Factory reset isn’t the end of the world, I did it to my gen2 Chromecast when the outage first happened and managed to get it connected again by rolling my phone’s date back and finishing the setup.

This article was super helpful and helped temporarily restore casting functionality from my phone. https://mensfeld.pl/2025/03/bringing-your-chromecast-back/

I encountered a very aggressive stray dog when I was about 14. It bolted after me, I climbed and vaulted over a chain link fence to get away. When I landed on the other side I thought I caught my sleeve on the top of the fence. Nope. At the top, one of the links was bent outward into a hook shape. It entered my wrist and exited my palm. Adrenaline is a hell of a drug because I barely felt it. Probably should have gone to the hospital but my dumb ass just rinsed it off when I got home and put a bandaid on it. Now I have a long scar running down my wrist where it entered and ripped. A small exit hole near my palm.

Read other people’s code. Dig through source code of libraries you use. You don’t have to understand their entire stack, but you’ll start to see all sorts of skill levels in production code. This obviously comes with the requirement to have some basic experience to comprehend the fundamentals of coding.

I’ve been a professional web dev for over 15 years and when I’m feeling down about my code, I just look through WordPress plugin source code. I’ve seen clients use some terribly coded plugins with a $50/mo price tag on them. No one cares.

But every once and a while, you’ll come across something beautiful, something thar will inspire you in just the right way and it’ll click how to code something. It can even be just a small portion of a messy project, but learn to recognize when you’re writing good code and be proud of that. Also learn to sometimes accept messy code.

Did I ship high quality code for every project last year? Hell. No. Some clients have smaller budgets or there isn’t time to work out the most elegant solutions or there’s pressures to ship ASAP. But there were a few projects I was given the time and space to write some code I’m genuinely proud of.

I’ve been in the industry long enough to know that skill and ability doesn’t hold back as many people back as you’d expect. Do I want more under skilled coders entering the industry? not really, but we all have to start somewhere. And as long as there is progress being made, it’ll be fine.

I wasn’t skilled or even a coder when I first started out (I was an art major) I lied and learned it all in the job. The web dev ecosystem was entirely different 15 years ago. But sticking to it, developing an understanding of what good code looks like, eventually lead me to a successful career.

Everyone has their own pace. Be patient with yourself, and learn to love learning. You’ll never stop learning in this industry.

The racism, discrimination, and segregation. As a Native American in a white school, it was frequently traumatic. Frequently assaulted and threatened by teachers and the principal to cut my long hair. Then had to sit in class to learn about how all those things I was actively experiencing were in America’s past was bullshit. <30 years ago.

Some highlights as to why I hated school.

I’m Native American, first grade teacher continually harassed me about my long hair, saying it wasn’t appropriate for a boy to have long hair. She demanded I cut it. And when I came to class with it still long she attempted to cut it herself. Same thing happened in 4th grade, different teacher. But her T.A. intervened and defended me.

Middle school art teacher scolded me for completing an art project early. She proceeded to smash my art and demand I do it over. I had to pay for the supplies.

Middle school, I was frequently pulled out of my homeroom class for a “study group”. This group was literally all the Native Americans in the school (all grades). We’d sit in detention hall and do nothing for the duration of the class. When I tried to complain and draw attention to the situation. The school defended it to my parents by saying I was falling behind in homeroom (the class they kept taking me out of). After being assigned a tutor I mentioned what was happening to him. The group stopped meeting and my tutor was reassigned. I still don’t know if it was a malicious act, but it was very disturbing to be locked in a room in the back of the school with the only other Native Americans.

Highschool, a math teacher continually accused me of cheating on tests, because someone like me doesn’t magically do well on tests. School administration got involved and I had to redo some tests in front of them. Got the same grade. He insisted I was still somehow cheating. A different math teacher came to my defense saying he had been trying to get me to join the math team, since I had an untapped talent for math. I didnt bother with coursework and would focus on tests to pass. I really fucked the bell curve in that class. Never did join the math team.

Yeah, this always gets passed around without credit to the author. They’re not real words, but are poems and invented words by John Koeing (possibly other words mixed in).

I first came across most of these on his YouTube channel Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

There is also a blog and a book has also been released.