So what am I doing now? 2024 edition

After my sudden layoff from ZipRecruiter in 2023, I decided that I needed to step back and think about things. The job market was (and end of 2024, remains) abysmal. I did a couple interviews but me and Leetcode don’t get along, and I honestly am not convinced that watching me attempt to code under utterly unrealistic time constraint is a really goofy way to see if I can write good, maintainable code on a schedule.

So after about 3 months of that, I decided that I would look at my options and see what I could do that wasn’t necessarily just another programming job.

I’m currently doing a number of things, some of which are bringing in income, though not lots of it, and others which are moving other parts of my life ahead.

• I auditioned for, and got, a job as one of the editors for the Miskatonic University Podcast. I’ve certainly been doing audio editing for a long time; seemed only reasonable to get paid for it. Podcast editing is a detail-oriented task, and those are the kind I enjoy. It’s a real pleasure to take the raw audio and produce a professional result. Dave and Bridgett are, of course, very professional themselves and make the job considerably easier than it could be, but the audio still needs that attention that cleans up the dead space, removes the pauses and um’s and er’s, tidily clips out those small flubs, and turns out something that is a pleasure to listen to. And I get to use my cartoon sound effects library!
• I’ve edited a Call of Cthulhu scenario and from that have a repeat customer for whom I’m now editing a full game manual. This is exceptionally pleasant though intense work. I’ve been able to help with making the prose sing, clarifying, and prompting for how the author can make the product better. I think this is developmental editing plus line edits and maybe collaboration, and honestly I think I may be undercharging significantly, but I want to get a few successful edits into my portfolio before I start asking for more money.
• I’m learning Swift 5 and SwiftUI. I had an all-hands-on-deck (okay, all-me-on-deck, I’m the only one working on it) moment last year with the RadioSpiral app – it had been working beautifully, and I had benignly neglected it for about 3 years…only to have Apple drop me a “hey, you quit updating this, so we’re gonna drop it if you don’t do an update in 90 days” email. So I had to bring it up to Swift 5 and Xcode 15 pronto. Some tamasha with “we don’t know if you’re allowed to stream this, prove it” from Apple Review was actually the hard part of getting it up, but I managed with a couple weeks to spare. (A lot of that was needing to noodge Mike to get me a “yes, I run the station, yes this is official, yes, we have permission” letter to upload. Requesting help from Apple Review after repeated rejections helped a ton because they couldn’t tell me exactly what the problem was, and me revising the code wasn’t going to work. I got a phone call, a clarification, and we were back in business.) Now looking at a new version using SwiftUI sometime soon.
• Started working on replacing our old broadcast setup with Azuracast. We’ll probably switch over before the end of the year. Azuracast has a ton of stuff that we really want and will let us simplify operations significantly. The APIs will net me pull in more info in the RadioSpiral app (notably the real current DJ and play history…up to a year!) We’re almost there.
• Started working on several other Swift projects, details still under wraps until I’m done. At least one of the projects is a brand-new thing that I needed badly; I’m hoping that other people doing that same thing will realize they needed it too, but just didn’t think of it, and will buy a copy. Another is a niche thing which I think will be convenient to online writer’s critique groups, and one other is a special tide-clock app just for me that maybe others will enjoy too.
• Because I’ve mostly forgone income this year, I’ll be able to roll over a chunk of money from the 401k to my Roth IRA. I’ll still need to pay taxes on it, but at least it will be now while my income is effectively zero and I can minimize the tax hit.

Next year? Well, we’ll have to see.

I did need some rest, badly; I was still fighting the combined MRSA/Eichenella corrodens infection (as featured on House; never have a disease featured on House) last year until 3 months after my layoff, and wasn’t clean until then. Spending the sabbatical learning things and seeing about options other than coding was useful, but I certainly wouldn’t mind a real income again.

I’m planning to look at new things in the new year, but for now, I’m trying to finish off this year’s projects, get our retirement money on a good footing…and then we’ll see. I think I’ll need to pick up something with a dependable, above-poverty-level paycheck, but what that will be I don’t know.