Last week I had an utter privilege. My employer let me do open source work for a full week! Being able to focus a whole week on open source work is amazing. The usual for me with Calva and related projects is that I get to work with them in small bursts. That’s OK too, but really, cutting out a whole week is something else.
During the weekend up to the week I had decided to use it to address some of the pain points revealed to us in the thread What do beginners struggle with?.
To give you a glimpse at what is was like for me, I will now share with you my daily ”check-ins” to the Clojurians Slack channel #clojure-europe. The people in that channel are sort of my work colleagues. 
We share on- and off-topic things and generally help each other during the days. I just read the log and smiled a bit at remembering how I was threshing and struggling to find traction. Not sure how much sense the log makes to someone who’s not me, but here goes:
Monday, August 16, 9:13 AM: Good morning. I’m starting my first day as a Clojure contractor today! (As a consultant for Agical AB.) Hopefully my first contract starts next week (at Pitch). My employment at Agical contains part-time Calva work (as some of you might recall). I will use this week to try contribute to the Getting Started with Clojure story. I’d love me some help with testing and reviewing. I started this work yesterday, actually. I updated the Rich 4Clojure repository with Gitpod configuration giving it a browser-based zero-install option. Please check it out! GitHub - PEZ/rich4clojure: Practice Clojure using Interactive Programming in your editor
Tuesday, August 17. 8:28 AM: Good morning. Day 2 of my Improve Getting Started with Clojure week. I had plans to start with a zero-install Clojure template this morning, but it seems I will need to start investigating problems with the zero-install Rich 4Clojure thing I released yesterday. I guess that at 53 years old, having developed software for most of my life, I should have anticipated this… Anyway, super great that people are giving it a spin!
Wednesday, August 18, 8:54 AM: Good morning! Day 2 of my Improve Getting Started with Clojure week felt a bit less productive than I had hoped. I know it is productive to stop and listen to feedback and such too, but my plans! my plans! 
At least I updated the ramp-up for Rich 4Clojure quite a bit based on the feedback I had. Please give it a new (or first) spin using the zero-install (Gitpod) option. If you’ve tried it earlier you’ll need to create a new workspace. That’s as easy as starting at the Github repo and clicking the Open in Gitpod button (please, please read the README first and pretend you are a total beginner). Let’s see what day 3 brings! I feel like whatever it brings, I will both be ready for it and totally unprepared.
Thursday, August 19, 8:47 AM: Morning! It’s already Day 4 of my beginners week. Time flies! I’m at where I am both expanding and folding. I have a pretty good idea about what my Get Started with Clojure article should be like now.
Friday, August 20, 8:56 AM: Good morning. Day 5 of lowering those thresholds for beginners. Yesterday, late, I released the first version of an experience to learn Clojure the REPL-driven way without installs. See #announcements about it. Today’s ask is that if you could be so kind as to upvote this HN thread: A REPL-driven, zero-install, Get Started with Clojure guide | Hacker News 
Saturday, August 21, 11:15 AM: Good morning. Day 6 of my beginner’s journey week (open source work weeks have 7 days for me ) . I’m in a bit of a post production paralysis, so no big things will be created today. But I managed to author a LinkedIn update that I hope can spread the spirit of businesses sponsoring open source and also some Clojure joy. Please share it on LinkedIn (and please connect with me there, if you haven’t already). Peter Strömberg on LinkedIn: The past work week Agical AB sponsored me to help beginners of Clojure
Sunday, August 22, 6:26 PM: Morning! Day 7 of my beginner’s journey sprint. I implemented some changes based on the results from Friday’s usability test. I hope it’s good enough now to let me put it aside for a few days. Starting my contractor assignment at Pitch tomorrow. That’ll be fun, but I am sure it will also be quite demanding since I need to learn a lot of new things in a short time. Wish me luck, friends!
I really could get used to weeks like this!