'Following Your Passion' Is Hardly Enough

Follow your passion.

Welcome to the 17th issue of Zero to Hero Highlights.

It’s been a while since my last newsletter, but I’m excited to get back into a regular cadence of sending updates. I know, I know… that’s what I said last time, too yet starting with this one, I am planning to be more consistent.

I hope the new year has started amazingly for you. To be fair, the year started really amazing for me. Here are some of the highlights:

A Trip to Hawaii 🎅

But the highlight of the year was our trip to Hawaii. It was a week with near-zero technology and full of nature. It was utterly recharging.

The beautiful landscapes and friendly locals made for a truly remarkable experience. While there, I even saw a cute little lizard that I just had to snap a video of. I call him Jerry, say “hi” to him 🙂:

Jerry the Lizard

Keep Your Secrets Secret With Aegis

I am excited to have released Aegis this weekend.

Aegis: keep your secrets

Aegis is an open source Secrets Store that provides secrets to workloads securely at runtime without requiring a pod restart.

Essential features that make Aegis unique are:

Kubernetes-first design
Minimal footprint
Hassle-free deployment
And overall, a delightful user experience.

With Aegis, you can rest assured that your sensitive data is always **secure ** and protected. Check out Aegis on GitHub for details.

With a caveat that Aegis is still a work in progress. I am improving its feature set; however, it is still technically an alpha product. Therefore, any part of it can change at any time. Use it at your own risk.

But while there, if you share your stars on GitHub, I’d be delighted ❤️.

Mastodon Anyone?

I also put together a guide for those looking to create and manage their Mastodon instances.

I have been a part of Hachyderm Mastodon instance for a couple of months so far, and I can confidently say that it’s a breeze of fresh air after all the birdsite madness. I am never going back to Twitter!

I also have created my own single-user Mastodon instance z2h (edit 2024-05-21: z2h is not operational as of May 2024), where I share many helpful for those interested. So if you like these newslettes, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the z2h.dev Mastodon instance too.

Random Thought of the Week

I have wondered why the adage “follow your passion” does not always work and why it has this uncanny, misleading nature.

We’ve all heard the saying “follow your passion” when finding a career that we’ll love. But the truth is, it can be challenging.

If I focused on what came naturally to us and what we enjoyed doing, I’m pretty sure I would be playing the Elders Scrolls of Morrowind forever.

It is more productive to consider doing the activities that challenge us: The activities that are even mildly annoying. If you know that when you endure the struggle, there is a positive reward, that’s the kind of activity that’s worth pursuing.

You might be better at these things. But you’ll always be energized by tackling them head-on and putting in the hard work.

So, aside from having fun, it is also essential to have **the right kind of fun ** for a good purpose.

Look What I’ve Found

Here are the things that grabbed my attention this week.

I typically don’t share these anywhere else.

Exclusively hand-picked for you 👌. Enjoy.

Thanks a Lot ❤️

That’s all for this week. Next week, I’ll gather more unique content and resources.

So, until next time… May the source be with you 🦄.