This is probably going to be a way too personal post. So, if you’re not into this kind of thing, no problem. I’m writing this after I’ve been quite inactive around here, and not coding that much. Life has been hard since summer and I’ve also been trying to pursue a different writing project in a different place. After some months dealing with a social media-influenced platform I won’t name, but which you’d probably correctly deduce, I creep back here, where I feel safe but not seen… because feeling seen feels immensely uncomfortable and fake.

I’m not going to give any details about the project I’m referring to above. I’ve been working on it under a pseudonym. However, the incessant need of the platform to lock you into an engagement cycle has made the whole endeavor progressively less fulfilling. I dare to say, it has become draining and making me doubt myself even though I’ve been writing about topics I have training in.

I have asked myself why. I also have asked myself why I’ve been so avoidant of programming. I know I’m not a professional coder and probably never will, but I’m almost every day on IRC discussing Arch (and other FOSS) issues. Is it because of gender stereotypes? Maybe, but I also feel like I have lost a lot of the brain power I had in the past. There is an underlying health issue (it’s in my metabolism) that I recently learned I have, which I’ve just started treatment for and may be related to this feeling of having lost brain power; let’s see in the next couple of months if it is related or not.

Truth is that I don’t care about metrics, but these evil systems have tricked me into caring about them regardless. Truth is that I don’t want to just talk tech, but I’m afraid that talking about other stuff (e.g., philosophy and mysticism) might be “too much” while I’m also talking about technology. “Am I overstepping here?”, is something I ask myself every single time I get into a new project. “Who do you think you even are?”, a voice in my head says, judging me unworthy. On the other hand, I am tired (again, this is related to stress these last couple of months and probably health-related, as I said) to even start learning a couple of programming languages I want to try out. It feels overwhelming, but also immensely frustrating because there was a time in the past in which I was such a quick learner.

It’s easy to be hard on oneself. It’s natural. Right now, I’m considering a plan to become more consistent, but also free of the shackles of the dark patterns that seem to pervade every platform online because they poison my soul. Learning how to love yourself back a process, my therapist tells me every time. I guess my biggest act of self-love is to honor that I want to keep coding, writing about as many topics as I want to, and hopefully contributing to other people’s projects.

I’m not even sure if this post makes any sense at all, but here it is.