💾 Archived View for log.pfad.fr › 2024 › what-am-i-serious-about captured on 2024-08-18 at 17:20:17. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I read a blog post today, which I found very inspiring and encouraged me to reflect on myself.
Surely you can be serious - by Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History
On the transportation side, I try to avoid the car as much as possible. I do all my everyday trips on a bike. I am both proud and sad to be known in my city as "the guy always on the move by bike, no matter the weather" (we usually have snow in winter and we lately had heavy rains). Proud because it means that people did notice it, sad because it means that doing it is not seen as the norm (what I believe should be the case).
Regarding holidays, we visit my parents who live 1400km away about twice a year via train (never less than 12 hours of travel). It is an adventure, but after doing it for a few years, it isn't as daunting as it once was, even (or especially?) with small children.
Yes, I live in an apartment where all of the above is possible (shopping places and a train station nearby), but this was one of the main criteria when we visited various places to live.
On the electricity consumption side, I track every week the meter. I would love to have this tracked automatically, however our so-called "Smart Meter" is not easily connectable to the Internet, so I enter the meter value into my phone every week. This encouraged me to track down the power consumption of specific appliances and achieve a daily consumption lower than 0.5 kWh/day when away (fridge and Internet router plugged in) and less than 6 kWh/day when present (cooking included, warm water excluded - but I have "smart radiator control" to reduce their consumption).
Graph showing the average daily electricity consumption of my home
Back at the end of last year, I wrote:
I'm going to work full-time on free software | December 2023
This didn't work out at all. I think the main reason is that I don't have enough reach (and not enough personal will to acquire this reach). So I am back looking for a permanent job, without the free software component. However, I hope with an assured income, I will contribute again to various free software projects (I have been away from Forgejo for almost a month).
My (not-more-secret) hope is that my new job will allow me to (at least partially) become an open source maintainer, as Filippo Valsorda is doing with Geomys. However thanks to the article that inspired this blog post, I know that I have to make compromises. And for now, I am ready to compromise on my seriousness about free software.
Geomys, a blueprint for a sustainable open source maintenance firm
It feels relieving to realize that I am not being serious about specific topics because it means that I can (and should) make compromises about them. Especially when those compromises help achieve goals that I am serious about.
If I want to be serious about new topics, I am now aware that it won't be a one-time shot, but a "tooth-brushing problem".
Being serious is a tooth-brushing problem—you have to keep doing it every day until you die.
So you wanna de-bog yourself - by Adam Mastroianni | Experimental History
📅 2024-07-12
