As I’m sipping on my morning coffee, I am reflecting on 2024 and the changes I am doing for 2025.

To put everything into perspective, I have a full time job IRL that I cannot work remotely. Therefore I have to get up at 5AM every morning. I also have a young family that started grade school not too long ago. This requires some enjoyable time with extra curricular activities and homework.

I also have a hobby. I love anything related to Self-Hosting, privacy and blockchain in general (BTC/Crypto, etc).

That being said, I unfortunately fell into several rabbit hole in 2024.

- optimizing my mining rig

- self hosted home lab

- FOSS softwares

- social media accounts (Nostr, X, Telegram, Discord, IG)

- maintaining bare metal BTC Node

- IPFS website

- Graphene OS cell project

- Beta tester for 2 new Crypto wallet

- DEFI

- Following multiple crypto project

- and more

Towards the end of the year, My Lightning node that had been running for a year and a half stoped. My 1 TB disk was full…….

This increased list of things to do for something that is supposed to be a hobby drained so much time that Indecided to neglect my health greatly.

I’ve gained a lot of weight (fat) and my visceral fat factor went up to 10. I was in bad shape physically.

Little did I know, I was in an even worse shape mentally. I unfortunately went on the brinks of a burnout.

In the last 12 weeks of 2024, I decided to change things around and prioritize things that matters:

1- Health

2- Family

3- Work

4- compromise and scale down hobbies

1. health

I took the bull by the horns in end of 2024. I signed up to a 6 weeks program that the sole purpose is to give you hints for new eating habits and give you structure at home exercises.

The first 3 weeks is to increase your bodies tolerance to insulin with a very strict diet and the remaining 3 weeks of the program gives you a better eating hygiene. Talks about what to eat and the normal quantity intake.

It has now been 16 weeks and I feel great. I shed 23% of my weight in fat only (barely a pound of muscle that I lost). I exercise 3 times a week and feel so good.

4. Compromise

I had to compromise on my hobbies. I had to condense my activities and consolidate my time.

A) I didn’t start back my BTC node. Instead I integrated nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm Hub to my home lab. It is easier and quicker to update. I now only run 1 server instead of 2

B) I ditched social media (X, IG, Telegram). I use #Nostr for social and Discord for crypto

C) I am in the process of only using nostr:npub1yzvxlwp7wawed5vgefwfmugvumtp8c8t0etk3g8sky4n0ndvyxesnxrf8q as a Nostr client. It has my feed, articles and I can connect my Alby Hub to it. I could potentially get rid of all the other apps and only continue with this one.

That’s it for now!