2025
On the last day of the year it’s a good idea to have a look back. January feels like a long time ago. I was enjoying having my newly refurbished bathroom at home with a proper shower. I was still in the process of getting onboarded to my contract, working from home and a few days in the office. February involved a week where a team from abroad joined us for some collaboration. It was pretty painful but we got paid. I booked two days off the following week because I knew I’d be so exhausted from five days of meetings, and just being around people. Looking back, the cracks were already starting to show. I found working on a project team like that really hard going. The depressing thing is I have nothing of note to say over the next few months. I just coasted through the monotonous routine of wage slavery, only just enough energy left after each day to make dinner and go to bed. That’s what 40h weeks in a soul destroying job does to you. It steals your life away. During this time I made a semi impulsive ferry booking to do another week in Spain on the motorbike.
That happened in June. It was great, some fantastic roads and warm weather, and that was the week I turned 40. Then, again, really there’s nothing. I finally got round to fitting a bathroom mirror that I’d been meaning to do since December last year. I grew more and more miserable, being made to “do agile” on a pointless project that had somehow managed to out-survive other pointless projects to the point that it began to be considered important. I was made to work with a broken, nightmarish screaming spastic that made every second of every day a living hell. He finally decided to leave the team, and as he was saying his final goodbyes, I was being walking into a meeting room to be told I don’t “represent their values” because I objected to the psychopathic woke bullshit. They’d been giving money to extremist campaign groups that advocate for chemically castrating children among other things.
After getting the axe in November, I managed to start on a positive note. I released Notehub.cloud, and then moved on to the next project. That’s where I hit a brick wall. The big ideas I had, after doing more market research proved to be non starters. Too much mature competition in every space I could think of. This has left me feeling quite deflated in the final few weeks of the year.
The dismal state of the UK
Sometimes I try to imagine what things were like in early 1930s Germany. With hindsight it seems so obvious that things were heading in a bad direction. History never repeats but it often rhymes. The UK has a government that’s out of control, constantly granting itself more power and control by abusing the legislative process and passing statues to force the population into compliance. Every civil liberty in the book is being violated, and the systematic demographic replacement of our people is beyond denial at this stage. Those ahead of the curve are talking about remigration, yet there are still vast numbers who refuse to publicly acknowledge, for example, that Afghan men will have any higher propensity to sexual assaults than British men. Of course the government doesn’t record or publish the data that they don’t want people to know. Police forces refuse to comply with FOI requests, so we have enough plausible doubt for the useful idiots to hold their head up high in their bubble of virtue signaling delusion, and bury their head in the sand. The UK can’t save itself if half the population would rather burn than admit that the house is on fire.
Looking ahead
The more I look, the less genuine opportunities I can see for a solo Software Engineer. The online forums are full of people making tools for other creators. They have no creativity. It’s like a community of impoverished artists, all trying to sell each other paintbrushes. I don’t want to fall into the trap of being a bottom feeder. Shopify, etsy, amazon KDP, affiliate links, ad revenue, etc. I want a real business. It turns out that it’s a lot harder to find an opportunity to create software that people or businesses actually need. I’m wondering if I can find a totally different way of making money, and using my software skills to give me my unfair advantage.
Creative endeavors
For a long time, I’ve wanted to learn the Piano. I’ve wanted to do some “music production” (I hate that phrase), and also video editing. Even though I don’t really play video games, I’d like to learn Godot and make some simple games too. Then there’s learning - I want to learn more about politics, philosophy, mathematics, history. I guess now is the time to do it. If I’m going to gradually starve, I might as well have fun doing it.
2026
Whatever happens the next year, I intend to have a bit more to say about it. I think that’s about the best aspiration I can have. 52 weeks, 52 interesting things that are a positive move forward in my life.