Leaving Trustroots Volunteering

TLDR; I've decided to leave Trustroots volunteering because I want to put my focus and energy elsewhere.

I remain a member of Trustroots community.

Looking back

I first contributed code to Trustroots in June 2016. It was a bugfix in randomization of user location.

Since then I took part for example in:

statistics
migration of frontend to React
i18n (internalization)
references
small features and bugfixes
summer hackathon in Berlin in 2017
winter collective at the end of 2018
spring hackathon in 2020
dreaming about more community-driven Trustroots

During this time i made 81 commits to master (grouped per 5 weeks):

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.     . . .   .   .   . .                     . . . . . .               . . . . .     .
2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2
6 6 6 6 6 6 6 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 0 0 0 0 0 0
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0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
5 6 8 9 0 1 2 1 2 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 2 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 0 1 2 1 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 2 1 2 3 4 6 7
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2 2 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 0 0 1 1 2 2 0 0 1 1 1 2 2 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 0 0 1 1 2 2 0 0
3 7 1 5 0 4 9 3 7 3 8 2 7 1 5 0 4 8 2 9 3 8 2 6 0 5 9 4 8 4 8 3 7 2 6 0 4 9 3 7 3 7 1 6

You can read my very personal account on volunteering for this network below:

Beginnings

I joined Trustroots in December 2014. Folks from hitchwiki hosted me and Talita in Antalya on hitchwiki hackathon. Mikael, Arthur and Rémi were about to launch Trustroots.

Inspiration

At that time I wanted to create a social network. You would find people who cared about the same things as you, you would start collaborating, and the world would become a better place.

I liked Trustroots a lot. So I simply copied many Trustroots features.

I didn't understand that a social network needed people. After years of development, I abandoned the project, reaching about 5 members. I learned a lot.

ditup.org: Do it together, start it up!

Contributing

I fixed a bug in Trustroots in 2016. Months later, somebody, probably Mikael, asked me whether I would work on statistics. I said yes.

Went to hackathon in Berlin, met people from yunity and Trustroots. I stayed connected with a subgroup of yunity, now centered around Kanthaus.

Contributed some more. Not being inspired, I decided to never make any decisions or take power. I only coded.

Went with Talita to a collective in Spain in fall 2018. Met with Abel, Kasper and others. I had a pleasure to collaborate with Abel. I also enjoyed getting to know Kasper who had been a mythical figure for me (hitchwiki, trashwiki, nomadwiki). I don't remember him being active in Trustroots before, but this time he was here and had a lot of ideas about what Trustroots could become. After the collective, Kasper disappeared again for over a year.

Around that time I hoped Trustroots could help refugees get help on their way. I was told (in now defunct forum by I don't know whom) this would be possible only after Trustroots was translated and Tribes (now Circles) were more evolved. I didn't argue, but started working on translations, along with React migration.

Dreaming

Mikael Korpela, who had been the main force and authority behind Trustroots, started having less time for Trustroots.

Then Nick Sellen came back to Trustroots and I was very happy with the direction we as a community took. I didn't have my own vision, but Nick's vision resonated with me. These were, vaguely, hopes for more community-driven Trustroots, in which founders would gradually give up their power and authority and we would govern ourselves in peer to peer way, with power more equally distributed.

Nick left Trustroots and some of this vision may have left with him. I hope some of it stays. I can't say since I haven't been around.

Burning out

During the first pandemia lockdown, I became isolated and unhappy. The Spring 2020 Hackathon took place. I participated, but the remains of my energy got depleted.

I stopped working on Trustroots.
I stopped coding.
I lost all excitement.
I was tired.
I was burned out.

It took me 3 months of cycling around, sleeping outdoors, very little computer and no coding to recover and get excited about life again.

And here we are. I don't want to make the world a better place by coding anymore. I don't think this medium works for me.

I still think Trustroots is a great example of a web application which helps us be more together, in real world. That might be the only together that matters.

I left unfinished stuff. Especially the React migration and translations were only half way done. I'm not going to finish it.

There were many new people involved in Trustroots during the 2020 Hackathon. It gave me a hope but I didn't stay around to get to know them better.

Why I volunteered for Trustroots

I used and enjoyed Trustroots, but I didn't feel very excited about working on it. I did it so I wouldn't go mad working on stuff that I found more meaningful and exciting but much more likely to fail.

I also learned a lot. Thanks to Trustroots I got fluent in React, learned to collaborate on a major open source project, and could also take credits for some of it (useful when applying for a developer job).

Why I'm leaving

I experienced programming burn-out.

I want to put my energy elsewhere.

What I'm up to

A cause worth spending next 10 years of my life:

Every (young) person knows that school is bad for them, that they don't have to go to school and what they can do instead. In other words promoting unschooling and self-directed education among people who currently go to school.

My hopes and wishes for Trustroots

I wish Trustroots:

is non-hierarchical.
connect refugees and people who offer their homes and help to refugees.
is decentralized over Solid.

My wishes for you

I wish you:

trust yourself.
question authority.
meet with me.

Life is essentially meaningless, therefore we are free.

Disclaimer

Maybe I'll edit this article later.

2021-01-10