I feel like this is important, at least for me, to maintain a balance. I have a small bit of land. I'm often building with wood or metal. I'm lucky enough to have a shop/outbuilding where I can do those things like machine, weld, paint, cut, etc.
I grew up in a small town (less than 3500 people) and I was a pretty fanatical gear head. I thought, at around 10, I had my mind made up and I was going to be a mechanical engineer. It was a way to combine two things I loved: computers and machines. But then I stumbled across a new undergrad program at one of our state universities focusing on networking, programming and *nix OSes and fell down that rabbit hole. On one hand I'm glad I did, on the other hand I'm still tinkering with things like Fusion 360 and vCarve. Maybe it's that it's not my professional life but building real things has a different reward. I've built, extended and upgraded countless corporate networks and have mostly specialized in network security over the years. But it's really good to physically build or fix something. I've got dirt and grease under my nails often.
I feel like this is important, at least for me, to maintain a balance. I have a small bit of land. I'm often building with wood or metal. I'm lucky enough to have a shop/outbuilding where I can do those things like machine, weld, paint, cut, etc.
I grew up in a small town (less than 3500 people) and I was a pretty fanatical gear head. I thought, at around 10, I had my mind made up and I was going to be a mechanical engineer. It was a way to combine two things I loved: computers and machines. But then I stumbled across a new undergrad program at one of our state universities focusing on networking, programming and *nix OSes and fell down that rabbit hole. On one hand I'm glad I did, on the other hand I'm still tinkering with things like Fusion 360 and vCarve. Maybe it's that it's not my professional life but building real things has a different reward. I've built, extended and upgraded countless corporate networks and have mostly specialized in network security over the years. But it's really good to physically build or fix something. I've got dirt and grease under my nails often.