now doing
# Self-hosting a few projects.
Since I abandoned Windows in 2023 (moving first to Linux Mint, but presently to EndeavourOS on my desktop PC), I've been interested in getting a lot more familiar with my computers. Besides managing my OS and my apps, the main way I've been doing that has been setting up a Jellyfin server. This has been a fun project - certainly stressful at times but overall very much worth it for me for now.
This particular project began on a Contabo VM, but that was pretty expensive. More recently, a friend gave me an old 2012 Macbook Pro they didn't need anymore. I was really excited to have a dedicated server machine, so I put ubuntu-server on it and got started. This has been ongoing for months now - always little things I want to tweak or improve or just need to fix (although the latter are thankfully rare now). Of course I've invited the friend who donated the machine to my server, but I don't think it has enough power to let more than a handful of people on, so for the time being it's a very small project.
# Building hella mechs.
Since I rediscovered my old Bionicles in 2022, and was later gifted my first Gunpla kit (HG RX-78-02, which to be honest I don't even like aesthetically, but it got me hooked), I've been descending ceaselessly into the autistic depths of mech fandom.
At this point I'm pretty entrenched. It's immensely odd to me, and a bit sad, that I only realized in 2023 while playing Armored Core VI that I love mechs and always have. I think I just assumed that because I never got into the Gundam IP that I wasn't a mech fan. But my old toyboxes are littered with Z'Goks, transforming beast-robot warriors, and other obvious signs. Even though I actually still don't actually like any Gundam media, I have at least half a dozen Mobile Suit kits to go with my Armored Core kits and numerous customs... so I think it's safe to say I'm a fan of giant humanoid robotic vehicles of war.
I've only slightly dabbled in painting, primarily for Battletech minis. That's mostly because I keep changing my custom builds - I buy batches of 30 Minutes Missions several time a year and tinker/experiment with new pieces almost every day, so painting a build prematurely would kind of get in the way of that. If I get more into painting... I actually don't really like the Battletech aesthetic, and I'll probably eventually start collecting 40k. I have long loved 40k despite not playing the tabletop game, and I'm already so close to it.
# Continuing to read fiction.
Some Discworld, some Eggers, some Lahiri. I still don't enjoy reading long-form nonfiction.
I recently made a Storygraph profile. Still working on backfilling past reads, but I think it gives a good idea of what kind of reader I am (... picky and inconsistent?).
# Growing as a software engineer
I've come around to appreciating my work more and more as I've developed confidence. Over the past few years, most of my closest coworkers have left, which meant two things: First, I felt more liberated to say "I don't know what that is or how it works" when someone asks me about a system that nobody else has experience with. Counterintuitively, this has built my confidence greatly - I have nothing to hide, and people still trust me.
Second, it's forced me to actually learn a lot of technologies, strategies, and philosophy I never really had time for previously. This has the secondary effect of giving me a lot more to teach to my coworkers when onboarding them to projects I've been owning, which I've really loved!
I went through an interesting inverse bell curve of confidence over my career so far. Starting out in a bootcamp, I felt like a prodigy - inexperienced, but well suited to the subject. After my first contract position ended, though, I found myself feeling more and more unsure that I could ever actually be a good developer. It's taken me years now to construct a new idea of what a good developer even is - and to understand that it isn't just one thing.
At this point, I feel very confident that I have many strong skills and the ability to learn quickly and deeply. But that has only come on the heels of learning my weaknesses more honestly - some of which only came from numerous medical diagnoses over the years. Genuinely, I could not feel good about my career if I had never, for example, learned that I have ADHD, and chronic depression, and so on. By learning to navigate the physiological limitations of myself, I've developed acceptance of them, which has led to pride and confidence in the skills I have and the ways that I actually do excel in my role.
I had very high expectations for myself as a late-20's career-changer with close to 0 knowledge of programming. Adding on top of that my disabilities, and the habits I learned in the decades of undemanding work prior to my new career, it's not at all surprising that I didn't straightaway start writing beloved FOSS libraries or working at Google. (Not to mention, I actively avoided the big names initially due to ethical concerns - I had no idea about the prestige and insane compensation of developing for them.)
I've only learned in recent years what it means to "trust the process" as my old 76ers-fan roommate said often (thank you, Jeff!): Focusing on the doing, not the outcome. While it's helpful to at times step back and see if you're walking a path that goes in a a direction you like, I am not obsessed with the destination any longer, and I'm more productive for it.