Yes! I was gone, and I took a very long-break from tech in general. I was still working as a software engineer, but I needed some time to introspect and watch inward. It seemed like I was so involved in the rat-race, chasing every shiny little thing, that I forgot to sit back and think if it was taking a toll on me. The tech-world has been developing so fast that it has become hard to keep on top of it. And the kind of nerd I am when it comes to technology, I’ve had the compulsion to be on top of all the shiny new developments in tech. And it made me burned out, and I just had to shut down my experiments and take a long break. And, I’m back now and back better than ever. But with new developments:

End of kudla.social

kudla.social was one of my experiments where I tried to make Fediverse popular among the people around me. I had a Mastodon, Pixelfed and Minetest (Minetest is not a part of the Fediverse, but it’s open source) instances running in a managed VPS. “kudla” is a local slang for “Mangalore” from where I’m roughly based off of. And I had great hopes that it would take off.

Although, the intention was idealistic, it didn’t appeal to a lot of people around me. A few interested tech-savvy one’s kept using the platform because we knew how elegant the decentralized networks are. But it’s unrealistic to expect that amount of enthusiasm from everyone. Eventually the activity was drying down, and I had to sadly shut down kudla.social due to less activity.

Until next time, when we find more traction for Fediverse among the masses.

Moving to Apple Ecosystem

I would probably be the last person in the world to advocate towards the Apple Ecosystem back in those days. And I even wrote a post about it here in my blog. But I still had to move to the Apple ecosystem for just one thing: Elegance.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t despise the open source tools. I love open source. And I know the power of open source, its ethics and its reach. But the sheer amount of workaround and hoops I had to jump through to get one small thing working sometimes is frustrating to say the least. As I was getting Acquainted into my professional life, I needed to embrace a system where I don’t have to work with workarounds. I needed to sit in my desk and have the setup work out-of-the box. It just leaves a lot of space for me to worry about other important things in my life.

While I believe open source is great and we should all contribute to the community, it still has a long way to go with respect to how capitalistic our society is. Most of the work in open source is done in “leisure-time” and out of sheer passion. And its slow. And its always a slow process when communities have come together to build something beautiful. Therefore it takes a lot of time. “Time” has become a luxury to me now. And I’d rather use my time, to contribute to the community with reliable tools, than tweak my tool to make it exactly how I want it to perform.

Mental Wellbeing

I was one of those software engineers that ridiculed mental wellbeing. I thought the hustle-culture in software engineering was how it’s supposed to be. And it landed me in a place where I was constantly burned out and I didn’t really know why. I had lost my motivation to work and tech in general. The “Velan” that enjoys everyday learning new things was lost somewhere.

Then, I decided that I would start meditating constantly, as a start. It sure is very difficult in the beginning while the mind wanders off. Few weeks down the line, I started to have more control over my mind while I watched my thoughts pass by. As my mind cleared, I felt like I should involve myself in other productive activities. As a result, I started reading more books since I was able to engage some time blocks between my meetings. And I feel better than ever like I was finding my old-self back.

Closing Thoughts

I agree I have done an M. Night Shyamalan twist on every ideal that I have stood by in the past. But on the flip-side, that’s what makes us human. We identify, We introspect and we learn. This is a part of my learning process. And that’s growth.

Going forward, I’m going to focus on my wellbeing. I’m going to read more, write more, learn more. This blog could turn from a tech-centric blog to a philosphical-blog or just a general-blog with no intention, I never know. But this will always be a blank slate for me to put my thoughts into words and push them out to the world. Nothing more, Nothing less.

Take care :)