About this project
I'm Roman Kolesnev, a passionate and pragmatic software engineer with a humanistic mindset. This is my personal website. It's mostly about software engineering and its philosophical aspects, but not limited to that. The site follows ideas of Indie WEB and self-expression that is not shaped by algorithms of huge media platforms.
Contacts
Feel free to contact me via hi@ffloyd.space or reach me on Mastodon.
You can find my public repositories on GitHub.
And here is my LinkedIn profile, but I don't use it much. It's better to reach me via email or Mastodon.
The Idea
How your personal page would look like if you have full freedom of design and content?
If this question hits you, and especially if you cannot get "what's the point?", then I recommend this longread about Small/Indie WEB reneissance.
One day an answer to this question started to take shape in my mind.
I want a stylish and minimalistic website that is not overloaded and where my guests can exhale from the intensity and noise of the modern WEB. A place where you can actually concentrate on what you explore.
I want it to be unusual, something I can call "a personal art project". A place where I can experiment with communication and expression formats.
Also, I need a hub for my works. A place for organising my thoughts and projects that I want to share with others and get feedback.
Last, but not least, it's about making meaningful connections and exploring beyond my filter bubble. When I started this project, I had no idea about Indie/Small WEB. Had very limited understanding of what Fediverse is. And how many interesting people you can find there. People that more concentrated on personal purpose and self-expression, rather than on external marks of success.
I feel like I lived in a small box designed to remove colors from my life.
Core Structure
The four main sections of this site resemble a timeline. About (this page) is the starting point.
Things is about the past — projects that I made, but not necessarily finished or currently support. A collection of achievements.
Thoughts is about the past-to-present flow — it's a blog where I reflect on the current state of things. Articles here are bound to the time they were written and usually are not updated later.
Vision is about the present-to-future direction — this section was the initial reason to create this website. I want the future where software engineering is more human-centric and "burnout" is no longer a common thing. Where first priority is to improve people's lives and it's done in a way that can exist in the current reality.
Humanistic Mindset and Stoicism-Inspired Pragmatism
This site is my personal exercise of searching for a decent philosophical approach to modern software engineering and life in general. The philosophical direction I define in this section is essential. I do my best to align everything I made with it. Through that process of doing things consciously, I explore this philosophical approach further, test it against reality and aim to reach equanimity.
But today I'm overwhelmed.
We're dancing around the technological singularity, or maybe we've already reached it. Many feel depression when looking into the past and feel anxiety looking into the future. I'm not an exception.
To be focused and present, to avoid being disturbed by the world perturbations, I need a compass. Something that is an indicator of a right direction. Reflecting on all experience I have, I found two main pillars.
The first one, is humanistic approach:
Life is full of inevitable suffering. But we can bring joy and reduce that suffering. Collectively and collaboratively.
Looks good, but there is a pitfall. For example, if someone works on a gambling software - than it's against this vision. It's clearly taking advantage of the people who have ludomania: no one asks for medical proof that you can gamble safely for yourself. (Or uses any other protection mechanism).
Example above shows how tempting to take "holy knight" position and blaming everyone who made missteps from what you see as "good". It's easy to criticize people. But will it lead to the world you want to live in?
Here the second pillar kicks in: stoicism. It's pretty ancient philosophy and a very solid foundation that should be adjusted using results of modern psychology and neuroscience. On my current level of understanding, I remind myself the following principles as much as I can.
Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
This is good mantra that returns to the present. It shifts focus to some good questions, to name few:
- Are there any overlooked opportunities I have right now?
- What I cannot change right now and should stop wasting energy trying?
- What are my real strong sides and weaknesses?
At first, I had no good answers. Only depressive ones. Over time I taught myself to look behind depression veil. And start seeing opportunities.
The next principle is:
You have no enemies. Enemies are external beings that we cannot control, and therefore they should not have power to disturb our inner peace. By refusing to see anyone as an enemy, you can maintain a state of inner calm and equanimity, even in the face of adversity.
This is the hardest one. But think about it. When I start seeing what this idea is really about... it started changing my life.
Say Hi
After I found the philosophical foundation described above, I realized how miserably I'm failing at following it. How much things I still need to learn and explore. I cannot imagine walking this path alone.
If what I write resonates with you - don't hesitate to say "Hi!" and share your thoughts and experiences. Write to hi@ffloyd.space or reach me in Fediverse.