DonTheDeveloper Podcast
DonTheDeveloper Podcast
Channel & Life Update | I'm Not Challenging Myself Enough
It's been a while since I've created a video. I just wanted to provide an update with what's going on with coding, fitness, and the future of content on my channel.
---------------------------------------------------
🔥 Webdev Career Help - https://calendly.com/donthedeveloper/coaching
🎮 Join Discord - https://discord.gg/TpQe2k8Ab3
❤️ Support What I Do - https://www.patreon.com/donthedeveloper
Disclaimer: Some product links are affiliate links which means if you buy something I'll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
===========================
WEBDEV COURSES I HIGHLY RECOMMEND:
🎓 Learn Frontend - Scrimba (20% off): https://scrimba.com/the-frontend-developer-career-path-c0j?via=donthedeveloper
🎓 Learn Backend - Boot.dev (25% off): https://boot.dev/?promo=DONTHEDEVELOPER - Get 25% off your first payment with code "DONTHEDEVELOPER"
🎓 Already Experienced? Level Up Here - Code Crafters (40% off): https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=donthedeveloper
Hello, it's been a while since I've created a video, so I just wanted to create this and share an update with kind of why I haven't been creating videos lately and am I gonna be creating videos in the future and how long is it gonna take. So yeah, just a quick update. My light's burnt out. I'm not in a dungeon, I promise you. I have to redo my entire lighting. I don't know what I'm going to do with that, so we're just clicking record and we're going with it.
Don Hansen:But essentially, I hit kind of a burnout point where I have just been spinning my wheels, not really progressing in any particular direction that I wanted to, and I've kind of just been getting by, and I am not someone that is satisfied with just getting by. It drives me nuts and it burns me out. Anytime, like even when I was a developer and I like coding I really do Even when I was a developer and I was building stuff and I had a great team, I always, like, had these additional ambitions. Always I've had it my entire life where if I was only just putting in 40 hours towards the company and being a developer, I would get burned out if I wasn't working on stuff that actually really excited me. And so, yeah, I've kind of been going the entrepreneurship route. I've been making this work, I've been paying my bills, but I haven't been doing anything significantly challenging at all, like I'm kind of just doing the same thing, that's just paying my bills. And then I was even live streaming and pretending like I was being productive and pushing myself towards more ambitious goals, and I just wasn't. I was being productive and pushing myself towards more ambitious goals and I just wasn't. I was doing live streaming because I was avoiding what I really wanted to do and what I really want to do and what I really want to talk about. I don't want to talk to you about that yet, because I've also discovered another thing Some people maybe you're like this, but some people will hold themselves accountable or get others to hold them accountable by sharing what their goals are, what they're going to do.
Don Hansen:I'm not like that. It's almost like if I share what I'm going to do, I'm not going to do it. If I share my New Year's resolutions, I'm not going to do it. By the way, one of my New Year's resolutions was stop drinking. I did that for a couple months. I shared that right in the beginning I'm going to do this, get really excited. I shared that for a couple months and then, nope, I fell off on that goal and you know I've definitely tackled that and I'm back on kind of the grind of losing weight, just being really healthy again. But you know it took a while to recover from.
Don Hansen:But I feel like every time I share stuff with you guys that I'm going to do, I just end up failing it, I end up just not succeeding. And so I've discovered for me I am someone that kind of just needs to grind on my own, and if you find that like you're sharing a bunch of stuff and then you don't succeed with those goals, I feel like maybe it's just me, but I feel like it just reinforces a lack of confidence that I can get things done and it almost doubles and triples like the effect of it, the feeling of it, when now I'm disappointing everyone else and I'm just not someone that can publicly share my goals. And so what I'm going to start doing is sharing stuff that I have already made pretty significant progress on, and so that's what I'm going to do for this channel. I have a ton of stuff, a ton of challenges that feel impossible that I've set for myself in the future and I don't want to share those yet. But that's what I've been doing.
