For the past three years, my career has revolved around technical project leadership. I’ve been in meetings, guiding engineers, and making architectural recommendations based largely on documentation. It’s the role many architects find themselves in—strategic, high-level, but increasingly disconnected from the hands-on work that originally drew us into technology.

And here’s the truth: I’m rusty.

When I was an individual contributor, I often questioned architectural decisions. Did this architect ever even touch the technology they’re recommending? I remember the early days of Xamarin—marketed as revolutionary, but in practice it was clunky, unstable, and frustrating. I spent countless hours just trying to get builds to work locally. That experience left me wishing architects had more firsthand knowledge of the tools they were prescribing.

Now, standing on the other side of the table, I understand why. Architects are buried in meetings, juggling deadlines, and rarely have time for proof-of-concepts. Staying current often means sacrificing personal time, and after eight hours of calls and coordination, the thought of diving into new tech can feel exhausting.

But I don’t want to lose touch.

My Plan: Learning by Building

This blog will document my journey back into hands-on engineering. My goal is to find simple, meaningful ways to stay up to date—projects that tie into my passions outside of work, so learning doesn’t feel like yet another obligation.

Here’s what I’m setting out to do:

  • Kubernetes Raspberry Pi Cluster
    I want to build a small Raspberry Pi cluster to learn Kubernetes in a tangible, experimental way. It’s a chance to explore container orchestration beyond theory and documentation.

  • AI-Powered Etsy Listing Generator
    Jewelry making is one of my hobbies, but my Etsy shop often sits neglected. Supplies are costly, and I’d love to improve my selling process. My idea: an AI tool that takes a photo of a piece, generates an SEO-optimized listing, and posts it directly to Etsy via their API.

    I’ll treat this project like a client engagement—implementing automation with CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, infrastructure as code with Terraform, and leveraging AI coding assistance. In short, I want to walk through the entire software lifecycle, but for a project that’s personal and fun.

Why This Blog Matters

I hope this blog inspires others to rediscover the joy of building. We became software engineers because we love to code, but somewhere along the way, deadlines, meetings, and workplace drama can make us forget that spark.

By sharing my journey—the frustrations, the experiments, the wins—I want to show that upskilling doesn’t have to feel like work. It can be a creative outlet, a way to reconnect with why we started coding in the first place.

So here’s to learning, tinkering, and building projects that matter to us.