Disclaimer: These are my personal views and do not represent any organization or professional advice.
#life
Tue, 13 Jan 2026 11:16:34 +0200
HAVE TAKEN UP FARMING
My name is Dylan Araps and I used to be a software engineer, best known for my open source work (Neofetch, Pywal, KISS Linux, Pure Bash Bible) [0]. In 2021, without explanation and without telling anyone, I vanished from the internet. My usage of the internet became strictly "read only".
In 2024, I appeared briefly to tell the world I retired and had "taken up farming" [1]. The vagueness of my message and strangeness surrounding its circumstances created a lot of buzz. It is not every day a person in a cushy, intellectual career drops everything and pivots to working outdoors with their body. It was amusing to read the theories people came up with: from driving a tractor up and down massive tracts of land to being holed up in a Kaczynskiesque cabin in the woods.
Today, I return to the internet to tell my story and announce https://WILD.gr.
For nearly a decade I spent the majority of my waking hours sedentary and staring at a screen. Praised for my work ethic, quick response to messages and sheer number of projects, I was seen as a wizard. People loved what I was doing and I in turn wanted to please them. Chasing attention led to my projects becoming more complex and bigger in scope over time. It became increasingly difficult to maintain them and keep up the wizard persona.
This left me tired and worn out. Hump-backed, skinny-limbed, out of shape and in constant pain with a chronic cough from years of smoking among many issues. Abusing substances to sleep and others to wake up and unable to exert myself for more than a few seconds before running out of breath. My diet consisted of meat, potatoes, junk food and little else. Everything around me was in a state of decay from neglect, and the worse life became, the deeper the descent into my work.
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