The Backlog Motherlode

I’m working my way through C++ for Scientific Computing in between activities so I can brush up on the lang before school starts. In recent times, however, I’ve hit that familiar and dreaded period of stagnation I get when consuming a piece of media.

Shows, games, movies, and books all seem to have some sort of “tipping point” where I stop and question whether or not spending the time going through media X would be more beneficial to me than doing activity Y/going through media Z. The C++ book’s been made slightly redundant by the LeetCode I do, though there’s definitely still content I need to get through in there. It’s just hard to balance in the time sheet next to everything else.

The same thing holds true for my Doctor Who endeavor. I’ve been enamored with Westworld recently, partly because of the slump and partly because it’s probably not financially sound to subscribe to something to watch one show.

But more on the subject of my lack of bookishness, I have an absolute stash of educational CS books in my possession

The sheer majority of these are super-long super-academic Springer books that they were literally giving away during the pandemic. Now, the electrons representing them gather dust in my drives. It’s the backlog to end all backlogs. I feel they’ll be super useful during college.

Looking at and writing about them makes me really consider setting aside more time for reading.

One interesting caveat to the media slump, though, is that I’ve recently started going through Google’s Professional IT cert since I really like the sector. It’s a 3-6 month thing made up of 5 depthy-enough courses each spanning 6 weeks, and I kinda like it. The content’s nice.

But get this: I started it because I was offered a free 7-day trial. I try to avoid free trials like the plague ever since Spotify wormed its way deep into my balance sheet. I took this one with a pretty core intention though: to finish the course within 7 days allotted.

How do you finish a 3-6 month course in < 6 days? By throwing all caution and distractions to the wind. I started the thing on July 24th, didn’t do anything for a day, and have thrown myself into an absolute slog ever since. I’ve completed 18 weeks worth of content in 3 days.

I’m just a dedicated (in some instances) person, one who wishes to make Coursera rue the day they ran such an offer. I refuse to let this be another victim of the backlog.