Quick bits:

• Apropos of nothing, the dream of home ownership feels further out than ever before. Renting feels like throwing money away but I don’t really seem to have much of a choice.

• I purchased a Thunderbolt dock: the CalDigit TS3 Plus. It’s made my desk setup considerably better. No more constantly accidentally disconnecting my hard drives.

• I now own a chain wear indicator, and it has told me that my Brompton chain is in dire need of replacement. I’ve been delaying fixing the chain for too long, but at least I made a bike shop appointment.

• I’ve been using my Fitbit as a sleep tracker, and it only ever shows me “fair” or “poor” for sleep quality — never “good,” let alone “excellent.” I haven’t really felt well-rested in weeks, so that tracks. (I’m having some difficulty keeping my eyes open this morning as I write this.)

• What is up with the number of crows in Berlin? It’s a borderline plague. On a walk yesterday, I must’ve seen hundreds. A little scary.

• I signed up for an 8-week intensive acting course starting late October. Exciting.

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I’m not doing particularly great this week. My burnout is manifesting itself, and I wonder whether I’m sliding into the depression (the two can go hand in hand).

My energy levels are at an all-time low. No focus, either. I’ve had a to-do list titled “To do (Saturday)” where I kept scratching out the weekday name and updating it. It now says “Friday” (it’s Sunday as I am writing this), but at least some of the to-do items are checked off now.

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My cardiologist didn’t see anything I should be worried about, but two more tests are scheduled.

One regret: not putting on puppy eyes and asking my doctor “so if my heart is fine… does that mean I can love again with all my heart?” (He really didn’t seem like he’d find this funny.)

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I have failed my writing challenge. This week, I have no new short story. I have not written a single paragraph, or even a single sentence — at best a few words that I could not string together.

I have no inspiration, no energy, and no focus.

I’m sad that I’ve broken my streak, but it is what it is. I might continue coming week, depending on how I feel. I’m not going to force myself, though.

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I need to talk about the tools and techniques trap, because I see people stumbling into this frequently, and I think it’s quite a source of frustration for me.

What I mean by this trap is that we tend to overly focus on tools and techniques, rather than what to achieve with them. There are myriad examples:

• Some electronic musicians will talk about all the synthesizers they have – physical or software, but not really make any music with them.

• Some people get excited about stationary and fountain pens and ink types and paper thicknesses, but not really write anything.

• Some actors get really excited about the particular acting technique they use, rather than what they want to achieve with it.

• Some software developers care a lot about paradigms (OOP vs. FP, monolith vs. microservices), specific programming languages and specific libraries/frameworks. Those people don’t really seem to care what they build or what it’s useful for.

• Some people with cameras (video cameras or photo cameras) can talk about all sorts of camera bodies and lenses, but not caring about what they produce.

• Some people who take notes are very much into certain note-taking techniques and note-taking tools, but not talk about the insights they’ve gained from this process.

• Some people get really excited about generative AI, for the sake of generative AI.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with talking or getting excited about tools and techniques like the ones I just mentioned, but it gets problematic when the focus is entirely on the tools or techniques.

I’ve seen this most prominently in software development, where far too often there was no conversation about what to build and why, and only on how to do the implementation. Oh, the endless arguments!

This is frustrating to me because tools and techniques are just a means to an end. Yes, agreeing on a set of tools and techniques is useful, as is learning them properly. But the only way in which they matter is their ability to produce good results.

This is why I’ll follow up a request like “we need to break up our monolith into microservices” with the question “why?” — and often, I end up coming across as contrarian.

I much rather want to think about what the end result is, and why that result matters. In other words, what is the value I am creating? What is the purpose of my work? The drawback of thinking this way is that… well… the purpose of the work is often remarkably vague — a problem that has certainly fueled my burnout.

I want to do things that genuinely matter, is what I’m saying.

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I found a big mushroom!

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Entertainment:

• I rewatched Los cronocrímenes (Timecrimes). It’s still good.

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Links:

• This Song Teaches Counting But Is INSANELY Hard To Count (Charles Cornell): Amazing!

• So does private equity own everything? (Dan Toomey for Good Work)

• Cult vs Startup - Can you spot the difference? (struthless)

• An Audacious Plan to Halt the Internet’s Enshittification (Cory Doctorow at DEF CON 31)

Tech links:

• Nuclear Anchored Sidenotes (Eric Meyer): Can’t wait for this to become generally usable!

• gokrazy is really cool (Xe Iaso): I had not heard of gokrazy and it does look cool indeed!