Getting Started

Dead, Beat, Dad - Part 1

Wow.

That about covers it.

It’s one of those things. People say that it’s the greatest, most rewarding moment of your life, and they’re right. But it’s hard to understand until it happens. There isn’t much to compare. Now that it’s started, it makes sense.

They also say it’s the most tiring. They’re right about that, too.

I also didn’t anticipate (but really should have) how much there is to learn. To keep track of. It can feel overwhelming, especially when so many of the answers start with “it depends.” Janice and I are taking notes, reviewing notes, revising after realizing that something on day one no longer applies on day four.

We’re getting the hang of feeding. The hospital gave us a handy dandy sheet to track the important bits, like frequency, for how long, from which side, the works. It’s complicated. Not the tracking, but keeping track of what we should do and when. Especially when the rules change day by day. Especially when this is our first time, and we’ll have forgotten by round two.

When I want to organize my thoughts, I write them down. When I want to better understand a system, I design its processes. It’s cathartic.

I think I want to do that here. APT 304 is piloting a new (for us) server-side rendered golang service architecture using templ to generate an htmx application with a generated repository layer using sqlc. It’s going well, and we’re seeing the benefits. Now that I’m comfortable with it day-to-day, I’d like to go back to square one and build a small project with fresh eyes.

Which is why I’m here writing. The paper feeding tracker works great. We’ll keep using it, but I’ll work through these new learnings as I siphon off some of the pressure in the software engineering side of my brain. I’ll track the progress here.

Getting started is the hardest part. I’m excited.