# One Week of Nothing to Do

*All the things I could do*

By Thorsten Ball • October 15, 2023

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I have next week off. No reason except that I need a week off. That means I have one week of nothing to do. No travel, no big family events, kids are still going to school, my wife is working, and I have nowhere to be and nothing to do.

What do I want to do in a week with nothing to do? Here’s a list of things that popped into my head while pondering that question:

- Go for a long bike ride.
- Go to lunch with my wife at this restaurant here in town that we both really like.
- Watch a very good movie I haven’t seen before.
- Keep digging into the Zig compiler, following [the same approach that I took last week](https://x.com/thorstenball/status/1711969973663355122?s=20).
- Write [a Monkey](https://monkeylang.org/) in Zig, using as many patterns from the Zig compiler as I can.
- Finish reading [The Making of the Atomic Bomb](https://twitter.com/thorstenball/status/1698206176700137845). I’ve been at it for far too long now. The book is like a companion by now. I’ll miss it.
- Work out every day. Last week was heavy and that kicked my butt. I’m hoping to get some accessories in this week.
- Hack on [Ghostty](https://mitchellh.com/ghostty). GUI programming is still alien to me. Maybe I can add a little feature.
- Fix the sealing of the patio roof. Noticed some heavy water drops making it through and fall is the time when it’s especially nice to sit outside with a roof over one’s head.
- Pre-write some newsletters.
- Visit my dad.
- Do some gardening. I have to cut down the hydrangeas.
- Learn how to bake pizza. After years of thinking about it, I ordered a new pizza stone last week. [Patrick](https://twitter.com/dubroy) gave me access to his pizza dough recipe. Gonna try it out for lunch, to share with my wife. I don’t want to make the kids cry with my first attempts.
- Just like last few weeks: drop off my daughter at school every day.
- Go to spa with my wife. That was a birthday present to her. Now we’re doing it.
- Finally try out Tailwind.
- Play around with Dall-E.
- Go for hike, uphill with weight vest on. Always a good feeling for the rest of the day.
- Flesh out README for my compiler. It’s been sitting around unused. Maybe fresh coat of paint will tell me what to do with it.
- Migrate [my Vim config](https://github.com/mrnugget/vimconfig) to Lua so I can use [lazy.nvim](https://github.com/folke/lazy.nvim) as the package manager.
- Play GTA V, which I’ve last played probably 6-7 years ago. This time I’m going to play it not on the old PS3, but on my gaming computer. See what that’s like.
- Go for a walk in a residential area of a town around here I haven’t been in. I always enjoy seeing other people’s houses and garages and gardens and what kind of toys the kids leave lying around outside and whether there are any garden gnomes and whether I can tell what the people living in the house do for work.
- Buy new glasses, or at least get new lenses for my glasses. Current pair is so scratched that I keep rubbing the screen, thinking there’s dirt on it.
- Take the kids to a playground we’ve never been to.
- Maybe visit a friend in Frankfurt.
- Drive to this one butcher’s shop in the town I grew up in and buy some sausage. I don’t know why I crave this. There’s something about going to a normal shop on a weekday’s morning.
- Turn this idea I have of this tiny, absolutely minuscule book into maybe a couple of pages of draft.
- Watch the Strange Loop talks that I didn’t get to watch while I was there three weeks ago but that have been recommended to me: [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ao8GS488hA) and [that one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prM-0i58XBM).
- Clean up the shed. As always.
- Finally assemble the IKEA furniture we have sitting in our bedroom.

There you go. A week of nothing to do.