A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about “Getting things done while working from home using Microsoft To Do.” Ultimately, I am working from home, primarily because I am trapped here due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I fall into the category of high-risk for severe illness from the COVID-19 disease.

Being trapped at home is difficult. However, I’ve tried to treat it as positive as humanly possible. I now save 10 hours a week by eliminating my commute to the office after all! My mind quickly went all sorts of crazy directions by being stuck at home. Heck, after just three weeks, I shaved my head and beard!

One of my biggest challenges I’ve always had is staying organized at home; I was rarely here to keep up with the house, so who cared, as long as it wasn’t a mess, right? I started my organization by digitizing my to-do list using Microsoft To do. I reduced my distractions that were keeping me from doing my job. I still had cleaning up to accomplish, and only so much, I wanted to throw away. Plus, I needed to keep myself focused and out of the ‘slump’ of no social activities.

To keep my mind occupied, I knew I enjoyed gardening. I identified some significant landscape work and raised garden beds as my first project at the house. The landscape turned into a few weeks worth of work outside of my day job and keeping up with the house. However, I am thrilled with the results!

I did some brainstorming of projects I knew I could do around the house to keep my mind occupied. The most obvious thing to me were the blinds that were cracking and breaking throughout my home. I figured I could make some low-cost home improvement by replacing the blinds throughout the home! Well, that was a quick one week project, and it was complete, so I had to figure out the next improvement I could do.

I knew I enjoyed gardening, and I’ve enjoyed it on a small scale for the last two years. I identified some significant landscape work and raised garden beds as my first large project at the house. The landscape turned into a few weeks worth of work outside of my day job and keeping up with the house. However, I am thrilled with the results!

Raised garden beds and additional river rock

2003 MDA Telethon

My next project was going to be my most dreaded - the significant undertaking of organizing my office. After all, I’m an IT guy. I keep a ridiculous amount of spare cables, computers, monitors, and stuff I’ll most likely never need, but you never know I might! I ended up buying storage racks and storage containers on Amazon and spending a few evenings just sorting boxes of cable and PC parts. I now have a big container for e-recycling. I need to drop off, and I even found flopping disks that contained pictures from as far back as 2003! You can see from the image on the left I didn’t want to be in that picture.

I still have more organizing I want to do around the house, and heck even in my office; however, I’ve finally started moving onto ‘pet’ projects. I am focusing on writing more blog posts, but not technical ones. I’ve been creating a lot of training videos for work, and I am interested in creating some for my blog. I am just trying to figure out what I want to focus on in the videos. After all, I have made some significant investments in my home studio! I also scraped an LCD out of an old laptop and purchased the correct controller board for it. I’m going to mount to the hutch of my desk and connect a Raspberry Pi to try my hand at little projects!

My home office/half-assed home recording studio

Now for the most recent development. I’m getting a husky puppy! Yes! It has been over a year since my last dog passed away, and I am finally to the point where I want another dog. Training a husky puppy is going to be a significant undertaking. Still, I am excited, and I’ve spent the last week or so studying dog training!

Even though I am pretty stir crazy not getting to host parties at my house, go out with friends for a good beer, or play Lacrosse. I am keeping myself occupied, and my mind busy to avoid going crazy. So, you have read what I’ve been up to; how did/are you keeping yourself busy?