Nuturing Passion

I, like everyone else, would like to work in an environment that intrinsically keeps me passionate about what I do and allows me to pursue my interests in my field. Unfortunately that's not always the case. I know that I've been in situations where I'm just waiting for my end time to come around so I can head home. How does one keep themselves up?

Answer - Pet Projects. I know this may not be new to a lot of people, but it has been the best way I've found to help remind myself why I like doing what I do. Over the past several months, I was not in an ideal environment for myself which had a lot of times left me stressed over what I do. The way I tried to work past it is a pair of pet projects.

Pet projects come in many shapes and forms. I know a lot of people whose pet projects involve advancing their technical knowledge. I do this to an extent in my projects. Though the higher purpose of my projects is to connect myself to different communities of people.

The first project I tackled was a tool to manage data about characters from Final Fantasy Tactics. I implemented it as a tool for my wife and I to use to keep track of character progress. It is hosted publicly at github. Development of this project tailed off after we had moved on to other video games. It was at this time that I took another pastime of mine, frisbee golf, and turned it into a project. The goal was to have it ready for when I started playing again this spring/summer with my wife playing the role of customer. The result was Frisbee Golf Tracker.

Ultimately, the pet projects had reached another goal, to keep me passionate about what I do. Because regardless of what the work day was like, I knew that I could look forward to that half-hour on the train or time late night to work on something I truly enjoyed. It's my responsibility to make that I have passion and take pride in what I do.