As you can tell from my absence, my lack of posting, I've had to deal with some down time recently.
In September I had ACL reconstruction surgery. Normally I would have been off my feet for about a week. Unfortunately, I also had a meniscus repair done, this meant that I had to non-weight bearing for a full month.
This was a planned procedure (not the meniscus repair), scheduled a month or so before hand. This gave me the opportunity to plan for my time away.
I let everyone I'm working with know about my surgery, and my expected time offline. Adjusted product schedules, to account for this absence.
That was the day job, what about my side projects? There are no colleagues (for most of them), there are no plans, schedules to keep.
For those projects I was working with partners, I treated them similar to a paid projects and attempted to adjust expectations as well.
For my other projects, thankfully most run on autopilot and I was able to just let them be for a while as I recovered.
Those that weren't able to run on there own, got my attention when I was able to do work, triaging as best I could what needed the most attention.
Physically this was tough, I'm getting back to normal, mentally though it's taking a longer.
Patterns have been broken, streaks have been broken, routines have been broken that will take much longer to re-establish.
I've been trying to get back into the flow I had before the surgery. Return to the time and places I did things before, get back to being comfortable, in the routine.
It has not been easy. Habits can be broken very easily, and take even longer to regain.
I think I'm getting there, getting back into the flow.
It's important to remember that most side projects are hobbies, it's ok if you don't work on them.
A lot of the people who use my side projects follow me on social media, where aware of my medical issues, and have been very supportive of my recovery. Thanks everyone!