I've been working on a little evenings and weekends project for the last 10 months called PlaygroundBuddy. It's an app for finding nearby playgrounds to explore with the kids. And what a good learning experience it has been and fun.

Good experience, because I've had the opportunity to have an active role in the process from start to finish and an opportunity to be involved in every step of the development. This was especially interesting as we're making the clients: a native android app, (now available) and a native IOS app (coming sometime this fall). The native apps are interesting from a coding standpoint, because they are in languages that I'm not terribly familiar with and involve a lot of learning.

Fun because, I've got a great co-creator who is continually pushing the project on to completion. What a difference it makes to be able to work on something together with someone, I've realized that for me working in isolation means that I'm significantly less motivated.

The project has also given me a lift as I see the Playground Buddy project as a project with such positive potential outcomes. To encourage parents and kids to get outside, just seems like such a good and right thing to do. That's a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling that I'm enjoying.

It's amazing to me that I've been working on the project for 10 months!! Wow, that seems like a long time and it is. And it's amazing how long things can take when all the time available are just the empty corners of the day. I would love to put more time into the project, but right now, it's just an hour here and an hour there, unless I stay up really late!