Sabbatical Reflections: Week 6 - Getting Back on Track

After last week's more gentle pace, I felt ready to lean back into more structured work. This week was about rebuilding momentum in areas that matter to me.

I'm easing back into coding interview practice. It's something I'd been putting off but knew I needed to address. I also spent some time updating my resume and applied to a few positions that caught my eye.

The technical project that's really energizing me is building a stop motion book trailer generator for my short stories collection, Minor Movements. I'm experimenting with the OpenAI API to automatically generate scene descriptions from my short stories' text, then using those to create stop motion sequences.

It's a fun way to explore AI integration while building something for my technical portfolio. There's something poetic about using frame-by-frame construction to promote stories about small, deliberate moments.

I also spent time thinking about systems and frameworks, particularly around analyzing project backlogs and task quality. I caught myself falling into a familiar pattern: it's easier to critique existing approaches than to build constructive frameworks that actually work with real-world complexity and nuance. That's a writing habit I'm trying to shift. I am working on moving from "what's wrong" to "what could work better."

On the personal front, my wrist finally healed enough to get back to boxing class, which felt great. I also tackled some overdue car maintenance, doing some of the work myself. There's something grounding about working with your hands on.

Next week: deeper into the API integration and continuing to build sustainable rhythms.