Don Hansen:I've kind of just been taking a step back and thinking about, like what the hell do I actually want to accomplish? Let's revisit these like really almost impossible ambitions that I kind of set aside, and let's revisit these and figure out, like what the hell I really want to do in this world for myself, for others, um, because I just can't keep getting by. It's fucking boring. It is so boring and uninspiring and I'm done with it. So I kind of I like this idea of like monk mode if you've ever heard of it where you kind of just go solo, don't really talk to anyone about it, and you just grind and you focus on what you want to focus on, without like sharing it to the world. Like it's just you shut out the noise and you just focus on you and you don't need to convince anyone else but you. You don't need to hold anyone else or have anyone else hold you accountable. You were the one holding yourself accountable, but you just have anyone else hold you accountable. You were the one holding yourself accountable, but you just I feel like I had to shut out the noise, and I'm also revisiting a content strategy.
Don Hansen:I feel like I've just been creating content around topics that I don't give a shit about anymore. I've been given developer advice for so long and I still will be giving developer advice, but I don't want to give developer advice to satisfy the YouTube algorithm. I want to share advice that really revolves around things that I'm currently growing with, excited about, challenged with and then integrating that back into hey, how can I share this in a way that might help other people? And that's the route I want to go with my content, and so I've actually taken I'm taking a course called Two Hour Writer by Dan Kau or Ko. It's really changed my perspective, like I've been watching his videos for like a year now, but I feel like what I need to do for my channel is drastically different than what I'm doing, and what I want to do now actually really excites me. Again, I'm not going to share that with you, but you'll see the videos come out starting a few weeks from now, and I think the result like what you guys are going to see is just more well thought out content around topics I actually want to talk about, around things that I'm currently overcoming, things that I'm learning and I want to share back with you guys. It's not just gonna be hey, let's only shit on AI, hey, let's only give these five to ten tips for new developers to land that job. Like, Just fuck the algorithm. I'm so sick of it and I actually feel like the more that I just talk about what I want to talk about, it actually does well in the algorithm. There's something about the YouTube algorithm that just really screws you up as a content creator, if you let it. But YouTube is one of the best platforms out there, so at least for, like, building your audience and building a business, I can't really complain. It's just man. It's just a lot of things that I've had to learn as a content creator. I think I'm just tired of doing the same thing over and over. So, anyways, you should see newer content, variation of topics, and if they do well, great. If they don't, I don't care. I'm just going to post them. I just don't care anymore.
Don Hansen:So a couple things that I can share that I made pretty significant progress on. I'm doing intermittent fasting, really checking my diet. I've been pretty good about it. I actually started progressing towards trying to. I want to participate in my first triathlon but I'm still dealing. I don't know if you've known this about me, but I've shared this previously.
Don Hansen:I was dealing with back issues where my back was going out. Like that got to a point where it's going out once every month. It was crazy and I have this, like they call it, like this interior pelvic tilt or something like that. This is from like sitting, not doing a bunch of squats, having really weak glutes, really weak hamstrings, and I found that the bike portion of the triathlon not to mention it completely numbs my balls and penis. Not a fan of that. I got to like find a different seat or whatever. I'm just using the bike at the gym. I hate riding a bike. I don't know how men do it, but I think it's something you get used to, and I think I got to get a wider seat. But I think I'm more focused on just fixing the pelvic tilt, getting stronger glutes and hamstrings and starting to do legitimate squats with good form and put weight out of that. I think it's going to be a long journey for me because I've really screwed up my back, but it's getting a lot better.
Don Hansen:Again it like last year I was throwing out my back once every month. I'm like I'm 30 something years old. Like my back should not be going out this early. This is crazy, but it's because I you know what I think it is. I think it's because I've done the elliptical for like 10 years straight and I could do like max settings with the elliptical. Any elliptical you give it to me I do max settings. I do it for like 30 to 45 minutes, easy. My glutes are or wait, not glutes uh, quads front of the legs. They are way over trained, way over trained, and I think that's what's causing the instability and I have like a tight hip. So my focus is stability and then going into like more compound movie movements and then getting into heavy lifting again, but with focusing on a good foundation and not just bigger arms like I did when I was younger. Um, so that's my goal and it's it's a journey for me. It's really's really fun, um, but I am very much focused on improving myself with bodybuilding and getting a solid foundation and I'm going to be focused on that for many years.
Don Hansen:Um, and I'll share, like, if I start getting into more compound movements where, like because I've never squatted in my entire life. I actually want to share that. Maybe it bores you. I don't care, like I have never squatted, never squatted in my entire life. I actually want to share that. Maybe it bores you, I don't care, like I have never squatted with good form in my entire life, with significant weight. I think that's going to be a huge milestone. Um, that might not seem impossible to you, but it feels very, very difficult for me. Um, just because of how my body is, uh, screwed up at the moment. So I've been doing that, uh, um, but in terms of like, fitness, I'm having fun with that, but I'm also I want to build my game like a game, just, even if it's a really shitty game.
