Stop and Shift

Serene workspace transitioning from cluttered to organized, featuring a computer with code on screen, notes, a coffee cup, and an open notebook with a pen, against a backdrop of a plant and a window with a nature view, symbolizing a software engineer’s decision to pause and shift focus for rejuvenation

Today is February 8th, 2024. I have made a decision to de-commit from Fedimint and other bitcoin projects that I could be working on for the rest of the year. This is a merkedly big shift from plans I made in the beginning of the year. Technically, this makes me jobless. However, this gives immediately alleviates my expreience of chronic stresss, bordering on depression this past year. It gives me room to experiement with practical and quantifiable learning. It allows me to rebuild self-confidence and healthy consistency.

You shouldn’t come to the boxing ring every single day, already beaten!

Context

I set out to be a Bitcoin OSS contributor in August 2023, and reasoned my way into contributong to the Fedimint project. Within that, I contributed to the following:

  • Lightning Gateway - a functional component of Fedimint that bridges the federations and the lightning network
  • Fedimint User Interfaces - open source react web apps for runnign and administering and Fedimint Federations, and the Lightning Gateway
  • Tonic LND - an open source rust library for establishing RPC connections to LND nodes.
  • SimLN - a rust library for simulating realistic payemnt scenarios on the lightning framework
  • nostrdocs* - an attempt at connecting Microsoft fluid framework to Nostr protocol for open, decentalized collaboration experiences
  • colighter* - an open source browser extension for highlighting the web as you read.
  • GETLN* - A Lightning Service Provider for fedimint federations

This is a lot of projects for one year of work. In a lot of these areas, I was out of my skill and competence, evidenced by my struggles to complete I feel very little accomplishment

Notes

In my wary state after closing the year past, I’ve been considering both outward and in-facing goals I want to reach for the rest of this year.

Fundamentally, a win would be to feel consistency and accomplishment at the end of the year.

  • I want to relearn how to set ambitious but quantifiable (SMART) goals, that I can smash.
  • I look to build confidence and competence in my area of contribution.
  • I want to feel flow when I sit down to produce value.
  • I want to be happy with the work I do.
  • I want to ship.

I want to be a perfectionist, and a completionist.

Lessons

I had a lot of fun working on novel projects this year. My technical scope expanded significantly. However, while building and contributing, I was not sharing enough.

This means:

  • I was not documenting much of my work.
  • I was not setting realistic goals with my projects
  • I was not reflecting honestly on capacity and progress
  • I was learning diffusely, whimsically directed by whatever project I was wowking on at the time.

I should have been building in public

Dead Stop. Then Shift

This post marks a dead stop and reset. In the next few days, I get to stop, rest and reset. Then I get to reprioritize what I do, and commit to:

  • Sharing live notes and carrying people along on my journey
  • Prioritize meaningful projects and testing stickiness
  • Deal with psychological pressures I definetly have blamed for my bias to walk and work in the shadows :p

Build with honesty. Consistently