Taking a Sabbatical

The point of the sabbatical is that I don't have any goals, but I'll use this task to share my experience. Similar to what I did in my recent trip to Japan.

In a way, this will be a simulation for my retirement (which is definitely decades away 😅). In my recent mini-life in japan, I divided my trip into 2 distinct chunks: 3 weeks working remotely, and 3 weeks on holidays. This time, I intend to blend the two, and see what my life is like when I don't have to work for a living. Honestly, I don't think I'll be on holiday mode all the time, because I do enjoy my work and I don't like the idea of spending months without programming. But I also won't be traveling alone, and both of us will be unemployed, so I'm sure that will skew our tendencies.

The current plan is to spend most of August in Spain, which is usually a time where most people around here is on holidays, and fly to Asia in early September. We don't have many plans beyond that, and we'll probably fly to wherever is more convenient. So far, Singapore seems like a good starting point.

It's been a month since I started the sabbatical, and so far it's going well. Being August, and the first month of the sabbatical, it felt like holidays as usual. But I'm happy to say that I've also been doing some coding, and I haven't been completely afk.

My intention is stil to blend the two, but I've decided that I'll separate these updates in Life stuff and Tech stuff. That way, if you're only interested in the tech stuff, you can skip all the ramblings about my personal life.

Life stuff

As I'm writing this, I'm still in Spain. But the preparations are made to leave for Singapore on September 6th (this Friday). I'll be spending a couple of days there before moving to Malaysia; and so far, I don't have any plans beyond that.

This past month has been pretty chill overall. I spent some time at home, did some mini-trips around Catalonia, and went camping for a week in Asturias.

That last one was interesting, because it was my first time camping by myself (I actually did it with my partner, but I mean without parents). It's something I've wanted to do for a while, but for one reason or another we always stayed in hotels or albergues. I'm very attracted to this type of lifestyle, because I do agree that we have a comfort crisis. I also started reading The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, which has been excellent so far. So camping and doing the Camino de Santiago have been very valuable experiences. But always that I've done these, it's been completely divorced from my work because I never bring my laptop along. I guess the real test will begin in Asia, because this time I intend to do it, and it'll be for an extended period of time.

Right now, I'm going through a mix of excitement and anxiety. Excitement because I've been looking forward to this for a long time, and anxiety because I worry too much about the future and "planning stuff". But whenever I think about it, I realize I have a priviledged life without any real problems. I have to learn to live more in the present!

Tech stuff

Whenever I thought about my sabbatical in the past, I assumed I'd have infinite time to do everything in my TODO list. But of course, that didn't happen. In fact, I've realized something. When you say you're in a sabbatical, everyone around you also assumes you have all the time in the world, and they don't respect your time as much. However, if you say you're self-employed (even if you aren't earning a single cent), people take your "work time" more seriously. So maybe this whole sabbatical thing was a mistake 😅. But I still think it's an experiment worth pursuing, we'll see how it goes.

All of that to say, that I no longer have any hopes of making any real progress in this sabbatical :/. But not to sound too grim, I found something better: building Proofs of Concept (or "Spikes" as some call them). There are many ideas I've had in mind for ages, but never started because the task seemed too daunting. But this month, I gave a couple of them a chance and I was pleasantly surprised.

One of those has been building a Solid Server from scratch. This is obviously not something I'll complete in the sabbatical. In fact, it's one of my ideas for a full-time project. But following the spirit of doing whatever I feel like, I just started typing away. And I got it working in a single day. I'm not sure how far I'll take this, but I'm very excited about it and I may continue tinkering with it during these months.

