Building in Public Week 1: Finding my Place

I’ve just completed my first week of exploring what it’d mean to work on side projects full time!

🔥 Some Highlights 🔥

🎉 Ideas Down Version 1.2 is now live on the App Store (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ideas-down-quickly/id6529524065?platform=iphone)
📈 Just hit a major milestone with the 400th Linear ticket created
🎮 Proud to have submitted my first game, Candlelight, to the Pirate Software Game Jam. (https://sillysideprojects.itch.io/candlight)
📸 Photography Store test prints ordered and on the way

💬 Thoughts on last week 💬

The goal of last week was to figure out “whatever this is” that I’m doing with the next few months of my work life. It’s been quite the roller coaster. What to work on? When to work on it? Where and how? What to prioritize?

Figuring out to work on in the short term has been surprisingly easy. I already had a few projects in motion when I was laid off so I figured I’d start there.

• I committed to getting my name out there as a photographer by posting daily on Instagram for 30 days. That was 72 days ago. Now, I’ve ordered test prints and plan to open my online store.

• I just completed my first game and submitted it to a game jam competition. It's feature incomplete and the code is a bit messy. I'm excited to start from scratch with the goal of publishing it to the Steam Store.

I've been thinking a lot about long-term priorities. During my walks last week, I had a key realization: I want to experiment with various activities to find what is enjoyable, impactful, and profitable. Sharing my knowledge with others has always been a passion, and it seems like a great place to start.

• I used to live stream my creative engineering projects on Twitch and I'm eager to return. My initial focus will be live streaming the process of rewriting the game from the game jam.

• I’ve had this idea for a podcast around creativity for a very long time. It's time to ideate on what that could be.

🎯 Goals for this week 🎯

• Get Ideas Down published on the Android Play Store
• Restart Educational Twitch Stream (https://www.twitch.tv/sillysideprojects/)
• Create and launch online photography store

🔢 The Hours 🔢

For now, I'm just writing out numbers. At some point I'll make a blog where I can add more visualizations and such.

Hours Per Project

Self Promotion 1:34:18
Photography 13:25:56
Spanish 1:44:55
Ideas Down 12:26:10
Job Search 2:42:11
Learning 1:06:51
Game Jam 12:28:28

Hours Per Focus

Social Media 2:10:44
Marketing 3:35:39
Misc 4:02:01
Programming 22:52:34
Photo Editing 5:01:48
Sales 3:54:02
Admin 2:23:36
Product Management 1:04:44
Design 0:23:41

💰The Money💰

I thought it would be interesting to track my spending on these pursuits and see how close I come to covering my weekly expenses with what I earn.

Earnings

0% of Weekly Living Expenses

Expenses

• $80 Android phone for Play Store testing
• $30 Instagram Advertising
• $100 Rode microphone
• $60 Test photography lab prints

✅ That's all ✅

If you'd like to see me document any additional parts of this journey, please let me know!

#sillysideprojects #indiehacker #buildinpublic #webdevelopers #nightsandweekends #learningjourney