Why I’m Focusing on Learning, Not Launching This Vacation

 What I have going on right now: I'm bored during the vacation, and I don't know what to work on.

What I had planned for the vacation was one of two things:

• Look for a job using my portfolio site

• Work at any startup or side project, like TaskLoop

Applying for jobs in vacation

I've tried applying to a couple of projects on freelancers.com, and for me, seeing the very, very small percentage and small probability of being accepted makes me feel like this is so fuckin boring and I can't do this. Also, I talked with Mohssen, and he told me that he applied to not less than 20 companies to get a job as a backend developer, and he couldn't find any.

So that made me realize that I am willing to learn, launch, and work on small changes and projects and get feedback early, rather than applying for a ton of jobs, getting rejected, and not even getting noticed.

Working on my side projects in vacation

But here I faced the second problem: TaskLoop, as a project, can't be launched these days, because we're in a vacation, not in a study season.

So that made me feel a little bit disappointed and not willing to put time into a project that isn't going to launch soon.

But I feel like if I started working on TaskLoop as a project to learn, not to launch, I won’t get bored as easily — especially if I show the progress to my friends.

I feel like if I started going to sleep early and waking up early, and working on TaskLoop for some time, and then if I get bored, start applying for jobs — then if I get bored again, return back to TaskLoop — I feel like there's no problem with this.

Building to learn not to launch

I have a goal: to build my own startup.

To reach this goal, what I need is repetition and trying startups and failing multiple times before I succeed.

To start a startup, I need to:

• Have ideas

• Be able to execute these ideas

I am able to get ideas from the problems I face daily, but right now, the only ideas I have are TaskLoop and GDG, and both of them require the school season to launch. And now we’re in vacation.

So the solution I came up with is:

Work on being a better executor, and take a course in either UI/UX, React Native, or an Advanced Django course.

Which means I’m working on this project to learn, not to launch — just like what I did last vacation when I learned Next.js.

Bored on Vacation

During vacation, college students usually fall into a few categories.

Doing Nothing

Some do absolutely nothing—just binge-watch movies and series at home. Others go out a lot, hanging out with friends, gossiping, and playing games like cards or dominoes. Rarely do those convos get serious about the future or anything meaningful.

Another version of “doing nothing” is going to the beach or parties—if you’ve got the money. It’s technically unproductive, but at least it’s fun.

Working and Thinking About the Future

Then there’s the second group: people who spend their vacation working for someone else in any kind of business, or those who focus on self-study.

Let me be honest—self-study is boring as hell. And going out with the same people doing the same things also gets boring fast (unless it’s the beach or a party... then I’m down).

I’ve already tried most of these things. I’ve done the gossip, the hanging out, the games. I’ve also done self-study. At one point, it was fun—especially back when I didn’t have friends and was always on my own. But now? Studying alone at home feels dull and pointless.

I lose motivation easily. What I really want is to be in an environment full of like-minded people—people who care about their future and actually want to start working on something now, not after college.

I don’t know why self studying started feeling so boring lately, but it just does.

Mostly because: 

• There are no deadlines for the projects I work on.
• There are no launchings or showing anyone anything (no feedback or reward).

The one thing I haven’t tried yet is working in a real company in my field (programming). It feels like the next logical step, but honestly, it's not easy to get into—and that makes it even harder to stay motivated.

If I want to work in a company I'll have to send my cv and portfolio to a lot of companies, minimum of 50 to 100, and finding this number in itself is hard. Also working in freelancing on a freelancer.com is hard when having no reviews or no one worked with me before on the platform makes it hard for anyone to trust me, especialy with the varaity of options and number of developers they can choose from which is a lot.

So I still don't know what am I gonna do in this fuckin vacation.