Running an engineering team and a neurodivergent household simultaneously requires active management of your own capacity. These essays cover what I've learned about protecting personal time, keeping hobbies alive without monetizing them, managing energy rather than just managing time, and building sustainable routines that prevent burnout before it arrives. The operational approach that works at work (monitor, alert, adjust) applies to personal sustainability too, though it took me longer than it should have to figure that out.
After eight hours at a desk managing infrastructure, the last thing I want is to sit at another desk to unwind. The Steam Deck solved a problem I didn't know how to articulate until it was gone.
I didn't build my home office all at once. It evolved piece by piece over a few years, driven by actual pain points rather than aspirational Pinterest boards. Here's what I'm running, what I'd buy again, and what I'm still evaluating.
The homelab isn't about saving money on cloud hosting. It's about having a space where I can build, break, and iterate without a ticket, a timeline, or a stakeholder.
Without a commute to decompress, the transition from 'engineering manager' to 'dad' happens in the time it takes to walk down a hallway. That's not enough, and pretending it is helps no one.
The moment you start thinking about ROI on a hobby, you've turned something you love into something you owe. I've watched it happen with photography, copywriting, and smoking meat, and the pattern is always the same.
You can't pour from an empty cup, but nobody tells you that the cup has a slow leak and the only time to refill it is 5:30 AM or never.
It started on shore with grandparents, tangled lines, and thrown rocks. Eventually the kids wanted to try the boat. Fishing turned out to be one of the better family reset buttons we've found.