Summer off, what does off really mean?

As a contract developer, I’m lucky enough to have I have the luxury of choosing when not to work, I’ve just finished a six-month contract and rather than find a new contract immediately I am taking the summer off to work on my projects.

I have many personal projects, the big one that dates back years and then lots of small projects, one of which has become far more popular than I ever expected and is keeping me busy.

What does a summer off mean?

Outside of social and family commitments, it means I have a bit more time to focus on my projects. I always manage to find time to work on my projects, being a night owl, but it is nice to have the extra time, makes it easier to solve the more significant problems that you can’t entirely get your head around when you only have a couple of hours at the end of a long day.

In no particular order, I am going to support and improve my open source projects, learn Swift, write a simple app to interface with a RESTful API, develop the API and if I get time, work on my long-term project and do some charting and graphing work for a new website.

The above is a tall order for six to eight weeks; we will see in September/October how far I got.