Week 9, 2026: On-Call Week, Peak Training, and Spring Vibes

Warm weather massively improves my mood. For some reason (which I am fully in for), the temperature rose to about 18 C this week, and the city transformed completely. I took full advantage of it and ran outside a lot.

During on-call shifts, running becomes a bit tricky. Here is the deal: I have 10 minutes to be in front of my laptop in case of an incident, which means the furthest I can run is about 7 to 8 minutes from my door. At this stage, I have perfected this loop, to be honest.

As I said in last week’s reflection, we had a “do whatever you like to do that you cannot because of roadmaps” week. I thought that might mean a calmer on-call week because everyone would be busy coding cool projects. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen (at least not fully). I had to deal with two very serious production items. I am happy I handled them without disturbing anyone’s week, but I had hoped to finish more of what I planned.

I am working on a new feature for “grpc-go” on the side, and I am very excited about it. Hopefully, I will push a proposal next week. I cannot wait to contribute to “grpc-go.”

✨ Highlights

Best Moments

I ran about 80 km this week; about 75% of it was outdoors. I really enjoyed wearing shorts and a t-shirt while everyone was out enjoying the spring vibes.
I went out with a friend on Saturday while wearing sunglasses at the end of February!! The same month that had -7 C with frozen ground!! We enjoyed coffee and sweets.

Wins

I set up WireGuard in my home network, and now I have remote access to my Kubernetes cluster.
I almost have Maestro ready. Maestro is my xDS service that I want to deploy in my cluster so I can develop features and learn more about service mesh and service discovery.
I am learning a lot about new technologies every day. I don’t think I studied every day, but I would say I achieved 80% of my study goals during the week.
Peaked in my training for the Berlin Half. Smashed 80 km this week!
I enrolled in a set of courses to prepare me for the next set of certificates I am going for. More about this in future posts.

⚠️ Challenges

What felt heavy or draining?

The Block layoff was hard to read about. It made me question, again, what comes next for software engineering and AI. I really like what I do, and I enjoy learning new technologies, so it makes me sad to see layoffs in the industry. I wish everyone impacted all the luck in their next endeavors.

The war in Iran and in my region right now is also heavy. Man, why doesn’t this region get a break from all the conflicts and problems? Will I ever be able to visit Syria the way any other person can just go home?

Sore body. My body is very tired at the moment, and I can feel it. I am glad I peaked for the half, and now I can slowly decrease the load week by week. As I promised before, this blog is about being honest and transparent about my feelings and what I go through. So I want to share that I wasn’t happy about my weight during the running analysis. I didn’t like how I looked running topless in those videos. I know I have already lost a lot of weight, but I am not where I want to be yet.

What didn’t go as planned?

Reading. I barely read anything this week 😟 I don’t know why I am not getting hooked on reading yet!
I wanted to do something fun, and unfortunately I didn’t. I wanted to do puzzles or play video games, and I couldn’t. Work and career goals are keeping me busy all the time. I don’t know if this is sustainable, to be honest.

🧠 Lessons & Patterns

I am learning so much about containers and containerization. I launched a container without an image this week! It felt like a whole world had been hidden from me. I am still planning to write a blog post about that, but I need more time to finish my study.
I am working on my next career path these days, so I am trying to understand what a Staff Engineer means in software engineering. I don’t think I have a good understanding of it yet.

🏃 Running & Training Summary

I wrote about my peak training week here if you would like to read it.

😄 Things I enjoyed this week

As I mentioned above, I am really enjoying learning about containers. I think Ivan Velichko has great blogs explaining everything about containerization!
“Casually Explained” dropped a video about one of my favorite subreddits, r/wallstreetbets. Check it out here.
PewDiePie has the best retirement ever. A great video by him “beating” ChatGPT.

🎯 Next Week Plan

I am working and learning about so many cool things, and my goal for next week is to have a proposal ready for my upcoming grpc-go feature.
Prioritize fun activities during the week. I have a birthday on Saturday, and I will take advantage of that to have some fun.
Also, I have a very, very busy week. My goal, as always, is to try not to let work bleed into my private life, and next week is a good test of that.

Looking forward to seeing what March has for me.