Austin's Weekday Routine 2019

It was kind of fun to read my last article I did like this, so I thought it'd be a good idea to update it now that it's a little over two years later.

Austin's Weekday Routine

My life is a lot more chill now that I don't have an hourly wage job. My alarm goes off at 6:45 every morning, playing "Fishing" from the Runescape soundtrack. It's kind of a pain to press snooze or turn the alarm off, since my phone cord isn't very long and I have to hang it inside the pocket of my shorts or pants that hang next to my bed. I usually snooze at least once or twice and cuddle with my wife while we both wake up. After a couple of snoozes, when her alarm gets up, or when our early-rising children sound like they're getting into trouble or raiding the fridge and eating all the pickes, berries, and string cheese, we get up.

First things first, I go to the downstairs bathroom (which has a walk-in shower I like better than the tub one upstairs) for my morning bowel movement on the Squatty Potty. While doing my business, I look at the IMDB Born Today list on my phone and add to a list I made on IMDB (You know me—I like to document perfection).

After my legs fall asleep (I should probably not spend as much time as I currently do, but like I said, my schedule is much more chill), I weigh myself if I remember to, take a shower, then go upstairs and get dressed and take my two Buproprion for the day. I take three on Saturdays because for some reason I get a weird sort of boredom/depression if I'm at home for too long with too much free time, but two are fine if I'm going out of the house, working, etc.

I've been great with my diet over the past couple of years. I lost 40 pounds and then gained 5 back, so I usually hover around ~175 pounds. I still don't really like big breakfasts ever since I started the habit of just having an egg on toast and a very small bowl of cereal for breakfast-dessert, but I do like brunches, which I usually make on weekends. The kids are usually clamoring for food excessively by this point as well, so I get them some cereal and milk if it's not too late in the morning. After that, I brush my teeth, give my kids and wife hugs and kisses, and head out the door.

I always listen to podcasts on the way to work, generally D&D actual-play podcasts. The current one I'm listening to is called the Damage Guild, and it's okay, I guess... I finished listening to the all 115 chapters of the first season of Critical Role for the second time a few months ago, and after getting caught up with the Titans of All'Terra, I'm still trying to find one that I look forward to listening to each day. I think it's all about the DM's level of engagement. Anyway, it's only about a 12-minute drive to work, but lately it takes at least 15, sometimes 20, because of all the construction.

Work

When I get to work, I park my car in the most distant parking lot, four or five spots from the west side. Since I'm terrible at exercising, this along with walking up the four flights of stairs to my work floor instead of ever using the elevator is my attempt at getting some in without much effort, and I think it's healthy for me. The first thing I do when I get to my desk is fill my water bottle. I'm not sure what happened to my bigger one, but for now I have one from the place I got my coding certification at, MTECH. Then, I log into my account, read the daily Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal comic, check my email, and review my work tickets for the day.

Our team works in a Scrum framework, so my work process is generally predictable and linear each day. If I don't have a ticket, I find one on our Scrum board, assign it to myself, read it over, and create a branch for it to work on. I spend time programming it, making any automation tests needed, and when I'm ready, I put the branch online for peer review. After two of my fellow teammates have reviewed and approved it, it gets merged and published, and the process starts over again. If they find mistakes, I fix those and continue the review process. I usually have one branch I'm working on and one in peer review at any given time.

At 11:00 every day, we have our "Stand Up" meeting. Our whiteboard of ticket progress is wheeled into one of the conference rooms, we connect via Microsoft Teams to anyone working remotely, and then explain what's on our work docket for the day. I like how it keeps everyone accountable, but sometimes there's simply not much to do, so I work on my yearly company goals.

I tend to work really fast and take lots of breaks. It's kind of a weird system of productivity, but for me it works. I'll program for 10–20 minutes, then take a 20-minute break to make notes for my D&D campaigns or read an article on The Monsters Know What They're Doing, or one of the other many D&D blogs I have marked in my favorites. Then it's back to work, maybe a break to transcribe a page or two of the Book of Mormon, which is a new scripture study method I discovered this year that works well for me, work on a Google Docs project, and so on. Work is almost too relaxing for me, which makes me wonder if I have superhuman speed at getting things done or if my team just needs to assign more tickets each sprint.

