My Quarantine Challenges: Family, Learning and Expanding Skills
Hi fellow Steemians,
There's all kinds of cool initiatives going on right now across Hive and other places in regards to quarantine-life. I wanted to take part in one about what I am and plan on doing in the quarantine. There's some good parts to this situation we are living in; it's made us rethink a lot of how we do things and that isn't all bad. There is a lot of positive aspects that are coming out of it!
Personal Goals
There's a lot of opportunity to do a whole lot of things from a learning perspective. I have a good career going for me but there's always room to grow in other areas. Before the things really hit the fan, I got another certification in my field so that was good, but kind of left a hole in my weekly routine. I need something to study for again!
I plan on doing more things that help develop my career skills. One of the areas I am focusing on currently is data analytics in programs like Excel and Tableau. I, in some of my recent posts, have shown that I'm really enjoying doing some Excel work. I recently attended a Tableau course and it was pretty awesome to get the data visualization part of it as well, instead of just doing the raw crunches. Seeing the finished product is a lot of fun in my opinion, and lets you get creative with how you display it to the end user.
I am going to be looking at learning more skills in Excel, specifically around components like Power Pivot. I am also trying to get better at things like Power Query, which I use on an almost daily basis to help transform my data.
My measurable goal will be to write at least one post, hopefully two, about the things I've learned with Power Pivot and how I can utilize them for a wider perspective.
Tableau has been a really cool piece of software to start to learn how to use. In times like this where everyone is looking for data and data visualization to better understand things, I think getting good experience with software like Tableau is critical in the online world we are living in.
The measurable goal for me is to try and take some of the COVID-19 data and make some cool visualizations of it from scratch and share how I did the process. The training I went to went over a lot of best practices and methods they can use to transform data in a meaningful way, so I am hoping to continue that and also show some different capabilities that may not necessarily be what someone is looking for, but a cool way to show off some of the software.
Miscellaneous work goal
Another component, though not really something important per-se, is I have been very good about keeping my work email inbox clutter free. I tend to let things pile up and then am trying to crunch through things, to the chagrin of the limited time I've got in a work day.
I recently learned of a concept of working on the one thing that is really bothering you at work and trying to get some headway on that. You can finish other small tasks as they come in but if you have a list of 10 things to do, knocking the 1 off that's really the biggest thorn to you is a great thing to do in order to feel accomplished and on-task. I've been able to work on and complete things that have been on the back burner for some time and it feels good to make progress at closing them out.
One of the really beneficial things that has happened for me during this whole scenario, is that I get to be home 24/7. Where we live in Massachusetts, I commute 40 miles one way to work, being 80 miles a day. That's a considerable distance that many people wouldn't be able to deal with. Living in such an expensive state though, it's par for the course for many of us.
Our son has really enjoyed having me home, albeit working, every week day. I know that when I go back to work where I won't be home all of the time he's definitely going to cry and ask where I am. I also haven't had to go to my part-time job at all since this all started, so that is two or three more days a month I'm at home rather than working. It adds up!
I've been able to spend an hour or so each morning and several hours in the evening before we go to sleep, spending time with him, playing with him and being much more present than I was before because I'm not wasting spending 3-4 hours a day commuting. I still struggle with times where I have a need to get away and have a few moments to myself but I've got a much deeper understanding of the things my wife, @ssiena, the professional mom, has to deal with each day. It's a lot different than one can imagine!
My goal is to continue that play time every day with my son and the quality time with my wife. It may sound corny but I'm glad that I have a good relationship with my wife in times like this. We have some friends that purposely stay very occupied so they have little time at home as a family. We've thankfully been pretty tight knit and independent of that type of behavior. We are always doing activities together because of the relationship that we've got.
In playing with him recently, we've done a fair amount of building of LEGO's, trains and other toys (that I plan on sharing in some posts, an added bonus for me). These types of things spark the creative nature in him so it's a great component of home-schooling as well as getting quality time with him and fostering his imagination rather than just sticking him in front of a device to keep him quiet.
One of the other goals I have, that I have been succeeding at, at least this week, is posting more on Hive! I've been slacking a bit on it, busy playing Splitnerlands and being bombarded at work with various requests but things are hopefully getting to a point where I can start to post more on Hive. I'm really hoping that I can post at least twice a week. Previous to this, I've only posted once a week or once every other week due to obligations and lack of time. Since I've got more time, I'm hoping to be able to post a heck of a lot more than I was before.
I've also got some good stake on here that I didn't necessarily have previously. I got into the habit of delegating my stake to others to get rewards. It was ok and worked for a while but I've taken most of my stake back except for a select few and now have a lot more voting power! I've been trying to spread that voting power around to more accounts than before, giving them some rewards and getting curation rewards for myself. I'm going to try to do my own "pay it forward" type of thing and will try to visit the new page and look for lower reputation accounts (unless they are getting downvoted for a reason) and give them a vote and comment. One thing that I really enjoyed in my early days here was someone searching out my content or finding it somehow and giving it some love and engagement.
This post now got a lot longer than I anticipated so I'm going to stop it here lol.
- What are you doing for your time stuck in quarantine (at least unless you're living in China, where they just lifted the quarantine I've read)? I would like to know! Share something with me in the comments!
This is my entry for the quarantine challenge hosted by Blocktrades and OCD, you can find the post here if you would like to enter!
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