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2019 had a rough start. There I was, in the worst shape of my life, burnt-out on my startup, and living day to day without a plan. I was stuck, and desperately needed to get my shit together.

"How can I compete with them? I'm just a single person and they're a VC-funded company with millions of users." 💩😩

The first version of my website, the site you're reading this on, was born seven years ago. NodeJS was just released the year prior and I was eager to give it a try. So, I built and released an open-source Node blogging engine—aptly named Simple Blog—which ended up serving as the first true home for my content.

I see a lot of people in the software community continually bring up the same problems and questions regarding side projects: Should I launch my side project? I never finish my side projects. Should I charge for my side project? I don't have time for side projects.

In July of 2015 I was burnt out, tired, and in desperate need of a change. My job of three years was no longer fulfilling and I couldn't fathom continuing to give up a 40-hour work week to achieve someone else's dream.

Listen to episode 🎧 I recently sat down with Ryan Chenkie to chat about my journey from indie to acquisition of Insomnia. We go over a bunch of interesting topics like fear of starting, burnout, and the decision to sell the company after three long years of hard work.

Recently, I bought an iPad Pro and have been using it for basically everything except software development, which it's not yet good at. This led to a problem, however, because I've been wanting to start blogging again but publishing posts requires many software-development-like activities which, again, the iPad is not good at.

Instead of making resolutions at the beginning of each year, I like to decide on a focus instead. Last year's focus was getting back on track with nutrition and exercise in order to fix my chronic back pain. This year, I've decided to focus on being more creative. But why creativity?

I'm currently sitting in the Vancouver International Airport, in my sweatpants, writing this post; waiting to board a plane to London, one-way, with no plans of returning any time soon.

Have you ever wanted to see a random, funny and colorful message every time you launch your terminal? Well I did, and and here's how you can do it too.