Jonathan Christian

What I'm Doing Now

Here I keep an up-to-date list of the things I’m focusing on and what I’m doing. Inspired by Derek Sivers.

Updated on October 21st, 2024, from my home office in Humboldt County, CA.

Project Omega

With the release of Rails 8, the urge to create a Rails monolith turned PWA is simply too alluring to pass up. I’ve been refining an idea for a small one-man app with potential to scale for awhile now, so I might as well strike while the iron’s hot. I still have my usual web development work to stay on top of, so this is something I’m working on early in the morning and later at night when I have time.

This is the first project I have ever worked on in a vacuum. I’m purposefully not telling anyone about it until launch so that I can avoid any outside influence. I’m referring to it as “Project Omega” for now since I don’t have a real name for it yet. This temporary name has personal meaning to me as well, so it seems fitting.

Working on this site

While the static site generator I built that powers this site is working, I still need to work on deploying it myself. I’m using Netlify to deploy it for now, but the end goal is to host it on my own VPS and set up my own deployment pipeline. I also need to get an email for this domain set up and build a simple API that lets people sign up to be notified via email when I publish new posts. I haven’t been able to work on the site as much as I’d like to due to work. Now that I’m working on Project Omega as well, it might be a little bit before I get to finishing up this site.

Reading through my backlog of books

A few months ago I realized that I have way too many books. A good chunk of these books have been in my possession for six or seven years without being read. I made a rule for myself that I can’t buy another book until I get through this backlog. Once I’m done with a book, I decide whether or not it’s worth rereading again down the road. If it is, I keep it. If not, I put it in a box for donation. I’ve gotten through about 39 books so far—about 15 of those went straight into the donation box because they don’t interest me anymore. I still have 4 books remaining. My goal is to get through them all by the end of next month.

Being more mindful

Recently, I’ve been trying to eliminate distractions from my life and focus on the things that matter. I’ve found that if I don’t actively work on this, I end up in a state of fractured attention where I don’t accomplish anything worthwhile. The modern world is full of countless distractions, so I’m treating this like a marathon rather than a sprint.