Something else I worked on was animations. For a while, I've heard from many people I admire that Framer Motion is one of the few reasons why they aren't using Vue (such as Josh Comeau and Adam Wathan). And since I started taking Emil Kowalski's course on animations, I decided it was a good time to start playing with this. So I created a library (for now a folder in a project) called Vivant. Again, this is not something I will finish in the sabbatical (or maybe ever), but it was fun to start tinkering. Ironically, it wasn't as easy as implementing a Solid Server from scratch, but I've already implemented a couple of animations in Focus and it seems to be working well:

I'm entering the 3rd month of my sabbatical, and I can officially say that I'm growing tired of it 😅. I know, I know. A guy complaining that he has too much free time, give me a break. But that isn't the problem. This is the first time I've been living as a "Digital Nomad", and I don't like it :(. It's fine for a couple of weeks, but I've been traveling for almost a month now, and I miss a lot of my routines. That's not to say that I'm not enjoying it as well. But I'm certain that this is not something I'd like to do in the long term... at least not like I'm doing it now.

Life Stuff

As I mentioned in the last update, we landed on Singapore on September 6th. I'm now writing from Pattaya (Thailand), and we traveled here on land (buses, trains, etc.). Crossing Malaysia, and stopping along the way. So far, we've been to 8 cities. Which isn't a lot compared to other times we've travelled, but our lifestyles have been quite hectic. In fact, the only period I've felt "at home" was the 7 days we spent on an Airbnb in Kuala Lumpur.

Again, I want to emphasize that I'm enjoying the trip (even though you may not feel it from my writing 😅). The trouble is that I'm experiencing an overload of stimulus. I miss the quiet times at home, I miss cooking my own meals, and yes, I miss "wasting time" watching TV Shows and movies. One of the most worrying things is that I can see how my health is deteriorating :(. Again, like in my trip to Japan, I'm finding it difficult to find non-animal sources of protein (or healthy options in general). And I haven't been working out nearly as much as I should.

But if I had to pinpoint the root of all evil, that would be my lack of time affluence. Again, the same as in Japan! Which is totally self-imposed, so I'll have to make an effort to slow down and avoid the temptation to "go out and do things".

Anyways, that's it for my ramblings, sorry that you had to read that.

So, we landed on Singapore. Besides being quite modern and extravagant (maybe some would call it "artificial"?), I really liked the mixture of cultures. Other cities I visited had similar vibes (Barcelona, without going too far), but Singapore really felt like a melting pot of different cultures. Unfortunately, we only spent a single day, so I'm looking forward to going back at some point.

Malaysia surprised me in a couple of ways. I didn't expect most people to speak English (which shows how little I knew about their history). And overall, it was very easy-going. I was also surprised at the number of malls (also in Thailand). We definitely don't have as many in Europe, and I don't remember seeing so many in Taiwan 10 years ago. In some ways, I like malls, for all the obvious reasons. And I love going to the cinema. But I also despise the consumerism and blandness of it all. Unfortunately, we end up going more often than I would like for their convenience and ubiquity. We've also visited a lot of temples, food markets, and other attractions. One of the highlights of the trip has been visiting some tea plantations in Cameron Highlands (did you know that tea plants live hundreds of years and are harvested all year long? There are even thousand years old in China :O).

In Thailand, in contrast, cash is king and English skills are more of a rarity. But I also enjoy the quirkyness and novelty of a different culture (though I'm not melding in their daily life as much as I'd like). As expected, there are a lot of TukTuks around (there is even an "Uber for TukTuks!"). And I'm feasting on coconuts and mangoes (again, probably not too healthy 😅). We also attended a cooking class and learned to make a Sour & Spicy soup, which I'll certainly try to replicate at home (though I'm not sure I'll find the right ingredients).

Finally... Durians. They are everywhere, and despite having travelled to other Asian countries in the past, I almost didn't know of their existence. I'm sorry to say that I don't like them, but people around here seem to love them.

And that's mostly it for the life updates! Here's some pictures from the trip:

Pictures

Tech Stuff

This month, I've been pretty consistent spending an hour or two in front on the computer every day. Unfortunately, I don't think I've done a single day of full-time work, so I haven't practiced too much flow and I miss it tremendously :(. Again, it's mostly self-imposed and I'll have to make an effort to slow down. Now I see what they mean about the dangers of having too much freedom!

