Welcome to Bullets #20! Sit back, relax, and dive into the latest edition of the series, you can also catch up on the previous edition bullets/19.

Things changed#

I’ve got a job - I joined a new company!

After years of wearing the manager hat, I’m back to being an engineer, just like in the early days of my IT journey. It’s been a few weeks so far. I joined an agency and got assigned to a project that’s… well, let’s just say it’s large, has a few years on its clock, and includes a lot of people working on it simultaneously. Think serious enterprise vibes.

I’m now living the backend life with Ruby on Rails and trying my luck with Vue on the frontend. It’s honestly fun to live in IDE full-time again. 😄

Also, I somehow became a team leader. Didn’t really plan for that, but I certainly don’t mind, I enjoy supporting people.

After almost a year and a half of sabbatical (or early retirement), I’m back in the game and officially selling my time for money again!

Battlestation refactor#

Since I received a MacBook as my daily work machine, it was time for a desk refresh. My setup was perfectly tailored for the stationary Mac Studio, but it wasn’t ready for a two-devices setup.

As the laptop is a work device, I had to make sure that everything works well there, but I’d also like to use Mac Studio for daily life. The first few days were rough. Context switching was hard, I couldn’t find a satisfying rhythm, and I missed the small everyday conveniences.

Fast forward through lots of cable rage, research, and experimentation – I now have all peripherals plugged into the monitor. HDMI + USB go to the Mac Studio, and USB-C goes to the MacBook. Changing the monitor input is all it takes to switch between machines, and surprisingly, everything just… works! The only manual thing left is switching my MX Master mouse to the right device. Few seconds and I’m switched. Acceptable.

Still, my dream setup is still a single-device setup where both personal and work life run side-by-side. I’d love to be just a CMD+TAB away from replying to my wife, or turning a HomeKit lamp on. But hey, this is good enough, for now.

Underware and multiboard#

I upgraded my desk with motors, so I can now press a button and it moves up and down depending on my needs, super convinent. I had to switch, as my old setup was not capable of lifting 32" monitor anymore.

Most of my effort here went into cable management and organizing all the stuff under the desk. I’ve worked with two projects which are super cool and I can recommend it to anyone1:

I printed over 2 kg of filament just to bring order to the cable spaghetti. I probably spent more time under the desk than on top of it. 😅 I’ll post some photos soon… once I clean up the chaos that organizing has caused. Here’s a sneak peak of the last few prints.

Last batch of my Underware prints

Life after “Unretirement”#

I noticed a few things after getting in the new mode:

  • I stopped using LinkedIn. Got the job – mission accomplished. Now it’s just another social media.
  • There’s not enough time in a day. Shocking, I know.
  • I can’t finish a workday unless my git status is clean, and everything in my brain is offloaded somewhere. This is not healthy:/
  • My fitness dropped. I struggled on a 7 km run, which used to be quite easy a few weeks back. But somehow I also manged to beat my 3km PB. 🤷🏻‍♂️
  • I get nervous more often.
  • Woodworking and furniture building are just a hobby now.
  • I’m basically off social media. I miss Mastodon sometimes (fortunately, I can still follow some people via RSS)… but ⬇️
  • I can’t check RSS feeds during work (e.g. while waiting for builds), and the unread count is piling up.
  • My monthly cash balance is net-positive. Finally! 😅
  • It’s going to be hard to build relationships as strong as the ones I had in my previous workplace. I’m not in my 20s anymore, we just see each other during standups and on Slack.
  • I still have great friends I can chat with, and I’m grateful for every little interaction.
  • Keeping a separate work-life balance is hard, but in my case I’d like to have it much more integrated. I like to have one browser (with profiles), one terminal, one email client, one calendar… All these apps have a way to separate work and personal life, but right now I have different devices with the same apps and it’s just not the same. I had a way of working and living that worked for me, and now I’m forced to approach it differently.

Summary#

So yeah, I’m officially back from my “early retirement.” Summer is in full swing, horse flies are terrorizing my runs again, I fire up the grill every few days, and my sons are out of school, so no more washing lunchboxes or refilling water bottles for a while. We’re healthy, life’s good!

  1. I’ll even say that printing stuff for getting yourself organized in your closest space is good enough reason to buy a 3D printer! ↩︎