I basically took the last year off from creative projects and just played solo board games in the evenings for most of the year, on nights when I didn't have other plans.
Marvel Champions in particular is a lot of fun, although may be a bit overwhelming at first if you don't play a lot of board games already.
I also got into Legendary deckbuilding games recently, and those are a bit more approachable, although not all of them play solo unless you manage two hands of cards (which isn't a big deal for me, but I've played hundreds of different board games).
They have those based on various IPs (Game of Thrones, James Bond, X-Files, Matrix, Alien movies, Buffy, Marvel, and in a few months DC comics) and play somewhat similarly, so if you learn one it would be easy to learn another one.
I also picked up a solitaire variant called Hoki just last week and really enjoyed it. You upgrade your cards over multiple games (that are each about five minutes to play), and then once you've completely upgraded all the cards you can play the game daily and then consult a book that will give you a fortune based on the final state of your game.
It took me 53 games to unlock the final state, and I did all of them in just a couple of days, I enjoyed it so much. Now I'm playing a game or two a day to see what the fortune is and then writing a journal to reflect on what that could mean, for fun.
Slowly getting back into my creative hobbies this year (which include board game design and writing), although coding I still feel is hard to do in my off time (even when it's making games, which I've historically really enjoyed doing).
I've messed around with A.I. agent coding a bit, and I'm a bit more impressed with it than I anticipated, but I'm not sure how deep down that rabbit hole I want to go and not code myself. But I really don't feel like I have much energy left in the tank for coding more after doing it for my day job lately.
LOL, I meant for a living but I enjoyed reading this nevertheless :D
But ya, I was out of work for 9 months and enjoyed pretty much every minute of it up until I realized it was not as easy to find a job as I thought it would be (well, it played out a bit differently but for the sake of brevity I'll stick that story)
We usually stop by Michigan City every time we're driving through the area (usually on our way to somewhere in Michigan or on our way back), mainly to make two stops: Cool Runnings Restaurant and Bar (excellent jerk chicken and catfish) and FLUID Coffee Roasters (really good coffee). Both highly recommended.
The city itself seems like a relatively quiet city. There's some parts of town that seem kind of run down but not too bad, and the downtown area (where FLUID is) is nicer.
We went to their outlet mall once (which is all I knew about the place ahead of time, people would say how it's a great place to shop) and while there's a decent number of stores there, the courtyard was surprisingly bland and undecorated at the time, like it was never finished. We haven't had the urge to go back since. I've been more impressed with shopping centers in the Chicago suburbs (where I'm from), like the Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook, or the Chicago Premium Outlets in Aurora.
Also stopped by their beach once, and it's fine, but I think other beaches not too much further away in SW Michigan or the Indiana Dunes are nicer (especially the Dunes).
If/when we get to the point where my job is automated out of existence, then so will a large enough categories of jobs that there's going to have to be some sort of universal basic income system in place, so hopefully I'll just be on that and work on one of my creative passions, like writing or music or board game design/development, and supplement that with what I've managed to sock away so far.
I could see myself doing teaching also. Or just become a barista or cook, but I'm not sure I can handle standing for that long at a time anymore, the front of one of my thighs starts tingling and bothering me (when walking it doesn't really have a problem, it's mainly when I stand mostly in place, like when I'm cooking).
I wouldn't mind doing some sort of research but I've don't have any experience with that, outside of research projects in college a couple of decades ago.
It doesn't necessarily mean not working. Just only showing up for a little while and still working from home otherwise. Like maybe only go in for a few hours in the morning until lunch, go home at lunch, and then work from home the rest of the day.
Also they might actually be more productive going home for most of the day than if they stayed in the office. Some people aren't very productive in office environments, comparatively.
I currently pretty much only use A.I. when I get stuck (or sometimes if I want some help writing the scaffolding for unit tests). If I'm not stuck then I don't use it. There may come a day when I don't think it'll be worth the time to code myself when I'm not stuck, but that day is not today.
But then again I may be considered old, too (I'm in my 40s).
I don't think it's a great idea to become too reliant on it, just like it's not a great idea to only know how to copy+paste code from Stack Overflow. If you use it too much the coding muscle gets weak and you will become less able to identify when something is done incorrectly or in a less than ideal way because of this corner case or business requirement.
You can still not comply and see if they end up terminating you. If they value you as an employee enough they may begrudgingly be willing to look the other way.
I've had companies try several times to bring people back to the office, just to have most people not show up anyway (or show up only every once in a while), and so far I haven't seen terminations enforced. That may eventually change, but at least so far I haven't seen that happen. YMMV though.
You can always work on video games on the side. I used to be in the video game industry, but I'm not anymore. That's what I do now.
Even before I got into the industry I was making video games on the side. The only time I wasn't making games on the side was when I was in the industry itself, as it seemed like a conflict of interest (and the contracts I signed reinforced that).
In order to be able to work on anything at all on the side, how do you propose solving the "it leaves me feeling drained at the end of the day" problem?
Certain fields need it more than others. Graphics and vide game development needs more math than web app development (well, usually. Sometimes you need to implement a formula), including trigonometry.
I used a bunch of trigonometry when I was making 2D action games, getting characters to move about the screen and move smoothly at all sorts of angles, for one example. I also used Sine functions a lot for UI animations, making things looks like they're hovering or oscillating up and down.
I think one of the benefits of these classes, though, and university classes in general, is that even if you don't use or really remember the specifics decades later, you're at least aware of how these problems can be solved, and can look up and verify potential solutions much quicker than if you hadn't ever been exposed to it at all.
Marvel Champions in particular is a lot of fun, although may be a bit overwhelming at first if you don't play a lot of board games already.
I also got into Legendary deckbuilding games recently, and those are a bit more approachable, although not all of them play solo unless you manage two hands of cards (which isn't a big deal for me, but I've played hundreds of different board games).
They have those based on various IPs (Game of Thrones, James Bond, X-Files, Matrix, Alien movies, Buffy, Marvel, and in a few months DC comics) and play somewhat similarly, so if you learn one it would be easy to learn another one.
I also picked up a solitaire variant called Hoki just last week and really enjoyed it. You upgrade your cards over multiple games (that are each about five minutes to play), and then once you've completely upgraded all the cards you can play the game daily and then consult a book that will give you a fortune based on the final state of your game.
It took me 53 games to unlock the final state, and I did all of them in just a couple of days, I enjoyed it so much. Now I'm playing a game or two a day to see what the fortune is and then writing a journal to reflect on what that could mean, for fun.
Slowly getting back into my creative hobbies this year (which include board game design and writing), although coding I still feel is hard to do in my off time (even when it's making games, which I've historically really enjoyed doing).
I've messed around with A.I. agent coding a bit, and I'm a bit more impressed with it than I anticipated, but I'm not sure how deep down that rabbit hole I want to go and not code myself. But I really don't feel like I have much energy left in the tank for coding more after doing it for my day job lately.