[rtomayko]

Interesting to see this as I’ve never heard returning to adolescent interests being common but that’s exactly the path I followed after leaving tech. I tried getting into sound engineering because I loved recording with rented 4 track recorders and early software DAWs in my late teen years. It didn’t stick and I ended up going back further to when I found an old Honda Trail 70 in a barn when I was a kid and rode around absolutely everywhere in my local area just to explore.

I recently found the adventure riding community and built up a Husky 701 for multi-day (hopefully multi-week in the future) on/off road trips. It’s not unlike a small open source project but more physically active. I’m early 40s now and plan to explore on a bike into my 60s.

I also recently bought a ranch in Colorado. This isn’t from my childhood but turned out to hit all the right notes for me. Ranchin’ is almost impossible to make a profit at but I’ve met a bunch of people now who can’t stop doing it and I understand why. It’s a never ending stream of natural projects, big and small, that engage every part of you mentally and physically. Again here, not unlike a (larger) software project.

I went into tech because I thought I liked hacking, turns out I just like work, especially on systems you can iterate on every day and see improvement.

As for tech, I haven’t written a line of code in years and rarely use the internet except for practical things like maps and basic information. I still browse HN occasionally. Not sure why as there’s not a lot of content relevant to my current interests. It still has a little of whatever I loved about tech in the 2000-2015 era, which seems entirely gone from the wider internet now.