Thread: To those for whom programming is more than hobby, what does your downtime look like?

It seems to me anyway, that if you are in the industry, or trying to break into the industry, learning is a never-ending task. I can only watch a movie or surf the web in my downtime, my brain is too fried to do anything else.

I could be underestimating the ridiculous amount of time that single life affords one. I married early and I've got two young kids. When I do on rare occasion game, I find myself thinking I should just: A. Stare into space or veg out with a movie and save the mental energy. B. Go do some programming.

Am I the only one who feels like if they aren't conserving their mental energy for some programming, or actually programming, they are "falling behind"?

I try to do as little work as possible during the weekends. If I do any coding at all, and it's rare, it's for a personal project that's unrelated to work in any way. I firmly believe in a separation of work and play, or you will burn yourself out so fast. My weekends are my time. If I really feel like coding, I'll do it, but if I don't feel like it I'll do something else instead.

I shift slowly through phases, usually a few weeks in length. In one phase, I do a lot of programming during my off hours. In another phase, I read about programming, math, and physics but don't do much of it. In another phase, I do nothing but watch TV shows and read. In another phase, I abandon it all and vanish into the mountains. This is just a thing I do, I don't plan it out or schedule it.

As far as trying to stay on top of it so I don't become obsolete, I don't really worry about it because the code I work on professionally is, and always has been, very specialized and not something that is going to decrease in value any time soon. If I was cranking out web apps or writing enterprise back-end code I would probably feel much more pressure to stay up to date on current technology trends. That said, I find such things completely uninteresting, as I am more interested in computing devices as the "whole enchilada" and not whatever the current hot topic is. Topics are hot and then they are irrelevant.

If I could support my family appropriately, I would walk away from it all in a microsecond and just live in the woods, survival style. I love technology but it rides shotgun. The driver of this vehicle hurtling into unknown locales is Mother Earth.