think about that much later.)

I also have a very unfunctional closet in the office room that was gifted to me by the previous tenants. It has a shower curtain rod attached to the wall in a... non-standard way. And a single shelf. A. Single. Shelf. I will obviously get rid of the rod, and I want to install some floating shelves so I can actually store things in the closet and be able to retrieve them without playing Jenga.

Woodworking

This ties into home DIY because I also want to construct my own shelves. And make other custom furniture. I don't expect to make any "real" furniture soon. But I want to do small things like extra shelves in the cupboards for plates, a custom utensil tray, and a desk stand to display my desk trinkets.

My apologies, that was a lot of boring words with no pictures.

But fear not, I plan to use this blog to share about my progress in all of my projects. With pictures!

I also hope to share about projects I've already completed, like my home automation and bullet journal setups, because I'm proud of them.