Well, 2025 is off to a crappy start

So it’s February now. Great. A whole month of 2025 gone, and what have I accomplished? Big fat zero. Nada. Nothing.

Remember that post I wrote in January with all those ambitious plans? Yeah, that was cute. Here I am, four weeks later, and I haven’t even opened the project folders on my computer. The Arduino kit is still in its box. The Raspberry Pi stuff is gathering dust. I haven’t written a single line of code for any of my planned projects.

And yet… nothing gets done. The most pathetic part? I’ve spent HOURS watching YouTube videos of other people making similar stuff. Like, I’ll literally have a video of someone building a custom keyboard playing on one monitor while the parts for MY keyboard sit untouched right next to me. It’s beyond sad.

I have the time, I’m just wasting it

The really frustrating thing is I can’t even use the “I’m too busy” excuse. I’ve had at least 30 hours of free time this month where I specifically set aside time to work on projects. And what happened to those hours? YouTube, Reddit, random Wikipedia rabbit holes, and staring blankly at project plans without doing anything about them.

Every time I waste an evening like this, I feel like absolute garbage. I’m not even enjoying the videos I’m watching - I’m just using them to feel like I’m somehow connected to making things while actually making nothing. It’s not relaxing, it’s not productive, it’s just… empty.

What makes it worse is that I know I CAN focus when I need to. At work, I’m actually pretty good at getting stuff done. I meet deadlines, I solve problems, I write decent code. But the moment I try to channel that energy into my own projects, my brain goes “nope, let’s watch someone else do the thing instead.”

My workspace is a disaster (and probably part of the problem)

After a lot of sulking about this, I’m starting to think my workspace is both a symptom and a cause of this whole mess. My “office” (the corner of my garage that I’ve half-heartedly converted) is a complete disaster zone right now:

• Tools everywhere, none of them where they should be. Want to find a screwdriver? Good luck, it’ll take 15 minutes.
• It’s freezing cold in the evenings, which is when I actually have time to work on stuff. Nothing kills motivation like numb fingers.
• The lighting is either “operating room bright” or “can’t see anything” with no in-between
• My desk is set up for computer work OR physical projects, never both at the same time
• The unfinished concrete floor and bare drywall give off serious “unfinished basement” vibes
• There’s nowhere to put anything down without moving something else first

I mentioned fixing up my workspace in my January post, but now I’m thinking it needs to be THE project, not just another thing on the list. If I can’t even stand being in my workspace, how am I supposed to get anything done there?

Actual first steps (not just more planning)

Yesterday I hit some kind of breaking point and just started tearing everything out of the office. Not in a careful, planned way - more in a “I can’t stand this anymore” kind of rage-cleaning. I pulled everything out - the tools, the shelves, all the junk piled in corners - until it was just an empty room.

Standing there looking at the empty space actually felt… good? Like I could breathe again. Like maybe there’s hope for this space after all.

So here’s my actual, concrete plan for the next few weeks:

1. Fix the damn heating situation. I bought a small electric heater yesterday that I can aim at my desk. Not ideal but better than nothing.
2. Build proper storage - not fancy Instagram-worthy stuff, just functional shelves and bins where things actually have a HOME
3. Set up my desk so I can switch between typing and tinkering without having to move everything around
4. Maybe paint the walls something other than “just white” - just to make it feel like a real room

I’m not going to kid myself that I’ll turn this into some kind of dream workshop. I just need it to be functional enough that I don’t immediately want to leave whenever I go in there.

One thing at a time

I’m writing all this down partly to hold myself accountable (hi, future Joe who’s probably still procrastinating), but also just to get it out of my head. I hate being stuck in this cycle of planning things and never doing them. It makes me feel like a fraud when people ask “how are your projects going?” and I have to mumble some excuse.

So here’s my very modest goal: fix the workspace first. Just that. Not the Night Sky Pi upgrades, not the keyboard build, not any of the other shiny projects. Just make my workspace somewhere I can actually, you know, work.

Maybe in a month I’ll come back and write a triumphant post about my amazing new office. Or maybe I’ll be writing another whiny post about how I still haven’t done anything. But right now, I’ve got an empty room and a pile of stuff that needs organizing, so I should probably stop typing and go do something about it.

Let’s see if February can be better than January.