leveling my hardware skills

disassembled an old laptop last night. I was randomly inspired by the cyberdeck community, and decided on a whim to tear it open, screw by screw, ribbon connector by ribbon connector.

I have some ancient experience building vintage PCs (back in the early 2000s AD) so it wasn't completely new territory, but my first time handling laptop internals... and my first time considering any kind of a custom deck build.

I've been on r/cyberDeck for years, and have long been a fan of the Sprawl Trilogy and Shadowrun, where cyberdecks are ubiquitous tools of the technically inclined. will I follow through with this interest and build one? don't know yet. I've always thought it was cool, but it might be too time- and cost-prohibitive for where I am in life right now.

but I'm at least in discovery mode, hashing out ideas in more physical terms than I'm used to. it feels good--and kind of odd--to be working with electronics. boards, circuits, and chipsets instead of the more intangible, virtual toolsets I've been living and breathing these past several years. I've been so immersed in my career, in design, AI agents, experience architecture, design strategy, AI-augmented workflows--consulting in the tech sector--that I've really lost sight of many of the more physical art forms that I used to pursue. I used to DIY halloween costumes every year. I built a series of lightsabers out of PVP. I used to sculpt with clay, plaster, and paper mache. I don't really sketch, ink, or paint anymore - instead I doodle in Procreate and Photoshop. I don't build computers anymore - I buy the mass-produced lines of consumer whore brand personal devices.

I've been feeling down on my current stage of life lately, creatively and professionally speaking. on the one hand, I currently have the best job I've ever had - benefits, compensation, and prestige. it's a role that I lucked into after a long period of crap jobs and crap pay, and I finally feel like I'm being paid what I'm worth, and getting recognition I've never before received. I'm constantly working at the bleeding edge of tech, a design leader in an AI-native accelerated industry - but my socially anxious neurodivergent mind screams silently with every new client-facing consulting engagement I am assigned to.

my point is, even though I'm in an amazing role that has allowed me to support my family and compete with the high cost of living and the financially debilitating traumas we've faced these past several years, I'm not in a role that inspires, motivates, and satiates me. I'm an artist, designer, writer, sometimes-developer... and ultimately, a builder.

lately I'm a builder of experiences. user experience, solution design, business strategy. but historically, in the annals of memory, I was a builder of things. art, comics, paintings, short stories, poems, model kits, whittling, woodburning, calligraphy. I have a hundred old sketchbooks filling a bookshelf in my office. boxes of loose-leaf pages of sketches, comic strips, and notes. the creative physical art forms that I used to enjoy.

and that's a roundabout way of saying this...

for the first time in a long, long time... as I look upon the scattered circuitry, computer components, and tools strewn across my desk, I feel excited about working on a physical activity... once again using my hands, my fingers, my tools--instead of tippity-typing on a keyboard or moving around a mouse--to craft something tactile, something with substance.

after so long in the virtual corpo bio-dome of consulting, I feel like--maybe--I am once again beginning to change my trajectory. maybe, perhaps, a new chapter will soon begin.

a new era. an era where I'm not living and breathing amongst a throng of orchestrated agents and billable clients and constantly striving to outrun the imposter syndrome... but an era where I'm living and breathing my creative passions.

whether or not I wind up building an actual cyberdeck, this will at least be an exercise in tactile creativity. getting one step closer to returning to the physical hobbies that have long ago fallen by the wayside.