freedom
January 26, 2026
Today is the first day of my freedom! For the first time in my life, I don't have work, school, or any other obligation to attend, or, a future commitment to any of these. The indefiniteness of this period makes it so exciting.
Most people I've talked to about my freedom have (naturally) asked me what big plans I have. I've told them about some project ideas, upcoming trips, new fitness plans, and so on. But a big part of why I need this freedom is to achieve:
doing nothing.
A modern life requires a lot, in terms of energy and time. Especially a life where your work doesn't stop once you leave the workplace. At work there will always be one more feature to implement, one more analysis to perform, one more person to convince (or ten, depending on how big your DesignByCommittee committee is). Then, you have to worry about chores, exercise, socializing, eating, sleeping, and whatever else brings fulfillment to your life.
Sometimes work can be fulfulling. It was for me for many years. During that time, I would come home and feel so accomplished, having learned so much, created something amazing, and was genuinely excited to go back the next day.
That didn't last forever though. Not only did the place I worked change, but I changed too. My thirst for knowledge and novel opportunities was not quenched by what my work could offer.
In recent times, I made serious efforts to do things outside of work that could provide this fulfillment. Inevitably, these would end up eating into one of the other essential activities (see above), and I found it really difficult to maintain balance. Even more, the cognitive load offered by my modern tech job slowly eroded my sense of what my outside of work interests even were.
The term I've used to describe this erosion is "spiritual damage" - in other words, the aspects of what make me who I am, and what make me excited about life, were being negatively altered. It's not that my job was particularly horrible, in fact, even right up to the end, I worked on incredible things, and with incredible people. The problem was really about the balance of my time and energy. And I found myself fortunate enough to be in a position where I could pause my work obligation, and more freely experiment with the balance.
So now I have an extra 8+ hours per day, and a ton of energy, that I can spend however I want. On some days, that might mean:
doing nothing.
Just letting my mind wander, browsing, researching things that I enjoy thinking about, and re-discovering what I'm interested in. I have good ideas of what domains I'll spend my time in (computers, "making", maybe music), but also plan to deviate and hopefully become surprised at what I enjoy.
Some of what I do will be documented on this site, so please keep reading! :)
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