Getting reacquainted with my inner child these days helped add a more fulfilling dimension to how I approached my present building and learning in public adventures. I have this website project in Curiosettee which I update from time to time, and I also have a lot of main and side quests on the daily that keep me occupied. Both this website and my daily building and upskilling benefited heavily when I began incorporating elements of play.
Playfulness as a Nod to My Roots
My childhood days were not particularly comfortable but it was a necessary crucible for my growth as a person. I remember turning to the pages of library books for comfort all the time, when I needed to quiet my mind. My parents were mostly absent due to the necessity of their work and personal activities, but books and knowledge became the surrogate parent that helped me make sense of myself in the world as I was growing up. In academic activities, I found joy and discovery. I did not feel that I was thin, sickly, or economically disadvantaged. As far as my young mind was concerned, in the pages of a well-written book, I was not an insignificant cog in the wheel but an adventurer who is about to embark on a journey to discovery and learning. My love for learning and reading solidified in this way. As a result, anything with a book with first principles is sufficient material to get me engaged.
Given my inclination to lean towards anything constantly dynamic and progressive, I remember stumbling upon the technology industry coming from a geodetic engineering background. I was extending some functionality in a web GIS application for a disaster management project in 2012, and then I noticed how expansive and how dynamic the technology sector is. I slowly veered out of the confines of my college major into new territory when I entered Python web development and data analytics, and more recently, FinOps. And all those pivots started with a dash of curiosity and an element of fun. I had the inherent joy of discovering something and slowly gaining the means to master it through repeated movements of craftsmanship and systems thinking. It’s like having Lego blocks again or a crochet pattern but this time I was dealing with data points, cost components, and infrastructure.
Back to Basics after Listening to Wise Advice
I recently had a session with my mentor and she advised me to incorporate play and inner child components in my daily activities as a way to romanticize my life. I have since followed her wise advice and it has been truly game changing for me and the way I show up to the world. Up until that time that I was on a video call with her, I had been raw dogging life. I was dryly going through the motions of my To Do list. Somewhere along the way, I became slightly disconnected with the fun-loving side of myself that found optimism and courage in the face of any learning opportunity. The call with my mentor jolted me back to the core of who I am as a person: a growth-loving, self-directed polyglot who is able to romanticize the little things and pave a safe learning space for myself and other people.
Play on the Daily
A week ago, I was privileged to be one of the few people granted a DataCamp scholarship by Data Engineering Pilipinas. I used to have an active DataCamp subscription but I felt pulled to enroll again for newer data engineering technologies like DBT and Snowflake. The scholarship requires that I maintain a daily XP or experience points in using the subscription for a whole year. It is a very fair trade considering the scholarship is valued at $399 for the entire year.
I used both my phone and my laptop to do the exercises. At the same time, I had the mindset on how I can integrate it with existing tasks or work instead of making it an isolated thing that I learn in a learning sandbox.
I also began consuming articles on Medium again. My Glasp account continues to document my learning journey. Outside of DataCamp and other free courses I flagged in my Learning in Public repository on GitHub, I also took a refresher in persuasive copywriting.
In the office I continued to gravitate towards people who loved to upskill. I was able to identify fellow course junkies like me who would get a real treat out of learning resources and we built out a Google Sheet of references together. I would do the work duties but I also allow some leg room for play and exploration in my approach. While I would be typically timeboxing myself strictly in the past, I now find myself benefiting heavily from having breaks and out of the box explorations to the business problems assigned to me.
My latest adventure was a Codex co-created Powershell script that would mass convert all encrypted office documents. The alternative was to do this cumbersome and boring task manually and open thousands of Office files one by one. Because I was able to create and explore freely with fun and openness, I was able to find a way to design a script that would automatically go through the folder contents for me and label and unencrypt my files on my behalf. I was able to share this to other colleagues, too, though I am not sure if they used it. It did not matter much, I was just frankly happy that I was able to do something fun and share it. Whether people use it or not, it’s okay. It’s like building something with Lego blocks and giving other people the liberty to take action or not. I just had the fun experience in the building process of it.
Getting My Pink Back with Play
I also felt the thoughts flowing more freely lately as a result, like a dam of ideas being opened once again. My once abandoned journal is now teeming with ideas. Sometimes I find it hard to sleep when I am overstimulated with ideas and exciting possibilities. But I also learn to ground myself and remind myself that this human vessel needs sleep, nutrition, and hydration for the body to be able to keep up well with the demands of the mind.
For once, it feels liberating to be able to express myself in this way again, to occupy space in this sometimes stifling world. I felt like I am not overthinking things anymore. I am just building and building and building. It’s not a perfect build but it works and it is a product of my creativity and imagination when I design and execute it. I am grateful that I am in this place of privilege where I have the bandwidth and time to execute and experiment accordingly while I deliver my urgent task items with care and precision.
And I know that as I hold room for my most curious and authentic self to get out of its cave and start building with less overthinking, I embody the same things I’d like my own clients to have: a sense of self-agency and clarity that leans towards action inspired by possibilities. I cannot truly give what I do not have, so I water myself with the same thing fused by self-love, inspiration, child-like openness, and a healthy dose of confidence.
In this case, curiosity won’t kill the cat but it will enrich it! In what ways can you incorporate play in your own building and learning adventures, fellow life wayfarer?