I was about to give up for the day on this project. Just after compiling and uploading, my VS Code was using up all my CPU and slowed my whole system to a near halt. Since my music also stopped, I pulled out my phone (brutal mistake) and connected to Spotify. I briefly glanced at my YouTube home page and nearly got sucked into endless scrolling, functionally calling the productive session to a close. But I remembered the conversation I had with my coworker earlier today: the goal is to actually finish this project. Immediately, I new what I had to do. I needed to stop trying to figure out a new development environment in VS Code that would allegedly give "lower level control" and other false-benefits, and crack open the old dusty Arduino IDE and just get 'er done!

Today around lunchtime, I got a notification on my phone. The package I ordered from Digikey -- nothing fancy, just some simple microcontrollers and a few other nicknacks -- was delivered to my house. For the rest of the day, I was hopping in my chair and itching to tell anyone about my new embedded project I had waiting for me at home. The main sentiment that I shared in today's conversations was that I never complete projects, and this time that would change. The usual reasons I don't complete projects are because the goal of the project is to have fun learning about the topic, I allow myself to get sucked into niche technical problems, and enjoy the challenge of figuring out how things work under the hood. Ultimately, this exploratory mindset results (for me) in lots of deep-dives into rabbit holes that are interesting in the short-term, probably further my understanding of the topic at hand but don't actually really make any progress to completing the project. This is all fine and good for a while, but after spending, like, 6, 7, years with technical hobbies and the only thing to show for it being a cheeky "I learned a lot of stuff", it leaves a little more to be desired. Now I am driven to build something by sheer lack of past results, start to end, have it work, be able to show it off and prove to myself that I have follow through. And the project that I will do this with is a pink noise relaxation device, the one I started with this blog post nearly a year ago.

The main ways I will actually complete this project:

• Tell everyone I know that I am working on it and that I will finish it to stay accountable (outsourcing, to some degree :) )
• Do the least effort to get the best result. Prioritize WORKING over PRETTY/FAST/OPTIMAL/whatever.

• Don't get bogged down with nonsense.
  • Pick the tried and tested tools for the job that will get it complete quickly before I burn out.
  • Have clear goals, measures of success, deadlines. Reject feature creep.
  • Don't go off on exploratory tangents to figure out how something works.
  • If it ain't broke, don't fix it <---- SUPER IMPORTANT!!!

Today, I booted up Arduino IDE, vibe coded a timer register setup, stole my own LFSR code from a year ago, and listened to the resulting white noise through two series 330 ohm resistors into cheap (disintegrating) wired headphones. Does it work? Yup. Am I proud of it? Not yet. Will this work style result in a real finished product some day? Only time will tell...