Experience

Over the past 18 years (more than half my life), I’ve been running my own server. From hand-me-down hardware to the latest full server purchase, a proper tower server. This last purchase was a little over 3 years ago, a couple of weeks before my daughter was born. The idea was to set it up and then run it for 3 years and see what to do next. I had big ambitions with this server, running a whole bunch of server software for various things. 3 years ago this seemed like a good plan, but a couple of months ago I started worrying, now what? Will I spend lots of money and buy something proper again, knowing I had underutilized the one I had. I ran a bunch of stuff on it, but every couple of days some security issue would come along and I’d have to go over everything. The maintenance of the server was becoming quite an issue. All sorts of custom software with custom issues. ...

Close to 10 years ago I found out that I was dyslexic, explaining many of the troubles I've had in school (and subsequently university and work thereafter). These troubles were mostly in the category of "things that are hard to pick up". Over the years I've found a mode for myself to not let it be too much of a handicap. Note that it really is a handicap, it's something that poses (a set of) significant limitations in your day to day work, limitations you can't fix, though you generally can work around them. ...