7:19 on Monday the 8th

I don't know why this has been so hard. Some days it feels impossible to get started after being away for a few days. Sometimes I encounter this feeling of dread when trying to get started. What is that? Why? Is it a warning, stress, a subconscious communication? Maybe it's late after a long day of work and my meds have worn off. I don't know... and I probably never really will. I choose to push on instead.

You know, today I just want to make some weird choices. I feel like I need to do something to shake up how I've been approaching things.

There's this line:

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It's often attributed to Einstein. Funny enough, there's no real evidence linking it to him. I think a lot of people my age first heard this line while playing Far Cry 3.

Whether or not it's a real quote doesn’t dilute the impact it's had on me. Doing something whacky instead of following the same approach could lead to a breakthrough... or at least help me break through the mental barrier I'm fighting.

Let's see how this goes...

Another "Final" Restart

I set out to post a quick status update, but found myself drafting something more ambitious than intended. I’m finishing that longer piece now; once it’s locked down, I’ll shift back here with lean, to-the-point progress notes. I’ll likely detour into a side topic when it feels worth it—but I’ll keep those tangents in check so you get the essentials first.

Thanks for hanging in there.

Checking in: Resetting

Since I last posted... I took a small break.

I got a discord bot working. All it does is barf responses in a discord channel from OpenAI's API - nothing magical. The only neat thing is that it takes the whole chat as context - so it can engage with multiple people at once.

It's kind of clunky since it's designed to interact 1:1 - so if you all say goodbye in the thread it addresses each person individually. It's like talking to someone who's sole interest is having conversations one on one.

I'm going to work on implementing MCP's. Initially when anthropic shared the paper I tested it. I think now that more of the community at large has adopted the standard it'd be worth getting into again. Not as, roll your own as it once was. I'll keep you posted.

Day 1: Progress

Little to no progress so far. Realistically, I expected today to be slower at work and for the path forward to feel clearer. Instead, I’m stuck—still anxious about making architectural decisions at this level. Years of troubleshooting a product built on shaky foundations have made me skeptical of every option in front of me.

Like crushing a spider… there’s a brief moment of relief, only to watch in horror as thousands of its offspring emerge from its corpse. Each line of code feels the same—progress made, ground claimed—yet in my mind, I see a thousand potential bugs, limitations, and design flaws spiraling into existence. I know this is for me, but the scars remain. I didn’t build that product, didn’t make those bad calls. But I knew those developers, those project managers. They had good intentions. Even the best-laid plans can derail.

Here’s my attempt at silencing the noise and pressing forward.

Day 1: Touch Base

I was able to get some code roughed out yesterday. I'm not entirely happy with where things currently sit... like I said it's really quite rough. My goal is to get to a version 1 that crosses off all the requirements that I set forth in on Day 0. Right now it's too crude to commit to my repo. I'll keep working this afternoon after I get some work meetings out of the way.