I have been a software developer for a little over a decade now. I have spent much of that time with the same company and have very much enjoyed the opportunities it has given me. I had a period where the other developers on my team had quit and moved on to other opportunities, leaving me as the lone developer. At the time, I was still very junior in my experience.
What followed was a period of “trial by fire” where I had to figure out how to keep the business afloat from a technical standpoint. I had to learn my way around our hosting services, our infrastructure, and the process of rebuilding a team, all of which I was utterly unprepared for.
Fast forward a few years, and I am finding myself in a very different place. My day-to-day work is no longer as challenging as it was, but it is still busy. I found that I grew accustomed to the velocity of growth that I had to take on in order to succeed in that phase of my life. It has made me uncompromising on reaching my personal goals.
I love working for my company, but I am no longer finding myself in a position where I feel I am growing. Somewhere between the pervasive nature of AI and the natural slowdown that came with learning the ropes within the context of a company, I have grown a little restless to find new paths for growth.
Why this blog?
In my time pursuing professional growth, I forgot how to take pleasure in some of the simple things in life. I found that I am no longer able to sit still and be with myself and my family without distraction. I am experiencing panic attacks. I am not always emotionally available for the people around me or myself. I am finding that while I wholeheartedly love the places I have been, I am at a place where I want to start exploring what it’s like to live fully again. It means living intentionally and making changes to be a better version of myself. So, to start this blog off, I want to discuss the things I do that make a difference in my world. This is going to be a story of growth, and despite what the “life hackers” say, growth is messy, slow, and unglamorous. I make no claim to have it figured out, but that is the point of writing to the world; to share something real and unfiltered.
So the short version of this long rant is this: I will use this blog and the explorations I write about to:
- Seek ways to be more present when at home.
- I love gaming and tend to dig super deep into story points that carry meaning. I will discuss those moments here as well.
- Discuss mental health and how I keep myself in a good place.
- Get better at cooking and share the little wins there.
- Explore ways to keep my passion for technology alive as a tool for people and less driven by AI. I believe people are the soul of the world. AI can neither create nor dream. It creates output driven by the work of others. It is not capable of novel thought and is not capable of providing experience, meaning, an understanding of moral stakes, or soul. I am not anti-AI, but I do believe it has a place.
- Leave room for whatever else this project becomes.
The goal is betterment of myself and the world around me. I don’t know what shape that takes as of today, but I am excited to get started and share the road with anyone who wants to join.