Burned out

October 01, 2024 2 minute read

I suppose it was to be expected.

The signs were there.

You may recall last year’s post about taking a sabbatical on this very blog. In it, I laid out my motivations as to why I needed to take a longer break to recover.

I also briefly wrote about prior experiences with mental exhaustion and burn-out, which I dismissed. Perhaps I was simply bored?

You may also recall that in a blogpost reflecting on the break I wrote:

I must admit that while I have gotten a lot of rest over the last three months, I don’t feel in a remarkably better mood than I did when my break started. I had hoped that things would shift dramatically, but sadly the dreadful weather has worked against me and as a result my overall mood has been middling at best.

After feeling off during my vacation time in August, I became extremely tired, both physically and mentally, and my sleep quality fell off a cliff: I started waking up once every hour. That makes everything much worse, very quickly.

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Writing for Fun

September 07, 2024 1 minute read

I actually enjoy writing. I always have, and writing blog posts on this website is not exception. In fact, besides blogging and writing code, I also maintain a daily journal.

When things are written well, reading is a ton of fun. It is a shame then, that so many folks online are only interested in selling merchandise, shilling sponsors or selling their latest course. I get it, you need to bring in the dough.

But the majority of my blog posts here, I simply write because I enjoy writing and I write them because it’s plain fun. My Linux experiments, my video game retrospective posts every year, my programming posts, all of them are written because they’re fun.

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Trying Linux on the desktop after a decade

August 24, 2024 14 minute read

When I was much younger I used to run Linux on the desktop, and tinkered around with the popular distributions of the day. I used to daily drive various distros like Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint… it was a good time. My preferred desktop environment at the time was GNOME 2.

I eventually became a Mac OS X user in 2011 after getting my first MacBook. I’ve been a happy Mac guy for a long time now, but I’m a bit concerned about the direction Apple’s going with their software at this point.1

In reaction to these macOS changes, I’ve been thinking about running Linux on the desktop. However, I didn’t want to sacrifice my bootloader on my desktop, so I decided not to do it.

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Shields Down

July 05, 2024 6 minute read

I have been a Rands in Repose reader for a very long time, and I consider Shields Down to be one of my favorite pieces of Michael Lopp’s writing.

Resignations happen in a moment, and it’s not when you declare, “I’m resigning.” […] The moment happened the instant you decided, “What the hell? I haven’t seen Don in months and it’d be good to see him.” Your shields are officially down. Shields Down, Rands in Repose

If you haven’t already, give the article a read. In short, it’s about when it’s time to look for a new job and embrace a new opportunity. I’ve had several Shields Down moments over the last few years, with a really significant one in 2022.

I knew that my time at my employer was going to come to a close in the next two years, but I wasn’t sure about the precise timing, so I have been quiet. Now I do, and so it’s time to share.

I was already seriously considering looking for new opportunities all the way back in 2020, but with an ongoing pandemic I was not motivated to look for something new, and decided to stay at the company.

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