I reached a mental block when writing code, like I couldn't structure what I was writing in my head. So I gave up, and with a bunch of my friends doing PCB work, I decided I should try to experiment with logic in the form of cheap and available 74xx ICs. But...how do you check your circuit is actually correct? Software like logisim is quite painful to work with for large enough circuits. That lead to the thoughts of a project myself and my best friend naively wanted to do: build a GPU, and so we'd very vaguely learned Verilog. If you can write logic in Verilog, you can use the comparatively good simulation tools to make sure it works, and then transfer that circuit to kicad (or as I would learn from Pepijn later, directly emit a kicad netlist). So, I joined #yosys, and asked a question about how easy it would be to target 74xx logic. The rest is history :p

late-2020 to late-2021. probably the second worst year of my life after 2023. as much as I tried to paint it all smiles and rainbows, it was awful.

• COVID meant I wasn't exactly able to get fresh air much. it probably lead to my present agoraphobic tendencies.
• the day before I moved in, my best friend died of cancer.
• the landladies were extremely picky - doing just about anything would lead to "look, mold!" and a stern lecture about maintaining the house.
• as much as I tried to paint it as cheerful, it... wasn't: I was in a house with someone who regularly verbally abused me; someone who raped me (cheating on his girlfriend in the process); and someone who was not all that available.

I'm not looking for sympathy - it happened, it's over, and I don't jump anymore when someone touches me.