2026-07-08 - the next chapter of my life

Greetings to the fediverse and small internet. I appreciate the blog posts, random thoughts and messages I see in my feed each week. You all inspired me to share some of my recent thoughts and happenings in my life. And who knows, maybe this will help someone.

I quit my software engineering job about 2 months ago to be a stay-at-home dad for a few years. I'm taking care of a cute 3-year-old boy, an abnoxious but cute 1-year-old girl, and a third baby on the way. The decision to quit wasn't easy, but it was definitely the right one.

Since quitting, I've already had a big improvement to my mental health. While working, I was always either feeling too stressed with a given deadline or feeling that my effort wasn't contributing to anything truly meaningful. Working hours took up most of my energy each day, so I struggled watching kids the rest of the day. My side projects are important to me, however with a job and kids, I was lucky to have 1-2 hours of free time each week.

The past 2 months have been busy. We sold all our furniture and most of our stuff. We moved out of the USA to reduce spending and get family support watching kids. I have a buffer of 2-3 years before I need to figure out something else. After this buffer period, maybe my passion projects will be more sustainable, maybe I will get another job in tech, or maybe I will switch careers altogether. We are just starting to settle into our new place. Kids are still a lot of work, but I already have more free time than I did while working.

I think I have a similar personality to Andrew Kelley (creator of Zig), who said in a recent interview: "I think that basically I am unemployable and I got lucky through my career that no one found out and I needed to be my own boss in order to be happy. And so once I was able to do that, then I achieved happiness."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqddnwKF8HQ

Another reason I wasn't feeling happy about work is due to LLMs. LLMs are an amazing technology and I was lucky to be working with the cutting edge since the start of their popularity. But now they are better at writing code and many people have abandoned programming all together. I too became an LLM cultist for a few months. In exchange for a small piece of my soul and paycheck, I could use Claude and Codex to solve my problems. However, programming has always been an art and a hobby to me. Humans writing instructions that a computer can understand has always felt like magic. That's why I graduated with a Computer Science degree and got an engineering job. Maybe I'm weird, but I enjoy the process of writing code! Having someone or something do it for me just makes me unhappy. There were a few times at my job when I had to take a break from LLMs and write code myself, simply because I wanted to be happier.

I am my own boss now. No company per se, but a family. I pledge to not use generative AI for the next few years and to avoid software and creative works that use them irresponsibly. I have no external pressure to need them now. Not every technology is good for humans and I think generative AI is for the most part not great for humans.

So what is my plan now? I want to switch from big tech solutions to smaller companies or self hosting. I also want to prototype a "fantasy handheld" idea I've been planning out for a year and a half.

Earlier this year I switched from google/perplexity/duckduckgo to kagi. A month ago I switched from gmail to fastmail. And I am currently in the process of switching from github to sourcehut.

As for my "fantasy handheld" idea, it will be called "oncon". I like to think it is a mix between PICO-8 and UXN. Both are projects I really admire. 2-bit 128x128 screen with 64KB cartridges, where you program in a forthy-luay language I'm designing. I haven't done much with UXN besides research, but I have done a lot with PICO-8. So the constraints I am designing come from experience making data-packed PICO-8 cartridges.

This little post took about a week for me to write as I was finding time away from kids and refining my thoughts. Here is to the next chapter of my life. A little manifesto to the future. You should be seeing more from me.