This one is probably going to be a lengthy one, and a deep dive into many aspects of life—life in general and my life in particular. I guess I owe that to all of the Hive community, as well as to myself. In the end, it have been long two years that I haven't been too active on here.
There are a few parallel movements in my life, one of them is learning how to be more open, authentic and honest—thus this might end up being somewhat of an exhibitionist post. But we'll see!
What has been going on
Those 2 years (and a bit) were quite transformative for me, with two break-ups along the way, the death of my beloved grandmother, birth of my nephew (I'm an uncle now!) starting a new job, leaving it, moving three times, doing a 7-months-long sabbatical leave (which is still going on!), starting photographing, writing literature, and a shit tonne of other things, which I won't bother mentioning—but feel free to hit me up in DMs if you want to chat!
All this time I also tried to clear my vision of what I want to do in my life, career-wise, but not only. The thing is, apart from being somewhat of a builder/entrepreneur/nerd/tinkerer, I am also a person with huge needs of artistic and self-expression. These two are not always easy to bring together, thus I tend to oscillate in time between those two, focusing on one or the other.
Lugshar
I feel like in the last few months I have been able to mentally consolidate some of my more creative work under the Lugshar moniker. I don't know, maybe it helps a bit to have this different persona to hold all of my artistic and spiritual endeavors, so it is easier to switch contexts if needed. I even now have a personal website/blog for all of these endeavors at lugshar.pl. There I can share my music, my photography, auditions, literature, and so on.
On the other hand, I am still on my sabbatical leave, and have been for 7 months now. I live off of my savings, earning basically nothing (and not trying to at all) and trying to flow with the life as it is happening.
Although the decision to take a break took a toll on my finances, it has been a great step to take and I do not regret it even a bit. These months have been very transformative for both my personality, as well as my life in general.
In that time I tried to put all of my spiritual and existential struggle into a musical audition, that I called „Przejście” (pol. A Passing). It contains music from all around the globe, as well as some poetry read by me in Polish. You can listen to it below.
Przejście by Lugshar — Mixcloud
I also decided to take the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in June 2024—from Porto, Portugal to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. We broke up with my girlfriend at the time, and after that I finally started getting mentally better—seems I had forgotten how to be easy and enjoy life!
I've got a few thousands photos from that journey, and many notes that at some point in time I want to transform into an illustrated essay.
Moving on
Now I have moved to Kraków again (after 4 years since I had lived here) and I am slowly planning what's next for me in my life.
Definitely it is a time of reaching out to old friends, some of whom I have not seen for years now! I already managed to visit @krolestwo a few times, and it was great to meet @hallmann and @foggymeadow after such a long time!
I also want to continue developing my creative endeavors, especially music, photography and film-making. I would also love to get back to writing, especially prose—but that is quite challenging thing to do and requires a monk-like lifestyle and dedication to it.
But, apart from that, I want to get back into working in IT-related domains, because that brings me a lot of joy. I love building stuff. I believe I have matured enough to stop focusing on more traditional 9-5 jobs, and instead I will be trying to focus more on open source, blockchain, leading courses and eventually trying to start my own business. Exciting times are ahead of me, and many challenges to overcome for sure, but that's what keeps me alive.
The Plans
There are already some solid plans for the upcoming months, which hopefully will come to life!
Most importantly, @hallmann works on a DHF Proposal for the next 3 months of running @krolestwo. He's got many wonderful ideas, which you can read about in the work in progress version of the proposal: Kingdom powered by Hive. DHF Proposal.
1. Hive Coding School
The thing I am really excited about, is the Hive Coding School which—if the proposal succeeds—I will be honored to lead! These will be lessons/courses/tutorials for developers to help them build things on top of Hive blockchain.
Apart from 10-15 meetups that will happen in real life at @krolestwo in Kraków, Poland, the lessons will also be recorded and published, so others can make use of them at later time. Also, all of the meetups will be converted into a written-form tutorials and shared with the world in a form of a Hive: Getting Started documentation website.
During the Hive Coding School we will learn what actually is a blockchain, what is Hive in particular, how it works and so on. Later on we will get to know different ways to interact with the Hive blockchain (from raw SQL queries to higher level tools like wax). Finally, we will see how to use that knowledge to actually build a real world application on Hive.
2. Digital Exhibitions App
The app that we will build during the Hive Coding School will later be further developed into a** fully-featured Hive interface** dedicated to building community-powered digital exhibitions that can be easily monetized with the help of Hive ecosystem.
I will not get into details just yet, as the project is being conceptualized. But I will say I am super excited for that!
3. Content Blocks
This one is actually an idea I have had for a few years already. Content Blocks are thought as a new standard of storing and presenting content on Hive blockchain, which solves multiple issues with the current solution:
- Lack of advanced presentation possibilities due to limits of Markdown formatting.
- No support for multilingual content.
- Discrepancies on how different apps and interfaces store and present content.
Content Blocks will not just be a new standard available as a documentation to be used by other developers, but also a set of tools and widgets (especially TypeScript ones) for easier integration into existing and new apps.
Again, I won't get into details right now, but if that project succeeds, it will also open many new possibilities for utilising Hive blockchain in new areas, e.g. as a backend for a CMS.
Summary
As you can see, quite a lot has happened in my life during last two years. Some of these experiences have been quite hard on me, but from a distance I somehow enjoy them just as much as I do the other ones. Every experience is valuable for me.
There are also many exciting plans that I am and will still be working on executing.
It's great to see Hive community still going strongly and even with some fresh energy that I could see during the recent Hive Fest, and with the recent core development that I think is so much needed right now.
I believe good times are ahead. See you down the road!