It’s Sunday evening and I’m back at the keyboard, working through my recap for the Chinese Sprint while knowing that the full race blog still waits for me.

One thing that’s becoming increasingly clear this season is just how much there is to write about. My recap of the opening race in Australia was already around 4.5K words, and that was just following my normal structure. There’s simply more happening, more narratives to follow, more moments worth unpacking. But honestly, if maintaining the quality I’ve set for myself means writing more, then so be it. I’ll keep writing as long as the story demands it. The only thing I’m mindful of is making sure it never starts to feel like a job, because the moment it does, the joy disappears. So far it’s been good, and I’m trying to keep it that way.

On the racing side, I’ll admit it’s a little frustrating that neither Max nor Oscar is winning right now, but that’s something I can live with. For me, Formula 1 has never been just about a single driver. The sport itself is the draw. I’ll watch every race regardless, even if both of them have a terrible weekend. Of course, I’d rather not see DNFs or DNSs from either of them, because that would make the season feel pretty bleak, but with Oscar the first step is simply getting on the grid in the first place. Hopefully he starts regularly and puts together a strong season, and hopefully Max has a good one too. Touch wood.

On the blog side of things, I haven’t written as many reviews recently as I normally would. That should change soon though, because I’m planning to start a new series: Retrospectives on some of the TV shows I’ve watched over the years. I’m leaning toward TV shows specifically because there’s simply more to unpack — long arcs, evolving characters, and seasons that change tone over time. The first one will likely be the Arrowverse. Someone actually suggested the idea in the comments of one of my reviews and it immediately felt like one of those ideas that’s too good not to pursue. That should be a fun rabbit hole to dive into.

The past couple of weeks have also been slower on the creative side for a practical reason. I’ve been going to office in person, and while I genuinely enjoy the work itself, it’s exhausting. The days are basically seven to eight hours of continuous work with maybe a ten-minute lunch break. It’s not as bad as it sounds because the work is engaging, but debugging can be mentally draining, and by the time I’m done I’m usually hungry and tired with very little energy left to do anything else. I’ve also been using Claude Code more during this time, which has been a learning process in itself as I figure out how to integrate it properly into my workflow.

That ties nicely into the dopamine detox challenge I started four weeks ago, which is coming to an end next week. I’ll probably write a full blog about it, because it’s been an interesting experience. It has definitely helped, but perhaps not in the way people usually describe. What it really changed for me was how I look for things online. A few days ago I was scrolling through Instagram and came across some genuinely useful tips about using claude code more effectively. If I can integrate those ideas properly, they could significantly improve how I work. That’s the kind of content I want to find more of.

It also made me realize that good content does exist on the internet, but you have to actively look for it. I recently watched a Veritasium video called The Internet Was Weeks Away From Disaster and No One Knew, about the SSH vulnerability that nearly caused major problems. It was one of those videos that manages to be both informative and genuinely fun to watch. Since I work with these kinds of systems across my projects, seeing how everything connects, the open-source infrastructure, the maintainers, the fragile dependencies was fascinating. And the fact that the open-source movement traces back to someone being frustrated with a broken printer sounds like something straight out of a horror story for software engineers. A printer testing your patience probably qualifies as a rite of passage in this field.

And that’s the strange thing I see about algorithms is that they tend to feed you whatever spikes dopamine the fastest. What I’m trying to do instead is push them toward things that also expand my knowledge and curiosity. If the internet is going to take my attention, it might as well make me a little smarter in the process. More thoughts on that will definitely end up in the detox blog once it’s finished.

For now though, it’s back to writing. As a small win before getting back to work, I just finished revamping the management dashboard for my site. The previous version worked fine, but this new one feels cleaner, more capable, and overall much nicer to use. It’s a small part of a bigger pattern I’ve been noticing lately of me slowly upgrading my own little ecosystem of tools and systems. Every improvement makes the next thing easier, and that in turn makes me more confident about trying new ideas.

Anyway, that’s where things are right now. Time to get back to writing.

Take care.