The pandemic burned me out pretty hard after a lifelong obsession with computers, tinkering around with technology back when it was more of a hobby than a commercial pursuit. It was nice to be able to parley my passion into a career, but contact with the world of business tends to corrupt what I always viewed as a form of play and artistic expression.

I like simple technologies like IRC. You don't need K8s clusters or deployment pipelines. String together everything with a smattering of bash because nothing is really at stake. It's easy to get started since the tech is as simple as it gets, and there's nothing actually on the line. You can practice using obscure languages never seen in industry. Do things because they make you laugh, not to build a portfolio or a product. At the least, I can still crank out a modest amount of code and actually enjoy the process, without tearing my hair out over whatever asinine enterprise-scale clusterfuck needs to be untangled now.

Still waiting for whatever is next.