I’ve been on maternity leave for almost ten months now and I haven’t really accomplished that much.

It’s not that I went into mat leave with any specific expectations – but I thought I might do something interesting. And in my daydrams I fantisized about accomplishing a TON, like keeping a perfectly clean house, writing a full-length novel, and learning so many new things about front end development.

In reality:

• 🏠 House is usually messy. Sometimes I go crazy and do a bunch of cleaning, but 2 days later it looks terrible again so it’s pretty demoralizing.
• 📚 I haven’t done anything super notable, although I have read a lot more fiction that I do most years, which has been pleasant.
• 💻 I have spent some time on Stackoverflow answering questions, which is sort of fun and rewarding when people thank you.
• 💻 I have spent some time contributing to open source, but not much. If you look at my Github profile’s history you’d probably roll your eyes and say “That’s it?!”
• 💻 I have also spent a bit of time working on a personal pet project related to my job.
• 💻 I have been blogging very regularly on Life as Rose, but it is a private/personal blog about my daily activities, so nothing to see there!
• 💻 And now my latest project is this, what you are looking at right now! Trying out Gatsby and publishing it on roserobertson.me because this site isn’t doing anything anyway.
• 👶 And of course I have been taking care of my baby!