On not knowing.

2026-08-25

A renaissance spirit with a medieval sense of humour. Nakmuay. Muffin walloper.

Knowing yourself narrowly is easy. Start your life, say you want to be a doctor, or become whatever your parents want you to be. Done. That's what everyone expects. You fit in. Does that bring joy? I don't think so, it is pathologically numbing. On the surface you have a life, deep down you are in pain no one sees and we all participate in this theater. Maybe it is me getting older. Maybe it is the world becoming crazier with ever-increasing pace. I suspect it is both. Regardless, not facing your pain is a sure way to hollow yourself out. Whatever it is I have in me, I am grateful for the nudging pain it has been giving me throughout my life to finally push me out of the zombie state and perhaps onto a better path filled with genuine, authentic experiences. The battle is ongoing, and though I have reached the midpoint of my life, I think the war is only picking up pace, with many more fights to go through. And so I am on a never-ending quest of knowing.

The rhythm

I have enjoyed 20 years of professional software engineering, and while I still do it and to an extent enjoy it, I have always had multiple hobbies going on in parallel. I can't say anymore that I am "a software engineer" — yes, that's still the only thing that brings money, but that's the same trap of fitting into a template and expectations. So it would be too easy, and self-destructive, for me to reduce myself to a title. Depth is good, but without breadth you are just digging your spiritual grave. Both go hand in hand, transforming into one another, establishing a healthy rhythm of life. There is always more to become, more to widen your understanding of, and more to get better at — to narrow and get precise.

The wide

My flat — well, it is barely a flat. It is mostly a workshop, a studio, covering my interests in:

• Machining — there is a mini lathe, a drill press, a tool grinder and poor neighbours behind the walls 🤪
• Electronics lab — this one is in progress, as I am preparing to jump back into my old hobby that once upon a time was pushed out by programming.
• A bike workshop. I have 2 bikes, one of which I built myself. I called it MoonRabbit, as it's built from Chinese AliExpress components on a Seaboard CX03 frame — also a nod to the Chinese moon rover.
• Jewelry workshop — calm down, I don't keep precious metals or stones here. That requires a specific trade license I'm not looking to obtain, so I work with regular metals and epoxy, of course — who doesn't like it.
• Sewing studio — a somewhat old hobby. I used to do HEMA and picked up a parallel direction from it: historical clothing. I still have a sewing machine and run some sewing projects from time to time.
• Painting/drawing — no comments, a renaissance spirit simply has to paint at least a bit!
• Musical instruments — flute and bodhrán. Suck at both. But I like the bodhrán as a way to meditate and decompress.
• Math — despite being an engineer, it didn't land well at university. So recently I've decided to go through at least some branches and finally address that problem. As my study program states: "The goal is to stop being traumatized by math and wield it like a weapon instead!"
• Cycling — used to do running, but since marathons are now TikTok-level entertainment, I had to jump on my high horse — sorry, I mean my high track bike. I have 2: a single-speed FabricBike I named SweatRocket, because it's light, fast, and I behave like a total idiot on it; and MoonRabbit, mentioned above, which is kind of a gravel bike, but not really — more a gravel/road/cyclocross Frankenstein. I like them both equally. My hip joints love them too!
• Olympic lifting — this one is my low-key "don't die from sarcopenia" routine. Not much to say about it; good strength exercise is important. 🤓

The narrow

Well, math is currently my biggest narrow. I am really digging deep into that and I will not resurface until I do! 🧛🏻‍♀️ What to study exactly has been a project on its own, spanning years at this point — perhaps we can call that the wide phase. Things are settled now though, and my objective, the fruit of the labor, is a geometric algebra library written in Coalton. Of course, that's on top of being good at math. This is actually my second attempt at this — the first one failed as I got sidetracked into the intricacies of Common Lisp, particularly CFFI, and lost all track of the math side of things. Eventually I burned out, and it was time to go to Thailand anyway. It was a very good dig nonetheless — I picked up a lot of Lisp and quite some knowledge of CFFI, even though CFFI still leaves me discombobulated every single time.

My second dig, currently wrecking my brain, is a home decor product line I want to experiment with. It's driven by a wider need — some diversification of income. I think it's a silly idea, but on the other hand, I refuse to be pigeonholed into a single professional activity. If I lose my income, that problem will pop up naturally regardless; I have no intention of forcing it on myself before then. So where it stands now, it is a high frequency oscillation between tinkering with epoxy and copper inlays on the narrow side of things and pondering at how/what/why this might become a product. Such flips are a sure sign that way more work is still needed before things settle down into a solid plan.

Superposition

Muay Thai — this one almost had me. It could have devoured me entirely. At 20, I think it would have done exactly that — but my middle-aged body presents a natural antidote. I'm strong, I burn absurd amounts of energy, and there's no way I bounce back from a morning weight cut by fight time the way a 20-something would. Nor do I recover as fast from a grueling training routine that, in Thailand, means two sessions a day, every day except Sunday.

Still — Muay Thai, hands down, is the best pain one can have. If you ask me to name the one thing that influenced my life the most, that's it: Muay Thai. I spent around 12 years working for one company, going through increasingly intense hollowing phases there, until Muay Thai yanked me out of it. I wanted to go to Thailand for my first long training season, and the company outright refused to accommodate it, so I finally stopped being a sheep and resigned. I left for Thailand with no job and not much in savings — enough spendable money for about 4 months. I returned, then spent 3 months finding another job, living on just enough for food and one more month's rent. Spending time in Thailand is a recurring theme now, and I'm very happy with how things turned out.

About the blog

Math is what pushed me to reestablish this blog, for the 3rd time. It's built on Zola; the content-creation side runs in Emacs, with a simple custom mode derived from markdown-mode. It automates the basic setup for my everyday journaling/logging. So the whole blog started as a journaling system to keep myself accountable for my progress, especially as I grind through math exercises. Everything else here is simply me drifting and procrastinating, taking breaks, and covering that under the pretense that having a blog is productive! 🤪 Perhaps the third take on this blog is the charm, and a good example of synthesis between going broad and going deep — it took me roughly 2 days to get the basic structure in place, since I could make decisions fast and avoid all the typical rabbit holes, compared to weeks or months with my previous attempts, filled with research and an absolute lack of any Elisp knowledge. The first one was on Ghost, if I remember correctly, and was filled with my attempts at meaningful blogging about sewing while not knowing enough about the blog, sewing, or writing.

Not sure how often I'll be updating this page, but eventually I hope the blog will take shape, filled with various projects I run — small and big, spanning a weekend or a couple of years — and also serve as a tool for self-reflection and a place for random curiosities.