New directions

2025-06-13

It’s been a while since I last updated this blog, which is mainly a place to post about my hobbyist software development activities, and I haven’t been doing much of that in recent years. I’m pushing close to my 40s, and I don’t have the same energy to stare at code after already doing so for 8 hours on the job that I had in my 20s. If I didn’t write code “for the man”, would I still code for fun? Absolutely. In fact, I’ve dabbled with the Godot engine, some executable minification, and reverse engineering, but not enough to deserve its own blog post.

So what have I been doing after work? Well, this:

For the last 8 or so years, I’ve been writing novels half time, and this January I published the first one (I’ve written 7 in total). Writing, unfortunately, is an activity that shares a lot with software development in that it features problem-solving and high-level reasoning. I wrote my first two books after coming home from work, but realized this was a path to burnout and switched to writing only on weekends, vacations, and other days off. I wrote the next 5 books that way, and so far I’ve found it a sustainable model.

Two years ago I also started learning art. I’ve wanted to do so essentially all my life, but every time I tried, I soon gave up. This time, though, I found myself a private teacher, and with his help I’ve advanced rapidly.

I’ve found that a private teacher suits me better than an online course or Discord instance where hundreds of people scream for attention at the same time. With my teacher I get to ask questions, and he can re-explain what I did not understand. However, the main way to learn, as with everything, is routine. Luckily, unlike writing, art shares little with the problem-solving part of the brain that software development uses, and I usually have little trouble doing my daily art practices after I wrap up coding. When I still was able to play my violin (sigh, neighbors…), I found that a similar activity. Playing violin is mostly a mechanical skill, and there’s little to think about when practising. Easy to do after already solving someone else’s problems for 8 hours.

As such, if you wish to follow me in the future, you may have more luck by following my book publication business at farstrider.fi or checking my art portfolio. My home server’s index page is also a good place to see what I’m up to. This site’s not going anywhere as of yet, though.