Ironically, something that I've been doing a lot is reading. What years of routines and timeboxing didn't accomplish, commuting has. I've spent a lot of time in transit, so I've been catching up with books and articles from my lists.

I've also managed to get some things done. First of all, I finally submitted my proposal for NLNet! I initially planned to apply for the deadline of December 1st. But after getting some tips from previous grantees (shout-out to Sébastien from ActivityPods and Niko from NextGraph), it seems like it was more sensible to do it now if I plan to start working in January. I submitted 3 proposals, even though I only intend to work on one, because I'm keen to hear what they have to say about the different ideas. They are essentially the ones I talked about in my blog post, but more fleshed out.

There's also been some developments in the world of Solid, and I've been participating in the discussion (TLDR; Inrupt released a Wallet Application they claim to be compatible with Solid, but I don't think it has anything to do with Solid and it's actually a proprietary solution). It really is a bummer, and I don't like to be the portent of negativity. That's why I was mostly neutral, if not positive, in my previous commentary on Inrupt. But this crossed the line, because it was misleading to people who may not be too familiar with Solid (even if not on purpose). So I thought it was important to speak out.

Finally, I also kept tinkering with some things related to Focus. I did some improvements here and there, but mostly I've continued playing with Vivant. It's still a proof of concept, and I don't have much to share yet, but I'm very excited about it. I love working with animations/UI, and Josh Comeau announced he'll be working on an animations course; so it'll be the perfect excuse to learn more about animations. In particular, I've been trying to recreate Shared Layout animations from Framer Motion, and I've seen how they can become very complicated very quickly. Making these from scratch involves doing some math, but thankfully this is not my first rodeo. So yeah, I don't know if this is going to lead anywhere, but it's a ton of fun. I guess that's the perfect thing to be doing in a sabbatical :).

Hi again!

I'm now writing from Saigon, Vietnam. I have managed to slow down a bit since my last update, but overall I feel mostly the same way. TLDR: I'm enjoying it, but also I can't wait to get back home.

Life Stuff

I won't spend too much time talking about it again, but yeah I still lack time affluence and I'm tired of the nomadic lifestyle. The good news is that we're past the half-way point now, and it's not like I'm being tortured or anything 😅. I'll do my best to enjoy the time we have left, and try to squeeze some time to tinker here and there.

In my last update we were in Thailand, and we had just said goodbye to Moo Deng. Since then, we've visited more of Thailand, went through Cambodia, and we've just arrived to Vietnam.

Thailand was awesome, probably my favourite country so far. After Bangkok, we went to Chiang Mai and I really enjoyed this part of the trip. We continued visiting a lot of temples, and Chiang Mai in particular had tons of them. I really like Asian temples, they are so colorful and quirky. They always remind me of Gantz's Buddhist Temple Alien Mission, and I think some statue will try to kill me 🤣. But I'm starting to feel a bit of "temple overload", they are starting to look the same to me :/. I guess that's normal when you experience too much of something (although I never seem to get tired of Japan or cats).

I also managed to do some co-working :D. I had been to a couple of meetups before, but similar to my experience in Japan, they weren't great. But then, I realized there is another website I can use to find cool people: nownownow.com! Through that, I learned about Hackamai, and I had a great time. You can read more about it in the "Tech Stuff" section. Unfortunately, I could only join a single day because, again, we left Chiang Mai too soon :(. Oh well, that's life.

After Thailand, we went to Cambodia. I noticed some stark differences right away. For example, there were a lot of "Tuk Tuks" that consisted of a carriage strapped to a motorbike. I am amazed at the resourcefulness of people in some contexts, I would never have thought that a meager motorbike was able to carry so much load (see pics below).

Something else that surprised me was how money works. They use both their own currency, Riels, and American dollars. But Riels are so worthless, that they serve as small change (1000 Riels are worth 0.25 cents :/). They don't even use coins, and it's not uncommon to pay or receive change in mixed currencies. Which is interesting, because you can see the price in both currencies everywhere (even in electronic displays and receipts, I can't imagine what types of headaches this has caused engineers 😅).

