Announcing Goatmire Elixir & NervesConf EU

10-12th of September in Varberg, Sweden.

The conference now features a few new speakers that have confirmed.

• Frank Hunleth - Creator of Nerves
• Jon Carstens - Right hand of Nerves and hacker of my Berlin talk
• Damir Batinović - A bodgemaster. He will have a drone project to show

Getting on the waiting list won't cost you anything and you'll get info as tickets become available.

The shirts are not discounted during the end-of-year period. We don't have that kind of margin or volume currently. I just want to remind you that you can pre-order the Elixir one or order the Nerves one immediately. 

Focus, inspiration and passion

.. none of them matter as much as clarity about what is important.

The holiday period for me has coincided with a bit of personal crisis. No great tragedies or anything. Just the reminder that I can't do all the things that pop into my head. And that the things I often react to as the scorecard of life don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Following my path of least resistance leads me to a particular kind of misery.

This is something I'm constantly grappling with. Formally I do not have ADHD (I failed the standardized test) but my experiences in life are very aligned with ADHD problems. I'm very susceptible to going on a hunt for dopamine. Working in public on open source gives me a lot of dopamine slot machines to keep putting quarters in. Occasionally I get the reward but mostly I have a bad habit.

The work part is a challenge. Thankfully I react pretty well to outside accountability so the fact that my client's have opinions and timelines help direct my work and priorities but when those are very open-ended I've seen myself struggle with focus. And the same thing happens with my myriad ideas in open source.

Thankfully for the shirt and conference stuff this is very real and I've looped in other people (primarily my wife, but speakers, local allies, they all anchor it) so I have the right type of accountability. It also isn't just a weird hunt to scratch an itch. Those are actually attempts to build something more .. real. It has ties to the real world, it has ties to where I live, it involves deep collaboration with my wife. While every shirt order is a small kick to the reward center and the response to the conference has certainly had me hyped, it is different. I fundamentally feel a deeper desire and satisfaction, as well as a mild fear of failure, around these ventures. They are wild ideas but have been grounded.

I am seemingly on the upward slope of this struggle right now. Going through the holidays I didn't just feel scattered, I felt shattered. Part of it was probably pushing a bit too hard through Sep-Nov for conferences, open source and my work. Running a company and caring for employees in a churning market has also taken a lot out of me. The holidays have been largely good but settling into a slow pace with lots of family time was definitely challenging.

The habit of hunting for reward signals is terrible for quality time. It is terrible for just being present and available with small children. It is terrible for systematically working through the many small items of prep for a holiday dinner. I've been struggling. One reason I've been struggling is that the fundamentals have been out of whack which makes the brain worse at .. everything. I've been sleeping poorly and staying up later. I've been treating myself to tasty things that make my stomach angry. I've not been moving my body enough.

Good recipe to being a restless, twitchy, cranky someone with a massive todo-list.

The current work is to reset. Refocus. Center things back on intentionality, fundamentals and letting the family be more important than the internet points. Once more. With feeling. Sometimes I can be sick of my own head, tired of my wiring. I think that happens to most of us. "Why am I like this?"

On the whole, I'm happy with who I am and appreciate my particular brain. It comes with downsides and challenges though. Been a lot of that lately.

Hope your end-of-year doesn't necessitate quite so much soul-searching. But if it does, feel free to share. You can reach me on the Fediverse where I'm @lawik@fosstodon.org or by responding to this email to lars@underjord.io.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you.