Written on the way out of Denver on May 25, 2024
After giving early retirement a whirl, my main focus now is to start a round-two career in software engineering. Main project here: I've been working on open source contributions to my favorite todo app, Taskwarrior (and its time-tracking cousin, Timewarrior). It's been nice to put the skills that I picked up at the coding bootcamp Rithm School to use. Setting up my own digital infrastructure has been a good time too. E.g., using my custom email service at mattmail.org has made email a pleasure again. (You can try it: write to me at m@ that site to let me know your strategy for breakfast, or something else of your choosing.)
You've likely been seeing my name written Smida instead of Szmaida. That's not a typo -- I'm now in a back and forth with the court to make it happen. I promised myself while I was in Tokyo last year that I'd have a passport with the new spelling by Dec 31. You can read more here. The shortest version: it's a way of communicating that things have changed.
To blunt the impact of the already-hot Florida summer, I've been traveling a little bit. I went to Montreal to see the eclipse and get lost. I went to Austin for a conference to talk with other software engineers (the advice: work hard). I'm leaving Denver today, where I was visiting family and hanging out at a cool hostel.
Getting back into plastic rock climbing after a five-month hiatus. Near the top of the list of reasons I like climbing is that you can't BS it. You either get to the top, or not. And there's no pretense of trying to be useful to anyone while you do it, nothing to BS.
I've been reading Peter Zeihan's books, and feeling more optimistic about the future of America. Contrast that with how I felt around Q1 2023, and you'll notice a big quality of life improvement for me.