I’ll never confuse “intense hobby projects” with “work”. I know that my solo coding and journalism pursuits are even less “work-like” than many volunteer gigs would be. There aren’t any unpleasant consequences for other people if I screw up.
That said, my hobby writing and programming the past few weeks felt closer to “work lite” than most of the other things I’ve done since I retired.
Why?
Our local elections!
As I mentioned in the last edition, I spent several weeks writing computer code to display our local election results as interactive tables and maps. I’m happy to report that it all worked!
Things were a bit delayed when one of the races choked. However, everything ended up online in a reasonably timely manner, which was more than good enough. (Article continues below image)
I ended up with almost the same sense of satisfaction as when I’d finish a demanding project at work – but with considerably less stress. I wasn’t coding for the Boston Globe, or CNN. Massive audiences weren’t hitting refresh on my site, wondering where the data was. There wasn’t any blowback because my interactive tables and bar charts were up 20 minutes later than I expected.
But even without workplace pressures, I’d still tackled something difficult (for me), and it was rewarding. Somewhat to my own surprise, I no longer need a high-stress environment to feel the glow of accomplishment in areas adjacent to my former career.
The tables and graphs weren’t the only piece of this project. I also tried to write about the election a bit like I would have in my local news reporting days. I loved covering elections when I was a newspaper reporter. Last week, I was working at a much smaller scale, focusing largely on my neighborhood races instead of the entire community. Still, I tried to be first with some news, which meant going out into the field and writing on a tight deadline (although not conducting the candidate interviews I would have in my newspaper days).
The breaking news adrenaline was pumping!
I went with a neighbor to one of the polling places shortly before the polls closed, so we could get several precinct results when they were announced a bit after voting ended. I had my laptop with me, connected it to my cell phone Wi-fi, and sent out an email blast to my newsletter list with the partial results less than 20 minutes after hearing who won each precinct. I also posted those partial results on my website, and a couple of social media accounts. And fed them into my tables and charts.
Sure, I would have enjoyed working with a team, and having a bigger audience for all that effort. But the nice thing about tacking this as a retiree? I could do as much or as little as I chose.
And, if it was exhausting, I could take the rest of the week off 😅
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