This weekend I entered hyperfocus creating my Emotion Picker. It hadn't happened in several years, experiencing pull rather than resistance to hobby work. I drank coffee at night to keep on going because I wanted to continue despite being tired, and I only left the house to attend my yoga class.

My intended task was to actually migrate to Hetzner out of Digital Ocean, my DO dropplet is on a very old version of Ubuntu that is no longer getting updates and Claude recommended starting from a new VPS instance. Being that Hetzner is cheaper and located in the EU that's what I did. But when I saw everything I had to migrate in order to support Movable Type, I thought fuck it, not worth it, let's get my content out of Movable Type.

That was my intended action before I got into this rabbit hole, but I still have to complete my main task (server migration), and I have a specific deadline for this. I initially asked Claude to take a look at my VPS (by relaying commands and outputs) and it walked me through deleting Snap with Certbot stating the alternative was simpler, but when we tried to do it Claude realized it was an old Ubuntu installation and it couldn't so whatever it intended to do.

``` My honest recommendation: don't fix renewals on this server. Migrate to Hetzner before early July and let modern certbot issue fresh certs there.

Reasoning:

Setting up webroot for 15 sites means editing 15 nginx configs plus 15 renewal configs, then debugging whichever site has weird routing or doesn't serve from the standard locations

Even after that work, you'd still be on a dead OS with old certbot throwing version-mismatch warnings.

The migration solves cert renewals as a side effect — fresh certbot from apt on Ubuntu 24.04 will issue new certs cleanly, no plugin gymnastics ```

Dude you broke my installation and then put a deadline on the migration. Sigh, sometimes this is precisely what we need to stop dragging our feet.

My beautiful Brazilian Couchsurfing guest asked if she could stay on her way back to Brazil. I said yes, and she will come next week.

She ordered some stuff on Shein to be delivered at a nearby pick-up location. She claims the stuff arrived earlier than expected (10 days!) and asked very kindly if I was available to pick it up. I had initial resistance as the situation reminded me of my cousin creeping up on favors until he left two suitcases full of clothes for me to distribute among half a dozen people. But then I thought one situation was not equivalent to the other, different person and no red flags (yet).

And so I went to pick up her stuff which wasn't straightforward, as the lockers were in an underground parking lot which required some searching, then she didn't notice she had two different codes and I noticed a block away so I came back to fetch a second package, but it was done.

Yesterday, as I was immersed in my project, she wrote me again... "Mark you're going to kill me, there was a third package that I didn't know would arrive" and then it became immediately clear: the first event is a courtesy, if I do this again I will resent it. So I wrote back "Sorry but if I do this I will resent it, it's better that you get someone else to fetch it. If you can't find anyone else I'll do it, but please try to find someone else first".

And with that I felt two personal development "opportunities" were executed correctly: 1. Don't deny help because someone unrelated took advantage of you and 2. Set early and clear limits when a situation will grind you down. Before my cousin left me with two suitcases of clothes to distribute I saw early signs, like him casually leaving small items for other people to pick up. The favors were small enough but when stacked up it wearied me. He wouldn't have dared to leave his suitcases if I communicated he had started to wear my patience thin.

We avoid setting limits to avoid conflict, only to experience greater conflict later on. This is one of the first times I feel good about saying no (especially to a beautiful woman whom I'm prone to please).