Happened: Growing Slowly
This is the third project update for my project “Happened” and participating in the One Side Project challenge. You can find my previous posts here.
Wow, the month flew by.
My usual time to work on Happened evaporated — and I never figured out how to replace it. This is probably one of the most common killers of side-projects, after not building a habit in the first place: life changes and you have to change with it. I used to have two one-hour slots every other week built in that I could sit and focus on just this, but due to the kindness of a friend I don’t have to be at that appointment most of the time.
So, eight hours a month should have been easy to replace but of course I didn’t realize how much work it would be to find those hours. Combined with needing a particularly tricky change in my code, I found myself putting it off. “Real work” also conspired against me, because I had the opportunity to work on a coding project in Python (my preferred language). This was then at odds with learning Javascript / Meteor / Express and I had the excuse that it was “paid” work.
I did finally manage to link up my revised web client to the now-standalone API backend, but only after deciding I just HAD to do it regardless of my excuses. There’s not a whole lot more technically do be done for the minimum system, but there are plenty of small things to do to make the experience better: finding fonts and sizes that work for the presentation, polishing the transition from whole-list to partial-list or searching for events, making sure that list item can’t get lost despite their tags, etc.
Another upside is that I will be going on vacation the first few weeks of May and will actually have quite a bit of time to work if I choose to. It might not be the best environment to do coding, so I want to line up a bunch of non-coding tasks that I could do — mock up an introduction to the service, write up ideas on how third-party services could integrate with mine, write the documentation for the API and its authentication system. I’m approaching the scary part where I actually have to put it out into the world, and I still don’t know what I need to do to feel “ready”. Will I ever be ready?
“Be not afraid of growing slowly, only of standing still”
Done in March
- Rewrite client code to access API instead of local database
- Added methods to request / terminate API keys, rough signup
- Researched deployment options
- Resisted the urge to write everything in Python
To do in April
- Work on sharing story, at least be able to access another’s list via a special link
- Ensure I have a specific time to work each week
- Spend time on the UI and UX portions of the client
- Brainstorm non-coding project elements I should do in May
And as always, give this article a 💚 recommend if you enjoyed it, and follow One Side Project Challenge for my future updates and other inspiring side projects.
