The flashback⌗

First, quick recap of my last year (or two), to provide some context for this post. This will also be kind-of-a-vent, completely out of topic of this blog, so if you don’t care about the drama in my life feel free to scroll right to the end for conclusions.

I’m currently 25 years old. I’ve had a pretty good relationship with my parents, although their relationship with each other was pretty rocky, especially in the last few years.

Last year I’ve learned that my Mom had cancer. Hidden in gallbladder.

When I learned that, I’ve been working at ST, doing my Master’s degree, and also working on a telemedicine-related side-project at the same time. The amount of work and stress, along with the situation at my family’s house, made me quit my work at ST so I could focus on finishing my degree and helping Mom and my brother. We had a lot of stuff to do.

At first, everything seemed relatively okay, as the gallbladder was completely removed, and after the first chemo everything seemed clean and we had hope that it was something she can live with for, at least, few more years.

Unfortunately, the tumors returned few months later - this time on the liver, and they grew very fast and couldn’t be removed surgically - at least not completely.

Mom died 16th January, 2023. She knew it was coming, she prepared us for it best she could, and I will be forever thankful for everything she has done for us.

Since then, I’ve been trying to move on. I’ve been working at N7 for some time and it’s been a good distraction so far - and I generally like this job and the people there, so I’m not planning to quit any time soon. I’ve dropped my science-club related duties, and focused on work and staying mostly sane, most of the time at least.

For the last few weeks, I had a popup in my mind, constantly appearing and telling me to do some stuff and write about it. I’ve also had an urge to do some makeovers in my life and become a productive member of society. Thanks to the privilege I have, as someone who’s being paid for creating new spells (writing code) using my elaborate sorcerer’s setup (split ortholinear keyboard with RGB strip), and who doesn’t have to wonder if he’ll have a place to live next month, I’ve decided that one of the productive things I can do is writing blog posts to force myself to learn and experience new things, because otherwise I don’t have enough motivation to even pick up the stick that I’m going to be poking the stuff I want to experience with.

Making stuff have helped others cope with loss of the loved ones, so i guess it’s worth trying.

Conclusions?⌗

I’m planning to be much more active here.

I’ve had lots of ideas for projects and blog posts recently, but due to the fact that my time is finite and I only have few hours per day to do this stuff (in contrast to more than dozen I had, back when I was broke and had no work - hefty price to pay), I need to prioritize and choose something to pour my attention into, one at a time.

From the top of my (unordered) stack, I can list some of those:

  • HTMX - I’ve bought a mug, so might as well learn it. Since I have almost no experience in web or frontend development, it should be a fun ride. The plan is to make a dashboard for my RaspberryPi to control the LED strip from a browser.
  • C/C++ project setup in Meson - i, uhh, probably will have to go back to C/C++ at some point so I’d rather be ready. I poked Meson with a stick already, and I’ve even made some working stuff, but it’s not quite finished yet. When I will finish it, I will describe it here.
  • Embedded-related stuff - Most of my time I’ve spent programming in the last few years were spent on embedded programming. So I guess I can pretend I’m qualified to talk about it now. I think that a series on implementing (and using) abstraction over microcontroller’s hardware could be nice, considering I’ve been developing BSP/HAL libraries for most part of the last year.

But first, i’ll probably do a cleanup of my NeoVim config, as it broke recently (again). Maybe i’ll write a post on that too.

I’ve also been considering making some video content, as i personally find this form more appealing, but looking at YouTube and their latest ideas constantly makes me reconsider that. The true reason i haven’t done any video content, of course, is lack of motivation, but we don’t talk about it here, it’s easier to blame The Corporation.

That’s basically it for now. I’m slowly getting up. I need to create and get used to a new daily routine. And everything will be fine, eventually. Hopefully, at some point in the future, this blog will not be a graveyard of few outdated and mediocre-quality posts, but rather an actual source of knowledge for people looking for it.