Don Hansen:I am learning three JS and I'm actually taking it seriously and I'm um. I'll show you once I get done with the first module. Um, it's a lot of hours just for one module, a lot of modules. But I'll show you what I built and it's. It's going to be pretty bad, but I'm still having fun building stuff with three JS. If you don't know what it is, you could essentially build kind of like um, take advantage of web GL or like isn't there something that's replacing web GL? It's a little bit more optimized. I don't know, but I'm going to be building a game with it. You could build, like more animated stuff for websites. Um, I think it's a really cool tool, a lot of depth. It's not a game engine per se, but I think you can combine some stuff Like I think there's like a physics library that's recommended in the course Um. By the way, I'm going through three journey. I think it's a fantastic course Um, but I'll I'll kind of share like just milestones with that with you guys.
Don Hansen:Um, I'm diving deeper into nest. I'm diving deeper into actually building something that's scalable on the back end, not some hacky, uh node application. I just, um, I'm kind of sick of the node environment. I think nest gave me a new, revitalized uh excitement for it and I you know I was going through bootdev for the longest time learning Python. I'm going to be honest, like I'll probably finish it.
Don Hansen:But I think I'm just going to double down on TypeScript. Typescript has come a long way. It's gotten faster and, man, there's a ton of stuff I want to build and I don't think I want to rotate languages. Ton of stuff I want to build and I don't think I want to rotate languages. I'm completely fine with JavaScript or TypeScript everywhere, and I prefer TypeScript over JavaScript. Now, by the way, that wasn't the case before. I think I'm just going to like double down on TypeScript and I'm just getting really. I'm just getting a lot more comfortable with it, getting a little bit more comfortable. I want to get more comfortable with Docker. I want to get more comfortable with trying to spit it up through AWS, but I want to deal with problems that force me to optimize how I handle requests on the backend, and whether I continue Twitch Sprout or not for that purpose, I don't know, but I'm just diving deeper into the backend and I'm tripling down on TypeScript. So I just wanted to share that and I have been creating anti-AI videos just to feed the algorithm and do reactions and stuff like that, to keep up with videos on my channel. I still might do those.
Don Hansen:Ai is really fucking cringe. The overhype is really cringe. I'm tired of AI being sold as something it isn't. Ai has been extremely disappointing and I don't like how there seems to be a pocket of people in our society that doesn't really respect human creativity, doesn't really respect humans. I get that feeling from some people, from some CEOs, where they kind of just sell this utopia where AI is going to fix everything and all I see is AI creating low quality, more problems at work, kind of preventing people from actually tackling stuff in their life that they need to tackle, especially socially and relationship wise, and people getting addicted to like building friends out of AI and building girlfriends and boyfriends out of AI. I feel like I like everything that I'm seeing points to AI being much more of a detriment to society than people had initially proposed it, as in this utopia, and I don't like the progression that I'm seeing. So I'm going to continue talking about that. In what capacity, I don't know, but you will probably hear more from me with that. Yeah, that's it.
Don Hansen:If I have more to share, I'll probably create another video. Give me like two to three weeks before I start creating the content that I want to create. I think it's going to start with writing. It's going to start with maybe a newsletter, maybe a blog post, I don't know. I'm going to finish to our writer and see where I land up with that, but I do believe in writing out a lot of my thoughts, doing a little bit more proper research and just being able to solidify my opinion on things that's well thought out, well articulated, and be able to deliver that to you.
Don Hansen:That's my goal to improve my content, because I feel like I've always joked about it, but I'm kind of just like I'm not a professional content creator. My videos suck. I'm not able to articulate things as well as I want. My videos suck. I'm not able to articulate things as well as I want, um, and I just rant and sometimes stutter and I want to do better with that. So that's like a big focus of my uh, big focus of mine just stuttered there. We're getting better, but I want to focus on creating better content and it's just going to take me a little bit to like really change everything that I'm doing. So please be patient with that. I'll probably create a couple of updates or talk about a random topic until I get to that point, but hopefully you start seeing a shift in my content for the better. If not, I tried. But anyways, here's my update. Hope you guys are doing well and I'll see you guys in the next video.