A few weeks ago, I migrated away from NixOS to Fedora COSMIC as my primary machine after a particular snafu I did with the primary machine. My intent was to temporarily be on Fedora and then get myself reset in NixOS but I realized I was doing more tinkering with NixOS than actually getting to the things I wanted to do (e.g. develop software, write blog entries).

With that thought, I decided I needed to find ways to hang up my technical ‘yak shavers’ and get about the business of doing things again.

I realize that some out there might say “well NixOS is how you get away from the tinkering because its declarative!” and this might be true for those folks. For those of you who love to tinker, by all means, continue to do so! You gotta do what brings you joy and sparks your creativity into a blazing fire! WIthout you, I wouldn’t have any great adventures to be a passenger on in your write-ups or discussions. It’s why I hang out with my friends on their homelab threads, I love seeing them solve problems and what ways they are pushing things forward. However I realize that homelab feels like work for me so I don’t do it.

When I look at who I am, I realize I need limits and constraints. Providing me the equivalent of an open world, which is what NixOS feels like, can be down right paralyzing because I start seeking ‘optimizations’ instead of just doing the things. The experimenter in me just gets out of hand and I do that instead of whatever I had originally fired up the computer to do.

I love the straightforwardness of my current COSMIC desktop arrangement and it helps keep the yak shavers on the shelf.

Could I dig further into it? Sure. Could I just use the damn thing? Absolutely by default.

I find myself wanting to do more instead just of tinker. There are programs and designs that exist in my head that need to get out of me even if they die a horrible death forgotten on a Sourcehut repo. There are blog posts that need the air of being only read by a singular person.

The yak shavers do serve a purpose for me: to inspire and foster adventure but its time to pick up a hammer and make an uneven, leaning birdhouse that I will probably be the only one proud of.