🌱 Active projects
These are the projects I'm actively dedicating time to work on. When I say I'm taking time off to build things on my own, it's to do this!
I compartmentalize these projects as "work" – it's work that I love, work that I'm excited about, and work that I chose for myself! But, still work.
✂️ vrk loves paper: vrklovespaper
I'm making stuff! I'm making software! It's software related to paper and stationery and journaling! This is the bulk of what I'm spending my time on these days.
And I'll be documenting how it's all going in this substack, so subscribe if you want to follow along!
📼 gentle pace: @gentlepace
This is my YouTube channel where I try to help people learn outside of school and to create outside of work, all at a sustainable pace, with pragmatic tips and how-tos that I have personally tried and vetted myself.
Had to pause work on this when other things in my life had to take priority, but excited to jump back in!!
I wrote two explanations for why I made this channel: the fun one, the personal one.
📖 learning & development
Similar to how some companies provide things like courses or education budgets for their employees to continue developing their skills and knowledge, I'm also providing myself time, space, and budget to learn what I feel will serve me in my creative and professional endeavors.
Currently: Catching up on awesome new web technologies I missed while I was doing Swift development for 2 years!
🌱 Active practices
These are habits and hobbies that I actively dedicate time to do.
I compartmentalize these practices as "life" – they are personal practices I am doing for myself. There are overlaps with my practices and my work, because I am trying to align my work with my passions, but they're still separate things.
🇰🇷 korean study
I average 5 hrs a week of casually studying Korean.
️🖊️ journaling
I set aside time on Saturday or Sunday to do a weekly lookback journaling.
🏋️ exercise
Devastated to learn my body needs exercise for it to properly function. I now exercise 5 days a week, 3 days of which is weightlifting 😫😫😫 People who know me know I DO NOT LIKE LIFTING HEAVY THINGS!!! but apparently your muscles like, atrophy if you avoid lifting heavy things your whole life. It's fine, it's all fine.
📓 Semi-active
I still work on these things but don't dedicate time for it, so they go dormant sometimes.
📔 personal blog: vrk.dev
I treat this as my freeform digital sketchbook. I allow myself to post whatever I want here, try out ideas and scrap them midway through, and not worry about whether it's interesting to others or even to myself. It's also my home for when I want to write something online but have no other place to put it.
In other words, this is not the place to look if you want regular, coherent updates on projects I'm working on – my substack or my twitter is a much better place for this! If I end up writing something I think is broadly interesting on vrk.dev, I'll also post it on my substack and twitter, so you won't be missing anything important.
But vrk.dev is a place you can look if you want to see the junk drawer of what's going on in my head sometimes.
️✏️ drawing
I want to get better at drawinggggg aghhhhh but I can't commit to regular drawing practice right now! Too many other spinning plates. So I just despair try to doodle occasionally.
The peak of my drawing skills, continues to be, always, Shark Tank Zine
🧊 Icebox
These are the projects that I've put aside for now.
🍎 everybody study club
I ended up running just one pilot iteration of esc and honestly loved it!
I still think this is a great idea, but I don't have the time right now. Maybe someday in the future I will bring this back.