Feb 9–15, 2026
The weather is getting warmer. Last week was bitterly cold, but now I can feel spring slowly arriving. I’ve been enjoying seasonal spring greens—doenjang-jjigae with shepherd’s purse, sweet spinach, napa cabbage, and the refreshing tang of radish kimchi. Lately, I’ve also been eating a lot of kkakdugi, and I think I’ve finally discovered its true flavor. Since I stopped eating heavily seasoned food, I’ve started noticing the subtle, delicate tastes of food that comes straight from nature.
My left arm is gradually improving. The pain in my elbow and arm has decreased significantly, though my wrist still doesn’t feel fully strong. The muscle tightness and the clicking sounds in my elbow have reduced a lot. I did barbell deadlifts for the first time in a long while—not at my previous level, but enough to feel that I’m recovering bit by bit. There are still finer details to work through, but it was good to see steady, small progress.
I submitted the updated version of my freelance project for review. It was different from the projects I’ve worked on before, so it took time to understand the codebase. Still, it’s a field I’m interested in, so I enjoyed learning new things along the way. Now I need to start preparing for the next step right away.
Preparing this update left me with more regrets than I expected. I resumed work that had been paused since the second half of last year, cut a few features, and focused on finishing the core ones. Since I wasn’t involved from the start, I picked up from the middle and focused on completing the stalled features. Claude Code made it manageable, but since the domain and codebase were unfamiliar, there were cases where I couldn’t review the code as thoroughly as I would have liked.
I gradually learned about APIs, specialized terminology, and techniques from a field I never thought I could work in. Along the way, I also figured out how to use Claude Code more efficiently.
Fortunately, there were no critical issues after launch. There were minor fixes needed, so I prepared and submitted a minor version as well. While organizing the project late at night, I discovered what I judged to be a somewhat critical issue, so I rushed to prepare a fix and resubmitted. I quietly notified the project owner and explained the situation. I was grateful that they didn’t make a big deal out of it—instead, they thanked me for being attentive. I think the trust we’ve built over time made the difference, and I appreciated that even more.
I don’t need to prepare the next version immediately, but I want to properly organize things before moving on to the next big step, so I’ve been tidying up the project bit by bit. I’m a little disappointed that I couldn’t spend much time on personal projects this week, but working through bugs and unfamiliar areas in the freelance project taught me new things, and I genuinely had fun for the first time in a while. Since it’s a field I’m not very familiar with, I’d like to publish a technical blog post about it if the opportunity arises. For now, let me focus on wrapping up the next version well.
I’m spending the Lunar New Year holiday, including the weekend, with family. This month in particular, I’ve been spending more time with them. I’m not yet in a place where I can fully relax and enjoy it, but I hope to get there soon so I can share more joyful moments with my family. Next year, I’ll make sure of it.