Captain’s Log, 2025.09

I flailed about with some websites.

If you’re reading this I must have succeeded. But as I sit here writing I have no clear direction, and I can’t seem to find a format that feels right. Everything I try feels forced and insincere. Yet for some reason it feels important so I stick with it, chipping away at it on Wednesday nights.

I climbed a little higher up the learning curve.

I have an idea for a software thing that I would really like to make. This idea has crawled into my head and won’t let go. It has subsumed all of my other software ideas, glomming them all together into one fabulous monstronsity, impossibly oversized and completely unmarketable. In the past I would have regretfully captured my thoughts to a “Someday/Maybe” list and turned my focus to something more “practical”. But now? The world being what it is? Leaning hard toward saying “fuck it” and just going for it.

• Continued learning Rust. This month was figuring out how to do “drivers”, or “plugins”, or “abstract factory patterns” or what-have-you. Rust requires that the compiler know the size of things at all times, which is requiring a bit of brain-reprogramming on my part. Box<> and Box<dyn> and Rc<>, a bit on unsafe pointers and downcast_ref<>, conditional compilation. All the pieces are there, I just have to figure out how to plug them all together. But then I’m also still learning basic stuff like “how should a workspace be organized”.

• Started learning about Veilid, “a framework that empowers developers to build their apps without compromising their users’ data”. I would really like this to be The Way, a community owned and managed data layer that we can all tap into.

• Getting better at Vi. I read (present tense) one new paragraph from Practical Vim, learning one or two new editing commands, and then spend the next several days trying to use and internalize them. Repeat. But it’s adding up. I enabled vim mode in Obsidian, but not yet in VS Code.

I got away for a bit.

I booked an Airbnb and headed back up north to my old stomping ground in Rochester, NY for a long weekend. I had hoped that being back there would spark a little inspiration, maybe move some writing or coding. But traction turned out to be just as poor there as here so I just had to roll with it.

• The apartment had a beanbag and an old plasma flatscreen, one of the thick ones that weigh a ton. Plugged my laptop into it, had a gummy and played hours of Art of Rally. So chill and relaxing and nostalgic and just what I needed. Started trying to get into the top 50% at all the stages, made some good progress.

• Had a lovely dinner at Dorado with an old friend and partner in crimes from back in the day. We were in a band together, and the first east coast geekhouse. Lots of laughs and reminiscing. In the early days we joked that we should buy mcdonalds.com, which was available at the time, and then we didn’t which is what makes it funny.

I continued focusing on R&R.

I don’t know when I’ll be out the other side of this nonsense, but it isn’t today. I’m trying to focus on the big picture and not force my way through it, which is obviously not how these things work (as much as my stubborn brain would insist).

• I’m using The Sad Bastard Cookbook unironically. “Food you can make so you don’t die.” Also, a batch of chocolate chip support cookies.

• Put the beatdown on Auntie Ethel in Baldur’s Gate 3.

• Pulled out the LEGOs. Pretty sure there are still pieces from my first sets in here somewhere. Had fun away from the screens making weird spaceships. Disappointed that I seem to have lost some of the ground pieces along the way.

• Discover Assetto Corsa has the Toyota AE86 from Initial D. Squee loudly.

• Attended The Market of the Macabre at Laurel Hill Cemetery on an absolutely perfect autumn day, got a jump start on my holiday shopping. Days like this almost make me want to get out more.

• I beat @valsombra at Soul Calibur! The score is probably 100 to 1 but I got one!

Poked at some Raspberry Pi’s.

As I’m doing all this decorporatizing I’ve been musing on the practicality of a little self-hosting box that someone could plug-and-play at home. And then serendipity happens and @valsombra comes back from a family trip to VA with a box of random electronics bits including two Raspberry Pi 3a’s. So I’ve been poking at those, and YunoHost, and getting a sense of things.

When I can relax, this is all really nice.

Despite all my complaints about it, being slow and relaxed about things and resting as often as I need it is working. I am starting to feel better. I love my little apartment. I love living around the corner from my friends. Esme is turning into the sweetest little love bug as she settles in. The little moments of enthusiasm and happiness are starting to come more often and more consistently. I even catch myself unclenching my jaw once in a while.

I’m starting to feel like I have some control over my life again. I am, despite everything happening (waves hands) out there, starting to feel safe.

Thoughts & Advice

• I don’t need anyone, much less everyone, to be happy before I can be. I will never make myself miserable enough to make everyone else happy.

• Excited anticipation is what I want to be feeling, is how I know when the compass is pointing the right direction.

• SLOW. DOWN. Everything gets easier when you just…slow…the fuck…down.-

• Be deliberate. If you’re working, work. If you’re resting, rest.

Random Links

• Initial D. A tofu delivery driver becomes a drift racing legend, and I am so there for it.
• A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a black & white Farsi vampire western coming-of-age movie.
• For the local peeps, I :heart: Doom. Grab a hoodie while you’re there, they are top notch. I’ll be living in mine this winter.