It has now been 6 weeks since I retired. What a whirlwind it has been!
I had barely a couple of days to decompress before heading off to San Antonio to catch 4 minutes and 23 seconds of totality during the solar eclipse. Additionally, I played six escape rooms, one of which was the stunning Sherlock Home, an AirBnB containing about 4-6 hours worth of puzzles.
The week after, I visited the set of Mythic Quest, a show about video game developers, and met Charlotte Nicdao. She plays the character that I’ve possibly most ever resembled, an Asian female developer who attended MIT!
In the following weeks, I attended the LATimes Festival of Books, Renaissance Faire, and LA County fair. I also saw The Jive Aces (my favorite swing band!) who are touring the US from the UK, and got a new photo for my collection.
While it wasn’t my intention to reinvent myself as a professional jigsaw puzzler, things have certainly been developing in that vein. My puzzling exploits were featured in an article on the MIT alumni site, I’m slowly growing my jigsaw Instagram (nearly 3k followers!), and I have a number of puzzle video collaborations in the works. More on those when they happen!
The World Jigsaw Puzzle Championships are happening in Spain this September, and I have started training in earnest. I’ve also made baby steps towards developing my wooden puzzle scroll saw skills, starting on a novel draft, and writing my first mobile app.
My initial idea to structure my day like a school schedule, allocating an hour for each activity, was unsuccessful. When I reached flow state, I would spend the next 8 hours working on that single project. I am now trying “Eat the frog” for time management. It has been more effective, but to nobody’s surprise, somehow I still cannot find enough hours in the day to do everything I want to!
Ooh what mobile app are you working on?
Looks like I subscribed just in time! This looks terrific. Have lots of fun!