Every three weeks, our work sprint comes to an end and we have a day of treats or team lunch, followed by a couple of hours of sprint retrospective and planning ahead. Otherwise, I spend my lunch hour reading (lately it's been the Westmark trilogy by Lloyd Alexander, or the latest D&D release). Wednesdays are my favorite day of the week, because I get to spend from 11:25 to 1:00 pm playing D&D with my work group! I've been the DM for the better part of the year for the gnome sorcerer Snackle Timbers, elf noble rogue Travaldus "Zeke" Gershwin, human abjuror Valera "Mom" Edgwood, tiefling bard/warlock Owen Viktor, and Urgbar the dwarf barbarian; but soon we'll be switching DMs like my group at Boostability did, and I'm excited to play my goliath monk, Paavu "Steadyhand" Koloa-Olathi. Even though my fellow players and I only get to play this hour and a half a week, it's been a lot of fun and we've been able to craft quite the story for their adventuring group, Momma O'Snazzy (Mom + Owen + Snackle + Zeke).

The longest part of the day is usually from 2:00–3:00, when I get sleepy. Sometimes in the company's Microsoft Teams I get a notification that the lunchroom has snacks restocked or that the higher-ups in the company have leftovers in the break room, but otherwise afternoons are pretty samey each day. I'm usually done for the day at 4:30. To avoid even worse construction on the other side of the highway, I head home a different way. It may or may not be faster, but it's less stressful, and there's one road that dips down at a 16° angle, which is fun.

Back Home
If my wife and kids are home when I get there, I greet them and play with them for a while. Otherwise, I try to get some productive moments to myself on my latest project for my YouTube channel or D&D campaign. Around 5:00, my wife or I administer a daily enema to my son, who was born with an imperforate anus. It was a bit inconvenient at first to take an hour out of each evening to flush his system out, but we got used to it pretty quickly, so it's just part of our daily routine.

I usually make dinner, but if the enema is started too late or if the kids are too tired and need to go to bed early, we don't get to spend much time together at the dinner table. We try our best to read some passages from Come Follow Me to the kids, and then try and get them to bed before 7:30 (since they get up so early). The kids love mom best when it comes to tucking them in, but my wife and I try to take turns. If it's my son's turn, I turn on his sound machine, help him say his prayers, and then sing him a song. His favorites are "The Blooming Heather," "Autumn Day," "It's Raining Tacos," and "The Alligator King." I love when he sings along with me.

Otherwise, I read a chapter or so from a book to my daughter. We just finished the two books in the Castle in the Attic series, and now we're starting to read The Hobbit! I'm hoping it'll give her a crash course in high fantasy for future D&D playing together. After that, most likely I'll start reading her Harry Potter.

Evening
After the kids are in bed, it's quiet time. I eat my dessert for the day and either work on a project, play a computer game, or watch a TV show or movie with the missus. Currently, I'm in between projects, so it feels a bit weird. I hate limbo periods. Hopefully I'll get excited about something else soon. Once I get my YouTube check, I'm sure I'll be able to buy some new D&D material for me to read. Speaking of D&D, if I'm lucky, I get to play a session of D&D with my wife, brother, and sister-in-law; and Fridays are my online D&D game with my childhood best friend. D&D is such a huge part of my life now, as you can probably see with my last few entries (and this one). I wonder if my daily routine will always have this much related to it for the rest of my life. 

If I'm nice to myself, I go to bed at around 10:30 or 11:00, but lately with watching Attack on Titan season 3, nights have gone on pretty late. I pray, plug my phone into the wall and put it in the pocket of my hanging shorts or cargo pants, and go to sleep spooning my wife under the glow-in-the-dark stars I put on our ceiling when we first moved here.

And that's my routine this year! Maybe in a couple more I'll do this again. Last year was a garbage year that I'd rather not remember, so with that as an exception, who knows? This could be another fun tradition.