Other than that, temples also had a different vibe. We visited "the largest religious structure in the world", Angkor Wat. These reminded me a lot of Indiana Jones, and we even visited a temple were the first Tom Raider movie was filmed: Ta Prohm. Is it weird that everything reminds me of movies and manga?

On that note, visiting the cinema was also a new experience. Every country seems to have some peculiarities. What striked me the most in Thailand and Cambodia was that they play the national anthem with a short "ad" about the royalty :/. In Cambodia, people even stand up during the anthem. Sadly, what doesn't seem to change in any country is that they play tons of ads before the movie. I still can't believe they managed to insert ads in a paid experience like this, and people doesn't riot... thank god for Phenomena Experience in Barcelona. By the way, I really enjoyed watching The Substance. I particularly enjoyed it because I hadn't seen any trailers, and the way the plot unfolds was a pleasant surprise. I can't say the same about The Wild Robot, which I also enjoyed but the trailer gave away pretty much the entire movie. If only you could go to the cinema just to watch a movie!

Anyhow, after that we moved to Vietnam. So far I'm enjoying it as well, it's funny how just after crossing the border we started seeing those traditional Vietnamese hats. We've barely been here for a couple of days, so I'll leave my impressions on Vietnam for the next update.

Here's some more pics:

Pictures

Tech Stuff

Last time, I mentioned that I was working on some more examples for my animations library, Vivant. And well, this month... I've almost exclusively been doing that 😅. Originally, I intended to use this time to work on small proofs of concept, but this one got a bit out of hand.

In my defense, I'll say that I used the opportunity to also do a proof of concept for a new way to build packages. For most of my libraries, I'm still relying on Rollup and some scripts I wrote 3 years ago. But I've learned a lot since then, and the ecosystem has also changed. This time, I tried using Deno and jsr.io, because their vision is really compelling. Unfortunately, we're not there yet :/. I gave it five minutes, but I started seeing isoteric errors I didn't understand ("has no exported member default export"!?). Then, in less than five minutes, I set it up with Vite and it worked :D. Now I'm using Vite for everything: development, publishing libraries, building apps, running tests, etc. I can't wait to migrate everything to this new setup!

The thing that took most of my time, though, was implementing the animations themselves (and also spending some time trying to make the playground pretty 😅). But I'm super happy with the results. Even if it's just a proof of concept, the animations are pretty cool, and I'm very happy with the way the project is structured and the code itself. I can also sleep well at night knowing that this proof of concept is "Done". I'll continue making animations for sure, but I believe this is a solid base I can build upon. If you're curious to see the animations, or the repository, check it out here: Vivant Playground

There are also a couple more things I'd like to talk about. First of all, it was great to find Hackamai. I really like all the people I met there, and hopefully I'll be able to attend more events from the Hacka* network. But I'm also feeling some dissonance with this community. There is some obsession with growth hacking, and no small amount of the conversations revolve around search rankings, backlinking, "printing money", and many other things I despise. But the truth is that it would probably do me some good to learn more of that 😅. I mentioned before how I don't do any analytics on my sites, and frankly, I don't spend much time doing marketing and spreading the word. My only virtue in that department is that I work in the open, and thanks to that some people hear about me. But if I ever want to make a living as an indie developer, I'll have to improve my game.

Finally, I was surprised by Dan Abramov's Web Without Walls. The talk is awesome, and he explains some of the reasons why I care about Solid and other decentralized projects. He talks about Bluesky and the AT protocol, but for 90% of the things he's saying, he could as well be talking about Solid. I especially like that this is happening "in the mainstream", in a React conference, and by one of the most beloved React developers. However, there are also some things I don't like so much. I expanded upon this in a social media thread, and got some responses (including from Dan himself!). If you're keen to learn more, check these out:

• Thread on Twitter/X about Web Without Walls
• Thread on Mastodon about Web Without Walls
• Thread on Bluesky about Web Without Walls